Cartoon from Reader's Digest humour issue

This cartoon is in the September issue of Reader's Digest which is billed as a "special humour issue" and features a bumper crop of cartoons.

Yet again, this is one that came to me while on a train, this time while playing Hangman with my son. Yes, I know I should switch off from work more often, but cartoonists rarely do, particularly as so many jokes are gleaned from everyday life.

Like my son and I, the pair in the cartoon are playing the game with film and TV titles. No prizes for guessing the film here. It's one that has inspired several cartoons by me over the years.

Royston's portfolio website

Toilet humour

I have writen on this blog before about what a boon Google Image Search is for the cartoonist. But sometimes it's just a distraction.

Yesterday I needed a picture of a toilet in profile for a commissioned job (it's not as bad as it sounds!) Quite a tricky thing to draw, off the top of your head, if you want to get the curves and pipes etc correct.

I could have popped downstairs to the bathroom for some real-life reference, but what's quicker than Google?

The trouble is, putting words like "toilet" and "lavatory" into Google is asking for trouble. It turned up all kind of weird stuff and took me down avenues I should have avoided. Here are some samples, and this is at the acceptable end. Well, the least graphic anyway.


What is that guy doing in the first pic? It doesn't look like my idea of a good time.

Royston's portfolio website

Chav debate: Cartoonists don't have to be nice

Here's a cartoon I drew last week to illustrate an article about new words in the Oxford English Dictionary, including slang phrases such as "muffin top". For those who don't know what that means, well I hope it's obvious from the cartoon.

As you can see, I have depicted characters that you might, in the current British parlance, describe as chavs. I sometimes do this in cartoons as a shorthand for a loutish or yobbish person. The Burberry baseball cap and sportswear usually does it.

But should I be doing this or does it merely show that I am a middle-class snob with a deep level of hatred towards the working class? That's what the Fabian Society would say. Last month the think tank said that the word chav should be banned.

I thought about this at the time, and can kind of see what they're getting at, they're worried about people being demonised. But isn't it patronising and insulting to imply that chav equals working class?

I guess I have to admit to being middle class because I went to university, read The Guardian, and have a passing acquaintance with sun-dried tomatoes, but my upbringing was working class and I know, possibly unlike the Fabian Society, that there are all kinds of working class people, many with no interest in designer sportsgear and hanging out at bus shelters.

It was left to Simon Donald, co-creator of Viz, to be the voice of reason when he pointed out that the word chav is meant to be a term of abuse. He has a point, it's like saying that the word idiot should be banned as it is offensive to idiots.

But the real question is: should I as a cartoonist even concern myself with the debate? Cartoonists don't have to be nice. Cartoons are meant to provoke and offend on occasion. That's why when Viz launched it was the funniest comedy around in any medium, because unlike the comedians on the TV and the radio they weren't constantly worrying about offending certain sections of society.

I'm not advocating a return to the days when racist and sexist humour was dominant, merely suggesting that we don't need to be concerned at all times about who gets upset by jokes and cartoons. Lampooning louts and idiots goes back to the days of Hogarth, so Burberry baseball caps won't be disappearing from my cartoons any time soon.

Anyway, on balance I probably do more jokes about the middle classes (see the Reader's Digest and Private Eye cartoons below). Everyone is fair game.


Royston's portfolio website

Time for change

Regular readers (I know you're out there) will have noticed changes to the way this blog looks. I've been fiddling with it a fair bit, switching to a more customisable template and so on. I'm still trying out various things, experimenting with colours etc, so bear with me if, on occasion, it all looks a bit odd.

One major improvement is the blog list, which now automatically changes order with the most recently updated at the top. I'm sure this feature has been around for ages, but it was new to me! If anyone knows of any other good cartoon-related blogs I should add, let me know.

Royston's portfolio website

The talking-object cartoon

My cartoonist friend Alex Matthews tells me that he has been trying for ages to get a talking-object cartoon published in a magazine. And he's finally succeeded, with a cartoon featuring a talking stagalmite (or is it a stalactite?) in Prospect magazine. You can see it on his new blog.

This got me thinking because I've really not done a great deal of talking-object cartoons. I've done plenty with talking animals, but not your actual inanimate everyday objects. And, really, you don't see that many around, unless they're by the master of the technique: the New Yorker's Charles Barsotti. He's given life to many an lifeless object. A great talking pasta gag springs to mind.

