Celebrity cartoonists: What a bunch of quitters!

The comedian Phill Jupitus has produced a couple of comic strips to promote the radio programme Comic Love, in which he talks about his love of comics and newspaper strips. One can be seen in the July 19 edition of Radio Times and the other (excerpt above) here: Seeing the world in four panels.

Jupitus is one of many celebrities who, in their younger days, dabbled with careers in cartooning before going on to make their name in a different way. Usually a more profitable one.

Three years ago I wrote an article for The Jester, newsletter of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, which was a round-up of these erstwhile cartoonists. It is reprinted here.

MEL CALMAN called his autobiography What Else Do You Do?, after the question that is so often put to cartoonists. In fact, there appear to be many cartoonists who not only did something else, but found that that occupation eventually made their name, to the point where the career in cartooning became a largely forgotten footnote.

I started thinking about this when I heard after the death of the comedian Bob Monkhouse that he had once been a cartoonist. A little light research on the internet turned up the fact that he worked for D.C. Thomson, but other than this I know very little and I’d be grateful if anyone could shed any light on the matter.**

At about the same time, I read an article about the novelist John Updike and how he had been obsessed with cartoons as a child. He regularly badgered his cartoonist heroes for original artwork for free (how we know that feeling). Updike also tried his hand at being a cartoonist before coming to his senses and deciding that writing was the better path to take. It was certainly the more lucrative.

Another writer who has dabbled with cartooning is Will Self. Some of his work can be seen in a compilation of his newspaper and magazine articles called Junk Mail. The drawing is crude but some of the gags are pretty good. A friend of mine used to work as a sub-editor at an architecture magazine called Building Design where Self once wrote a column and regularly submitted a cartoon along with it. My pal took a rather dim view of Will Self the artist because he never rubbed out his pencil lines and the lowly, overworked subs had to do it.



BBC 6Music presenter Marc Riley, formerly “Lard” of Mark and Lard fame on Radio One, and an ex-bass player with The Fall, is an ex-cartoonist whose drawing was somewhat on the crude side. Readers may remember his Harry the Head from Oink! Comic. He also appeared in photo strips in Oink! He was the guy with the big nose.

Former 6Music breakfast show presenter Phill Jupitus, the comedian and Never Mind the Buzzcocks team captain, also dabbled as a cartoonist apparently, though again I was unable to unearth any details about his early work (seems you can’t find everything on the internet) so it would be great if anyone could fill in the, er, sketchy details.

Another former cartoonist is broadcaster Andrew Collins, also an ex-New Musical Express journalist, EastEnders scriptwriter, Radio Times film writer and general overachiever. He chronicled his love of cartoons and half-hearted attempts to make a living drawing owls and wizards for puzzle magazines in Where Did it All Go Right and Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, his bestselling memoirs of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

Talking of the NME, anyone who used to read the music paper in the early 1990s may remember a cartoon drawn in the style of Gillray called Dr Crawshaft’s World of Pop. But did you know that it was drawn by Arthur Mathews who went on to co-script the sitcom Father Ted? Of course comedy writing and cartooning often go hand in hand. I know that some Cartoonists’ Club members have scripted stuff for radio and TV.

So I suppose there’s hope for us all if we get disillusioned with the world of cartooning. If you know any other examples of famous former cartoonists, let me know.

Right, time to get back to the drawing board/typewriter/record decks …

Comic Love is on BBC Radio Four at 10.30am on Saturday 19 July.



**UPDATE**
Here is a cartoon by Bob Monkhouse of cartoonist Noel Ford, along with a photo of Bob working on that very drawing. Noel, who once worked with Bob at the BBC, says he really did look that weird in the 1970s! Thanks for sharing, Noel.

Royston: Non-celebrity cartoonist!

Dalek cartoon: The director's cut

This cartoon is in the current edition of Private Eye. The Dalek cartoon was popular a few years back, notably during the lengthy period that Doctor Who was off air. Here I've combined it with a current popular obsession among cartoonists: outdoor smokers.

Private Eye added a sign reading "Stage Door" on the left hand side of the cartoon. I had considered putting in a sign saying "BBC" when I submitted the gag, but I thought it might be over-egging the joke. I don't think a sign is needed really.

