Friday Notes

Posting my 'daily cartoon' the next day is the worst part of drawing them. Firstly, it's a mark that you're finished with one and that you have to start another. Secondly, you hope for feedback saying it's the best cartoon you've ever drawn when the reality is that it's barely looked at and, even when it is looked at, it's often passed over with a shrug of the shoulders. This feels particularly bad when you do happen to think that it is the best cartoon you've ever drawn...

Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...

I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.



 

 

As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.

I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.

Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.

Ed Miliband

Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.

Natalie Bennett

I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.

Leanne Wood

Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.

Nichola Sturgeon

People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.

Nigel 'Nige' Farage

Not so much a one-trick pony as  a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.

 

My Problems With Being Richard Madeley (Revisited)

I'm not a man much given to hero worship. I have people I admire and whose work has inspired me. I could rattle off a long list of people who I hold up so they catch the light and sit bathed in a slightly angelic glow. Does that make them my heroes? Perhaps it does, though I've never really seen myself as a person who has 'heroes'. When I see celebrity in the flesh, I've always been a person who tends to give a shrug my shoulders and walk on, even if they're people I like. I see them as just human beings and I'd never want to impose myself on them nor demean myself by being 'fan like' in my admiration. It was good to meet Steadman on that day when I'd travelled to London to see his exhibition not knowing he was going to be there. Yet I was so conflicted. I didn't want to stand in line to meet him because I don't do that kind of thing. Yet fate had placed him in the same room as me on the one day in about ten years that I was actually in London. How could I not meet him and make a bit of a fool of myself? So, it was good to meet him but I really didn't meet him. I was presented to him and, in that sense, I think I lost something that day.

The reason I'm talking about this is that I realised today that many of the people I most admire in life are journalists and, if you count cartoonists as journalists (and I think you should), then they're probably entirely journalists. It means that I have a raised awareness of journalists and I have a respect for their kind. To be a journalist is to be one of the good people in the world. It's to be among the ranks of people who give my life meaning. It means being among that gifted literati that includes P.J. O'Rourke, Andrew Neil, Ann Treneman, John Simpson, Jon Ronson, Mathew Parris, Tim Marshall, Bryan Appleyard, Henry Porter...

It means that it's always a bit of a shock when I realise that many journalists are not P.J. O'Rourke or Jon Ronson. Many journalists are complete clowns.

I'm taking about this because I got an email this morning from the BBC.

That, in itself, is not unusual. I occasionally get emails from the BBC but never from the BBC departments from whom I'd actually welcome emails. I never get emails that begin 'We read your article on X and wondered if you'd like to write something about Y'. The emails I always get begin the same way and always involve the words 'Richard Madeley'.

This morning's email came from one of the BBC's regional radio stations. I won't name them because I don't want to shame them. The email was bright and familiar. It asked me if I wanted to appear on one of a regional breakfast show talking about niche societies.

The 'journalist' had discovered 'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' and assumed that it was a society dedicated to the UK's Richard Madeley fans. They wanted me to talk about my devotion to Richard Madeley.

Now, if you're new to my blog and don't know who I am, I should explain. I once wrote a website called 'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society'. I began it in a pique of self-hatred. I'd sold my first novel to a company which was bought by Harper Collins and part of the purchase involved the cancellation all their forthcoming books including my own. At this time, Richard and Judy were the nation's arbitrators of what constitutes literature. I, on the other hand, was a prolific writer, cancelled author who had countless degrees in English Lit and felt that the world was slowly going insane. So I spoofed Richard Madeley, thinking I'd be spoofing celebrity and publishing.

The only joke I had initially was that the real 'Richard Madeley' had launched a blog and given it the humble title of 'Appreciation Society'. This was in the days before Twitter and before celebrity spoofs were as rampant as they are now. I was one of the first people, I guess, to create a fake Twitter account and I tweeted as @richardmadeley for a long time. I gave up once the real Richard Madeley took to Twitter and the game lost its spark. I  stopped updating the blog for a variety of reasons, primarily because it was my most popular blog and also because I'd moved on to other projects.

Primarily, I felt a great sense of failure that everything I did as 'Richard Madeley' was hailed as funny and hilarious. Everything I did as myself was passed over. It taught me a hard lesson about celebrity and how the context of celebrity fools us all into attributing quality to work.

The great literary critic I.A. Richards famously used to make his students read poetry from which the author's name had been removed. It was a simple trick yet groundbreaking and became a new form of literary criticism (so called Practical Criticism), which attempted to judge the words on the page instead of the preconceived notions of quality that are passed on via the name of a famously lauded author.