Anyway, I looked through my files and could only find one published example, and it's almost ten years old. This was published in 1999 in the now defunct Metro supplement which came with the The Times on a Saturday.



I've always had a fondness for this one, probably because it's so very, very daft, and I never thought anyone would actually print it! I like the world-weary look on the ironing board's, er, face.

Looking through my unpublished gags, I found I've done maybe three or four others but none I want to share here because one is quite recent and is still "doing the rounds" of the magazines, and the others are, well, not that great. OK ... I have no shame, here's one. Talking punctuation marks, anyone?



Actually I rewrote this cartoon for a commissioned job. It became one of several cartoons illustrating an in-house style book (a guide to grammar usage etc.), but the rewritten line came from the mouth of a human.

It was an interesting exercise to look through my talking-object gags because what I realised was this: in every one of them the technique is used to illustrate a pun! So maybe a little thinking outside the box is in order and I need to find other ways of utilising this little-used cartoon technique. But I don't think Mr Barsotti will be too worried just yet.

If you have any links to great talking-object cartoons that I may have missed, let me know.

Royston's portfolio website

Cartoon exhibition: A Beano beano

Last week I went to a preview of the Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash exhibition which is currently running at the Cartoon Museum in London. Here's a short review I wrote for the PCO blog:

I attended the preview of Beano and Dandy show and can report that, as you would expect, it's great fun.

For the cartoonist geeks among us it's a chance to peer up close at original artwork drawn by some of the much-loved masters of comic art, such as Ken Reid and Dudley Watkins.

But there's plenty for the younger comic readers too, including activities and quizzes. Can you name all nine Bash Street Kids?

The exhibition spans eight decades and takes in all the Beano and Dandy characters you'd expect to see, from the iconic figureheads of Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan to much-loved characters from the past such as Brassneck, Winker Watson and Pansy Potter (The Strongman's Daughter, of course).

A highlight for me was the wartime strip showing Lord Snooty taking on Adolf Hitler. Der Führer is unhappy that the Beano is keeping the British nation cheerful and vows to get rid of it. But Snooty and his pals have other ideas. A classic.

I'll certainly be returning with my kids, and I suggest that anyone with a love of British comics puts it on their must-see list for the summer and autumn. The exhibition runs until November 2.

The museum is running Beano and Dandy events for children throughout August, including family fun days, cartooning masterclass sessions, and chances to meet Beano artists. For more, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

Royston's portfolio website

Cartooning in the media

This is a version of a cartoon I had published a few years back. I use it by way of illustration, though really it has nothing to do with the following article which is considerably less cynical. It is a short piece I wrote for the PCO blog about media coverage of cartooning

There’s no doubt that cartoons are enjoying an unusually high profile in the British media at the moment.

We’ve seen acres of coverage for the launch of new kids’ comic The DFC, the 70th anniversary of The Beano and Phill Jupitus’s comic strip programme on Radio Four. There has even been a graphic novel serialised in The Times.

So, are cartoonists happy about this? Not a bit of it.

I agree with Neil Dishington, who wrote on the PCO blog yesterday, that the Phill Jupitus thing was nothing special, but is that because we’re cartoonists and therefore he’s preaching to the converted? I think it’s likely that many listeners would have found Jupitus’s sincere enthusiasm about comic strips quite infectious.

Isn’t it a good thing that shows like these exist? Is it not the case that the only thing worse than the media talking about cartoons is the media not talking about cartoons?

But they misrepresent cartooning, some cartoonists cry, it’s obvious they don’t know what they’re talking about. Well, maybe. I’m sure I heard James Naughtie talking about "animators" at The Beano on the Today show on Monday, but is there a single profession that doesn’t think it is often misrepresented by the media? I know journalists who think the media misrepresents them.

Another common complaint is that any media obsession with cartoons is just a passing fad. Again, that may be true, perhaps they’re using cartoons to cheer us up amid all the credit crunch stuff, but then that is the role of most cartoons. And let’s not forget that the media treats many subjects in a faddish way before moving on to the next thing.

And as for the grumbling over celebs such as Jupitus drawing cartoons, cartooning has always been something where everyone wants to have a go. That's because it's fun. We often encourage that attitude, at events such as The Big Draw and the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

All you can do is keep on doing good cartoon work and hope that those who commission cartoons for publication will realise that it is best to go to a professional.

Royston's portfolio website

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