Apart from anything else, I thought that rather than actors smoking inside the Daleks, maybe this takes place in the Doctor Who universe – the Whoniverse, if you will – and these are Daleks taking a break from conquering the human race. Well, whatever the interpretation, it's smoking Daleks, what more do you want?

It's not the first time I've had a Doctor Who gag in Private Eye. Here's one from 2005, just before the series was relaunched.

In actual fact, having been a big Doctor Who fan as a child, I was really looking forward to the new series, but sometimes you have to play Devil's Advocate as a cartoonist. There had been an excessive amount of hype surrounding the series (that seems to have been maintained!) and the media kept falling back on the old "get ready to hide behind the sofa" cliche, hence this cartoon.

Royston's portfolio: Star Wars cartoons also available ...

News media cartoon: More relevant than ever

Here's another cartoon from the archives. A ten-year-old gag from Private Eye (26 June, 1998) that is probably more relevant now than ever. TV news was just getting going on dumbing down back then.

This is another pre-Google Image Search cartoon. I drew Sooty from memory and knew at the time that he didn't look quite right. When the cartoon appeared in print I saw what was wrong ... his ears were white! So when I put together my first portfolio website, a year later, I put up a version with black ears.

The cartoon made a reappearance in the Private Eye annual of 1998 (with white ears). It was also one of the first cartoons where I sold the original. A friend snapped it up for a sum that was cheap even for 1998 (hope you realise you got a bargain, Simon!)

Royston's portfolio website

One from the archives: My oldest drawing

For this journey into the past we're going back a l-o-n-g way, to the oldest drawing of mine that I still own. It was drawn when I was ten years old.

Clearly it was kept (by my mum) as it's an "award-winning" cartoon: Third Prize in the Schools Painting Competition run by the Catterick and District Caged Bird Society. Oh, yes. Here's the proof:



It was not intended as a cartoon as such, but I think the drawing betrays a cartoonist's sensibility ...



Yes, that's right, I drew a dodo for the Caged Bird Society! I remember being slightly obsessed with the extinct bird as a kid. Not sure why. I love the fact that the certificate just says "His painting of a bird". It's not even a painting as it's drawn with coloured pencils. I also like the fact that the dodo looks pretty evil.

I did draw cartoons before this. I made my own comic when I was about eight or nine called "Ka-Pow!" I used to draw it with carbon paper underneath and an extra sheet of paper so I'd have a copy for my friend Richard. I've no idea what happened to the comics, so my strips "Gomez the Gorilla" and "Toot and Carmen" are sadly not available to be shown here.

That's probably a good thing, on reflection.

Some more up-to-date cartoons by Royston

Arts and culture cartoon: The waiting game

Sometimes you have to wait quite some time before a cartoon which is taken by a magazine actually appears in its pages. The above cartoon is a case in point. It appears in the current issue of The Spectator. My records show that it was part of a batch of cartoons sent to the magazine on May 8th, 2007. So it has taken 13 months to see the light of day.

I've found, from talking to other cartoonists, that this is not unusual. Some have horror stories of even longer delays. My own personal record is the cartoon below which appeared in the New Statesman in early 2001, two years after they took it.

By the way, Newsnight Review, for those not familiar with it, is a BBC2 arts show that is screened on a Friday night after the regular Newsnight show. It's always good for a laugh as some of the comments of the participants can be a bit on the pretentious side. It's particularly amusing when discussing stuff that isn't generally what you'd call high-brow. For example the poet and critic Tom Paulin seems to say about more or less any Hollywood film, "Essentially, I think, the subtext here is Vietnam."

Kids, on the other hand, have two default settings when it comes to "reviewing" films and TV. As a parent I'm acutely aware that everything is "cool" or "boring". They should hand Newsnight Review over to the kids for one show. They'd get through a lot of stuff.

***UPDATE July 4, 2008***
Unbelievably, the "Newsnight Review for Kids" cartoon has come true! This week they brought in a panel of kids, rather than the usual pundits, to discuss the stage version of High School Musical. The words "like" and "cheesy" were heard a lot more than usual. Here it is: The REAL Newsnight Review for Kids.

Royston's portfolio website

Boardroom cartoon: A bit topical

I do cartoons for various business/trade magazines. Usually they're drawn to accompany an article, in this case one about governing boards putting together questionnaires to assess their own effectiveness. But on occasion you can allow a spot of topicality to creep in – which is what happened here.