The argument is simple. You see the name Coleridge or Shelley at the top of a sonnet and you read it with a certain detached admiration. If you don't like it, you think it's a problem with your thought processes. You don't ever consider that it might simply be a bad poem. Strip away the name of the author and, hopefully, you judge it as a poem.

'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' is probably a bad poem with a 'great' name attached. If my writing or cartooning or humour meant anything, it wouldn't be here on a barely read blog. It would be between the covers of books in bookshops, the pages of newspapers and magazines. All I know is that this morning's email makes me revisit all these long forgotten thought processes. I get annoyed and so depressed that of all the things that I've done in my life, my only success comes because of a man who really did nothing on TV other than talk to other celebrities.

It's why I've been so perverse in my approach to my work, believing that the quality of the work should be judged and not the name of the author. It's why I stupidly wrote 'Second Class Male' under a pseudonym, thinking I was following in the footsteps of the great Henry Root. I never put my name first when perhaps I should. Perhaps names are more important than I've ever realised. Perhaps I should have mine at the top of the blog. At least it gives people an identity on which to hang all judgments good or bad.

On Soup, Steadman and Skills

Monday and a post of a few odds and one barely functioning sod. It's noon and I fear that somebody spiked my coffee with a sedative. The caffeine has still not kicked in. I blame the weather. After a few days spent enjoying some early spring weather, the skies have turned an underpant grey. It's also cold which makes my blood run like soup.

However, trying to rouse myself: I have a new cartoon over at Tim Marshall's new blog, The What and the Why, and a new cartoon here today if I can shake life into myself and get it finished. Or perhaps not if I finish it and like it enough to include in today's magazine submissions. I've been spending a few days trying to collect together all the stray cartoons I've drawn. I have another batch ready to send out.

I was chuffed this morning to see that one of the rare Ralph Steadman newsletters had landed in my inbox. The master is finishing another book of 'boids', which I have to admit, isn't really my cup of tea. As much as I love simply everything that Steadman does, his 'boids' have never really floated my boat. I never bought the first book and I don't see myself buying the second. I think it's really the subject matter. I love Steadman's human figures, those wide eyed loons and tendril fingered deviants. Birds, to me, are just splashes of paint and a step too far into the world of the abstract. It's why I'm pinning my hopes on the news that he's working on a new book called 'The Book of Clever Bastards'. The title sounds promising. I just hope the clever bastards are human clever bastards and not a book about devious plants or ingenious insects.

I had a strange weekend. One of the unlooked-for advantages of honing my programming skills is that my new programming skills can be used for odd jobs. A close friend had a problem uploading data to a website because the data she had was in the wrong format. I said I might be able to help, thinking I could write a little bit of code to input the bad XML and output good XML. It took me about an hour but result worked and my friend was so happy the she had me quickly balloon the app with features. I now face a day when I'll be adding more. Did I say programming was an advantage? Not sure it is. It's the story of my life. All I ever want to do is draw and write and the only thing that life wants out of me is cold rational code.

A Brief Descent Into Semi-Colon Hell

A visit from news royalty this morning: a comment from the sorely missed Tim Marshall. My sister (a real news junkie) gasped when I told her, however, his visit also puts a slight shot across my bow given what I'd already written for today.

I was going to point you in the direction of a couple of interesting reads over at his new website, The What and The Why, but I was also going to drop a warning about the second piece by a guest writer talking about Saudi Arabia. I was going to warn you to push on past the opening paragraph. It's a fascinating article but begins in semi-colon hell:

While pressure was building around the situation with Putin and Ukraine; the possibility of Grexit was on the cards – creating a possible pincer on Turkey between IS and Russian influence; world leaders and country representatives headed to Riyadh to pay their respects to the new King Salman bin Abdul Aziz.

The reason I noted this was last night I was asked to proof-read a letter a friend had written for a job promotion. They'd used a semi-colon where they should have used a colon. I pointed this out and they questioned if I was right. I was naturally a bit affronted. A published writer, blogging for ten years, millions of words under my belt and with a PhD in English Literature and I was being asked if I knew how to use a colon! What was worse: I immediately started to panic. Did I really know how to use a colon? I had to go on the internet to check.

As it happened, I did know how to use a colon but the whole drama reaffirmed my own writing paranoia, which was brought into focus when I started to read the Saudi Arabia article last night. I just couldn't get past that opening.

Now, despite how this sounds, I'm not a pedant about the rules of writing. I don't really know the rules that well. I've always been more of a gut instinct writer. I've always encourage people to write from their gut and to ignore the rules they were taught at school. Our schooldays make bad writers of us all. They introduce things we never need such as the semi-colon. My mantra is: write how you speak but then edit how you read.

I have a love-hate relationship with the semi-colon and realise that admitting this is an odd thing to confess. Whatever next? A slight entanglement with an asterisk? A romantic weekend with flirty ampersand? The fact is: I adore a well-placed semi-colon but I tend not to use them myself. They're the harbinger of worse things. They're a form of gateway punctuation. You begin by occasionally dropping a semi-colon at a middle-class dinner party but then you find yourself using them every weekend just to cheer yourself up. Before you know it, you're a punctuation junkie scoring apostrophes and em dashes from dealers in some rat infested hovel in the backstreets of Manchester.

Semi-colons are the most pretentious form of punctuation. They're the most elegant when used correctly but abject expressions of self-importance when flaunted where they don't belong. You'd rarely (if ever) find a writer such as Hemingway use a semi-colon. They are not the stuff of his brusque prose. In fact, I'd offer a my hunch that 'better' writers rarely use them at all or those that do have a style which is distinguished by its sheer refinement. Whenever I've taught English to students, my first advice was always to learn to use the comma correctly. Commas can rarely be overused (though, of course, there are, exceptions). It can take years to learn to correctly use the comma and, even then, there's rarely a need to go further and adopt the semi-colon. Writers with a real ear for the flow of language can sense where pauses naturally occur in a line. The comma is really all they need and even then used sparingly. A master of writing, Kurt Vonnegut, once gave this wise piece of advice:

'Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.'

Not using the semi-colon is really the best advice since it is often misused simply because people don't quite know how to use it. There are pedants who will give you the strict definition of when and how to use one, though I don't take the pedant's line. The way I think about semi-colons is that they simply introduce a pause to your flow; a break in the narrative slightly longer than a comma but not as absolute as a full stop. Perhaps I've just misused one there and this too would reveal something significant about my character. I don't consciously use semi-colons myself and when I do I always get into a knot of self-loathing.

But back to the offending paragraph. It wasn't written by Tim Marshall but by a reader who also happens to be a solicitor. I began to wonder if that's significant. Solicitors live in a world of language yet they're not trained in language. Solicitors are often the abusers of language. They treat words like station masters racking up train carriages in a yard; locking clauses together with the iron link of the semi-colon. The offending prose is overwritten, destroyed by the misuse of the semi-colon. It's not a trivial misuse. What the writer only really needed was the simple comma. So why didn't he do that? Because semi-colons convey a message. It's like wearing an old school tie or a pin stripe suit. The semi-colon is saying much more than simply 'take a breath'. You can read a lot about a person's character by their use of the semi-colon. It's telling us that the writer is educated and believes in their education. They believes in their status. It is all posture. Horrible. Brutal. Plain bad writing. It's also a real shame. The article is an interesting insight into something you rarely read about. Just skip the opening paragraph and bite you lip whenever you see a semi-colon.

Who is Kate Emms?

Yesterday I wrote about my love of the new Michael Cockerell series, 'Inside the Commons', and doing so, I mentioned that the stars of the series are the people who do all the heavy lifting at Parliament. One of those people is Kate Emms, Clerk in charge of Private Members’ Bills. Well! No sooner had I posted her name than the hits started to come in. Across the nation, people were searching for Kate Emms. Nobody was searching for the politicos. Nobody was even searching for George Clooney, despite my cartoon of yesterday. No. The zeitgeist mob were clamoring for news about Kate Emms which now leads me to wonder: who is Kate Emms? Is this the same Kate Emms who is the Clerk in charge of Private Members’ Bills? Or is there a Kate Emms who perhaps sings backing vocals for One Direction? Is there a Kate Emms who is in Towie (I have no idea what that word means, if it's spelt right, or used correctly and, frankly, I don't want to know). Anyway, if there's a different Kate Emms I don't know about but perhaps invented stretch nostrils or haptic cheese, please put me out of my misery in the comments. I'd really like to know.

Incidentally, this isn't my proper blog of the day. My routine has been broken because I have to dash out in a few minutes. I have a Jacob Rees Mogg cartoon nearly finished which I'm both proud to have drawn and greatly appalled by. I might post it later if I get work finished. Then I'll try to write something significant.

In the meantime, if you're looking for some interesting reading, check out Tim Marshall's new post over at 'The What and the Why' about the politics of the Baltics. Good stuff from a very promising new website.