Note to non-UK readers: there has been a spate of cases where officials have left top-secret documents on trains and buses lately. The public reaction to this phenomenon was summed up neatly by the comedian Jeremy Hardy on Radio 4's News Quiz: "Everyone says, That's ridiculous! What kind of person would do that? And then you stop and think ... I would do that ..."

Royston's portfolio website

Comic strip: The Wedding Present

Here's something else a bit different from the usual gag cartooning, an excerpt from a comic strip drawn for a forthcoming book about David Gedge, lead singer of influential indie band The Wedding Present. Click the image to enlarge.



I used to draw strips for the band's fanzine in the late 80s/early 90s and was invited, along with other cartoonists who drew for the band, to contribute to the new book. We were provided with rough storylines, and asked to illustrate and expand on them. My strip was a transcription of a real tour-bus conversation, to which I added a few humorous flights of fantasy.

A postscript to this is that I received a free copy of the band's new album El Rey this week and found that I'm among the thank-yous in the CD booklet! As I've been a fan of the band for 21 years I got quite a kick out of that.

You can see a couple of my strips from 1989 at the Wedding Present fan site Something and Nothing.

Royston's portfolio website

Humorous illustration: some examples

You might get the impression from this blog that my work is all about the on-spec gag cartoon market. But, in fact, a lot of my time is taken up with commissioned work, and these drawings are often more in the area that is known as "humorous illustration", rather than joke cartoons.

Here are some examples, from various books and magazines. Click the images for larger versions.






Royston's portfolio website: humorous illustration and more

Caricatured by Steve Bright

This caricature of me was drawn by my cartoonist pal Steve Bright. It was kind of an exercise in no-holds-barred caricaturing. I'm pretty sure Steve isn't quite so cruel when at live caricaturing gigs, or he'd never get asked back. But I'm not (too) vain, I love it! And it's now on my wall, as well as my blog.

Steve cut his teeth at the Beano and Dandy and was co-creator of Bananaman (he also kindly drew a Bananaman for my son). He's a superb draughtsman and to see him draw live is a joy. Check out his website Steve Bright Cartoons.

The egg-shaker, by the way, is a reference to my "musical" exploits at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

Royston's portfolio website

Recycling cartoon: Climate change is such a laugh

I "do my bit", as they say, in terms of recycling, composting, re-using stuff, using public transport, etc, and I certainly believe that climate change is a problem ... yet I find that it's so much easier to make jokes about "Green enthusiasts" than about the climate-change deniers. Above is an example, which appears in this week's Private Eye.

I read an article in the Guardian last week about whether it's possible for comedians to do jokes supporting environmentalism, or whether they just end up sounding preachy. I've certainly seen the latter with some comedians who have tackled the issue. But maybe I'm just being lazy and should attempt some pro-environmentalism gags. Watch this space.

Appropriately, the joke in this cartoon was originally written for a commission but it was rejected by the client in favour of another option. So I "recycled" the joke by drawing it as a cartoon to go out with an on-spec batch.

Royston's portfolio website

Review: Pont at the Cartoon Museum

I wrote a review of the exhibition Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad, which is at the Cartoon Museum in London, for the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation blog. Here it is:

It's probably asking for trouble to use the word "important" in relation to a cartoon exhibition, but it seems applicable here as Pont, who was known as Graham Laidler to his mum, is so often overlooked when histories of cartooning are written.

Also, these cartoons from the 1930s were clearly instrumental in helping to create the magazine cartoon as we know it today. And a tribute to their worth is the fact that so many are laugh-out-loud funny, even now.

Pont's The British Character cartoons, which appeared in Punch and make up a large chunk of the show, still seem to hit the nail on the head. Even the captions in themselves are funny: "Fondness for laughing at our own anecdotes"; "Passion for not forgetting the moderately great"; and, my particular favourite, "A tendency to leave the washing-up till later".

The drawings demand your attention, and repay you with lots of brilliant details. Look at that impatient left foot in the drawing above! In "Life in the Flat Above", part of the Popular Misconceptions series, we see every member of the family jumping up and down on the floor and clanging pots, but look closer and you see that figures in the paintings on the walls, including an elephant, are also jumping.

Laidler died at 32, a tragically short life, but what a groundbreaking legacy he left. The cartoon above looks like a 1930s precursor to the melancholy of Charles Schulz's Peanuts.