Hello Tim Marshall, Thank You Michael Cockerell, Goodbye Jacob Rees Mogg

Before I get to the meat of today's blog, I should point you in the direction of a new website, TheWhatandTheWhy, which is the site of Tim Marshall's re-emergence into the world. You might have read my original piece about why I thought Marshall was the last good reason to watch Sky News, my vow to start a letter campaign, or the forlorn attempt  that Stan Madeley made to persuade 'Harding the Hack' to hire Marshall over at the BBC. Well, none of that went well but there is a new website and it contains enough words and video to get the heart racing. I don't understand what the hell is happening in the Ukraine but I feel a lot better knowing that Tim Marshall is around to explain the parts that make a little sense.

Speaking of chaos, I drew today's cartoon really late last night after watching Michael Cockerell's documentary about the House of Commons. I couldn't sleep. My mind was restless. I didn't want to draw cartoons that other people like. If I'm honest, I don't really like that type of cartoon I know I should be drawing if Private Eye are ever to buy one. It was late, I was angry, confused, thoughtful, so I resorted to type. I drew something for which there was be an audience of one. I don't know why George Clooney with a peg-leg amuses me but does there always have to be a reason?

I sometimes wonder how many people share my sensibilities. I cannot, for example, understand why there weren't riots when Tim Marshall left Sky News. Nor do I understand why Cockerell's series isn't a cause of national celebration. The series just gets better with each episode and convinces me that I'm utterly addicted to politics.

It's been such a sublime experience. The series has never once felt like it's pushing an agenda. The narrative feels supremely balanced, despite every step in the process of documentary production being in some sense editorial. Yet it's to Cockerell's credit that none of this feels directed to an end. There are no tricks on show. No sly camera movements or clever editorial juxtapositions by which a cut implies a whole new level of meaning. It's a programme that genuinely feels like it's watching but not intruding. Anything else is left to the reader to intuit. Was David Cameron being genuinely kind when he stopped to congratulate a politician who was being interviewed for the cameras or was Cameron being typically calculating knowing the cameras were on? In this household, that's a debate that raged for a week and countless replays. (The consensus is that it was the latter.)

Perhaps it's the way age gathers memories into ripe bundles but the BBC always seemed to make TV this good back when it wasn't racing with 200 other channels to find the lowest common denominator. Next week is, sadly, the last episode. It will be missed. It will, however, have a legacy and I can sense what that legacy will be after only three episodes. I already have a renewed faith in some politicians and, especially, the people behind the scenes. The series has been best when it followed the clerks as they laughed at the incongruities of the system. Conversely, the series had done nothing to lessen my hatred of party politics and, in fact, has in many respects confirmed it. The greatest threat to the parliamentary system are the big party machines which erode the significance of the individuals working to benefit their constituents. The greatest hope to the parliamentary system are the individuals who refuse to submit to the party machine and continue to work for their electorate.

In that sense, my suspicion of party politics is balanced by a new admiration I've found for the people who work in the system. The real stars of the series are people whose names you might not remember for long after the series ends. It's people like Kate Emms, Clerk in charge of Private Members' Bills at House of Commons, and Sir Robert Rodgers, the Clerk of the House, who announced his retirement in the first episode. If there is a message from the series, it seems to be one that affirms the believe that the system is safe in these people's hands.

Beyond the unexpected stars, the biggest winners are individual politicians. Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham, suffered an inauspicious introduction in episode one ('I need a wee' she said, ushering the camera crew out of her bathroom) but revealed herself to be the kind of MP I'd want fighting on my side. I never expected that. I was expecting to dislike her but found myself very quickly warming to her. It perhaps says something about our distrust of politicians but, over the first three episodes, I never expected to see so many MPs spending so much time working on the behalf of others. That was an almost spiritual revelation.

At the same time, the series has also show me how much a few MPs seem to work on behalf of nobody but themselves. I've spoken to a couple of people about this and they've both backed up an observation I made which sounds party political but it really isn't. I don't particularly dislike Tories any more than I dislike Labour supporters or Lib Dems. My mind doesn't run down such well worn ideological grooves.  Yet saying that, Tories have not come out well from the series. With the single exception of Peter Bone who was featured in last night's episode, many of the Tories came across as either self-promoters or wide-eyed ideologues. And as much as I find myself reassured that we have a system that's outdated and retains many anachronisms, there is one anachronism I don't feel in any way reassured by. It is the anachronism who calls himself Jacob Rees Mogg.