So it's an important show, but it's mostly just very, very funny. The exhibition, which includes a comprehensive and reasonably priced catalogue, is at the Cartoon Museum until July 27. Go and see it.

The Cartoon Museum website

The Professional Cartoonists' Organisation

Dinner party cartoon: Let's change the subject

Here's a cartoon from May's Reader's Digest. Needless to say, this is based on experience. Why do people love talking about these subjects so much, particularly houses? I own a house, not thinking of moving, or buying another, so who cares? People ask how much your house is worth now even when you're not selling, as if you're supposed to keep checking. Come on people, let's find something else to talk about. Whose watching Mad Men? Anyone?

Royston's portfolio website

From the archives: Early "fame"

I came across these cuttings while having a sort out the other day. The first two are from nearly 20 years ago when some friends and I ran a self-published Viz-inspired comic called DoodleBug.

We sent copies out to various media outlets, most of whom ignored us. We did get a mention on the John Peel Show though and, for some reason, five glowing reviews (not bad as we only did eight issues!) in the now defunct Record Mirror. These are the last two. Click to enlarge and read the text.



The cutting below, worth posting for the dodgy hair and glasses, is from 1994. Universal Post was a magazine for students in Sunderland. It was independent, not connected to the university, and was my first regular paying gig. For a couple of years I did a strip every fortnight (A4, landscape, two decks) and they paid me £20 for it. Not a great deal of money even then, but I put it all into a separate bank account and eventually it paid for a holiday abroad.

I submitted some of the strips in a competition for student cartoonists run by Zit comic, to which this article refers. Click to enlarge and read the text.



Check out the "comedy" pose and me pretending to draw a strip I'd finished ages ago! By the way I didn't come second, there was only one winner and everyone else was a runner up. I think the paper decided second sounded better. The bit about me being drunk is a scurrilous lie.

Royston's portfolio website

Train cartoon: Inspiration in a captive environment

"Hell is other people." So said Jean Paul Sartre. And he never had to travel on the Southeastern Trains service from London Victoria to Ramsgate.

The journeys can be pretty horrendous, especially when populated by the kind of people that don't give a stuff about anyone else. Still, at the least I got a cartoon out of this particular journey, one that appears in the current edition of The Spectator.

I travel on the train between Broadstairs and London fairly regularly and often come up with ideas for gag cartoons while doing so. I sold two to Reader's Digest recently which were both thought up on train journeys and jotted down in my notebook, though unlike this one they were not about train journeys. I think it's a good place to think up ideas because you're in a captive environment, with fewer distractions. You can't just go and make some toast or surf the internet. Of course, its easier on the quieter trips.

So, if you see me scribbling away on the Ramsgate to London service, please keep it down will you? And haven't you got any headphones for that thing?

Royston's portfolio website

Happy St. George's Day!

Here's an old cartoon on an "England" theme.

Royston's portfolio website

Back from the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

I returned last night from a fantastic weekend at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. Above is the 6ft by 8ft Big Board cartoon I drew (sponsored in this pic by Holland and Barrett, it seems. Click image to enlarge.)

I was pleased with the way the cartoon turned out, and it got lots of chuckles from the passing public, which is always good. Last year I followed the pencil lines a bit too slavishly, and it ended up looking a bit wonky as a result. This year I kept it much more loose, and it shows. I also added grey tone with acrylic paint, which helped.

It was the best Shrewsbury festival yet, I reckon, despite the colder weather. There was lots of superb work on show ... on the boards, the Humurals (a kind of mural of gag cartoons) and the many exhibitions, not to mention in sketchbooks ... and tablecloths!



Above: Paper tablecloth drawing by Steve Bright. The cartoonists are, clockwise from left, Clive Goddard, Ian Baker, Royston Robertson and Mike Turner. There is always lots of drawing on paper tablecloths during the evening meals at Shrewsbury. Thanks to ace cartoonist Steve Bright (former DC Thomson artist, co-creator of Bananaman) for this one. Pic by Steve Bright



Above: Cartoonists Clive Goddard, Royston Robertson and Steve Bright. As well as being a brilliant chance for the public to meet cartoonists and see them at work, it's a great chance for the cartoonists to meet up and chat. It is, after all, a fairly solitary profession for most of us. Pic by Sam Emms



Above: Clive Goddard and Royston Robertson singing the Belgian punk-pop classic Ca Plane Pour Moi at the Saturday evening sing-song. Guitar was provided by cartoonists Tim Harries, Noel Ford and Roger Penwill. Last year a bunch of us sang this song, but the only words we knew were "Ooo-ooo-eee-ooo", but this year Tim kindly provided the full lyrics. The full French lyrics, of course. There was much improvising, especially as Clive did not have his reading glasses. Pic by Gerard Whyman.

That's enough Shrewsbury coverage for now, though there may be more as more people produce their pictures! A fantastic event, and I'm already looking forward to next year ...

Royston's portfolio website

Off to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Tomorrow I'm travelling up to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. There are events from Friday through to Sunday. I'll mainly be taking part in events on Saturday, such as "reverse caricaturing" (you stick your head through a board, cartoonist draws a body ... like the cartoon above by Roger Penwill, only without the huge shrew), drawing a cartoon as part of a huge mural known as a Humural (geddit?) and doing a 6ft by 8ft "Big Board" cartoon.

So if you're in the area, come over and say hello! Many thanks to Shrewsbury area blogger Chrissy, of Chrissy Marie's Card Craft, for the very nice plug for the festival, and for this site, yesterday.

The Official Shrewsbury Site

Shrewsbury Festival stories on the PCO blog

History cartoons: How we used to laugh

Here's a cartoon that appears in the April issue of Prospect magazine. I'm no great history buff, but history cartoons are always fun to do.

Last year I illustrated a series of articles on life in medieval times ("How we used to fight ... eat ..." etc) which appeared in the BBC's Robin Hood Adventures magazine, a tie-in with the TV series. They were fun to do and I found that when the job finished I continued to think up gag cartoons on a medieval theme!

Here are a few of the cartoons from the "How we used to ..." series.





Cartoons by Royston

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition online

Some of the work from Cartoonists 2008 is now up on the Chris Beetles Gallery website. Click the links below.

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition
Direct link to my section

Cartoonists 2008: The private view

Last night I attended the private view of the Cartoonists 2008 show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. This was my first time showing work at a London gallery, so it was a pretty big deal for me.

There was a small section with my work in it and a few others scattered around the gallery. Ironically, the only one I didn't spot was the one I posted here on Monday. That doesn't mean it wasn't in there though because, believe me, there was a lot of cartoons by many cartoonists in the show, every square inch of wall space seemed to be covered, so I may have missed it.

To be honest, there were far too many cartoons to take in. As I've said on this blog before, cartoons are really meant to be seen in magazines and papers, and it's a bit weird seeing so many in one go. But it does give you a chance to see magnificent works by the likes of Mike Williams and Ed McLachlan in their full glory, rather than reduced to fill a two-column space. And of course, it gives people a chance to buy cartoons, which I'm certainly not knocking!

The place was packed, with lots of people clearly enjoying the cartoons. And it was a good chance to catch up with a few cartoonist pals and meet a few others for the first time. Add to this the free champagne, and the fact that I spotted a "sold" spot on one of my cartoons, and you have my idea of a good night.

******

Footnote: Probably the most surreal part of the night was seeing my biography on the wall. This is because it was written by me, just four days ago, and because they asked me to write something with humour in it, like the biography on my main website, rather than just listing where I've been published etc. So I emailed it to them, thinking, I'm sure this sillines can't be the kind of thing they're after really, and it was reproduced practically word for word. Here it is:

Royston Robertson

Born in Catterick, North Yorkshire, in 1968, Royston Robertson has been drawing cartoons for about as long as he can remember. At the age of seven, he wrote to the TV show Jim'll Fix It to ask if he could edit the Beano for a day. Jim never fixed it.

Between school and university, instead of going to work on a kibbutz, Royston ran the comic DoodleBug with a group of friends. Part fanzine, part Viz, it built up a strong following in the North East.

After university, Royston trained as a journalist, giving in to the “get a proper job” hype, and eventually worked for five years as a sub-editor at The Times. But all the time he kept drawing and selling gag cartoons and he gave up the day job in 2004.

He has been published in Private Eye, Reader's Digest, The Spectator, Prospect, New Statesman, The Oldie and many other publications throughout the world. He has also drawn cartoons for Oxford University Press, Children’s BBC and Scholastic Children’s Books.

Royston Robertson is now based in Broadstairs, Kent.

Jimmy Savile has still not replied to his letter.

Cartoons by Royston