This morning I was talking to my sister about last night's episode and she made a remark which I thought was telling. She's more interested in the day to day workings of politics than me yet she is nowhere near as cynical or hard-bitten. Yet even she found Mogg too much to bear. 'It's like he's never had to struggle for anything in his life!' she despaired. 'Everything seems to have been handed to him on a bloody plate.'

Last week's episode was a perfect example. Mogg was filmed filibustering a Lib Dem's private member's bill that would have protected the poorest in our society (particularly the disabled) from cuts to their housing benefits if they were deemed to have 'surplus rooms'. He first filibustered on the floor of the House of Commons and then again when the bill reached the Committee Stage. Some might admire or find it slightly amusing that he attempts to derail the bill by wasting time, languorously quoting the hymn, 'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past' by Isaac Watts . 'I want to talk about time,' Mogg begins, 'time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away...' MPs looked on in frustration.

It just made me furious beyond measure that the system rewards a man like that. It astonishes me that a man who has lived his entire life in the lap of the establishment, cosseted at Eton and Oxford, earning a second income (allegedly £500,000  since 2010) should play games with people's lives. In what sense can he even understand the plight of somebody living in council accommodation, on a low wage, perhaps with a serious illness? What gives him the right to judge and to block laws which would improve their lives?

My first novel (the one that was going to be published until the publisher was bought up by Harper Collins) was a thinly veiled lampoon of Mogg. Yet even I was left astonished by the depth of his twisted morality. The more you pick apart the Mogg biography, the  more your fingers bleed. The Honorable Mogg is an ex investment banker, the son of the noted editor of The Times and married into one of the wealthiest families in the country. So, naturally, he believes in zero-hour contracts and, according to Theyworkforyou.com, any policy that denudes the few protections that give the rest of us a chance to live a moderately tolerable life. For example, the Member for North East Somerset:

Voted very strongly against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability

Voted very strongly for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the "bedroom tax")

Voted very strongly for university tuition fees

Voted very strongly for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits

Voted very strongly against equal gay rights

Voted very strongly against smoking bans

Voted very strongly against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices

Voted strongly against slowing the rise in rail fares

Voted very strongly against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000

Voted very strongly against greater regulation of gambling

Voted strongly for restricting the scope of legal aid

For a man who clearly cares so much about correct parliamentary process, Mogg is a walking hypocrisy. This entry in his Wikipedia page says so much: "In December 2014 Rees-Mogg was reported to the Parliament's standards watchdog for speaking in debates on tobacco, mining and oil and gas without first declaring he is founding partner and director of Somerset Capital which has £multimillion investments in the sectors."

I could descend to some found language here but I don't want to demean my argument. My opinion of Mogg has never been lower and, for that, I am so glad that Cockerell was there to educate me.

Ralph Steadman once declared that he was stopping drawing politicians. His website describes it like this:

Finally so disgusted by the antics of those who should be running the country, Ralph decided in 1997 to stop drawing caricatures of politicians. He felt it fed their over-weaning egos and they liked the attention too much. It distracted them from the jobs they had been voted in to do by a long suffering public.

I don't think Steadman is wrong but Cockerell has reminded me why it's important to keep drawing the worst of them. Just a few weeks ago I'd have never thought of this reason. We owe it to the rest of them.

The Tim Marshall Letter

Apropos of almost nothing: is there a more annoying song than 'Things Can Only Get Better' by D:Ream feat Professor Brian Cox? I didn't actually know Cox was in the band until he was talking about it in The Independent this morning. I'd forgot how annoying that song is, though not musically. I mean the lyric: 'things can only get better'. It's a terrible song for a political party to adopt as its anthem. It's like saying, 'we can't do much worse than the last lot', though, obviously, there's always room for things to get worse. I would have thought a professor of astrophysics would have realised. Unless we're talking about the complete heat death of the universe, there's always a 'worse' direction for entropy to go.

Right. Glad I got that off my chest. I was slightly reluctant to blog today simply because I didn't want to push my previous post down the page. I rarely look at anything I've done and think it particularly good. I don't believe a person can ever gets real satisfaction from their own work until enough time has passed for them to forget the process by which they arrived at the finished article. You write what you know about and therefore nothing you read back to yourself can be much of surprise. Yet having said that, my previous blog post is one of my favourites. I think I dug deep enough to find some genuine blood and spit.

It's been a week and I've still not heard back from James Harding, aka 'Harding the Hack', aka the honcho in the chief's poncho down at BBC News. It's a nervous wait though I can't separate that mild nervousness from a deeper dread since I'm waiting to go to the hospital where my sister has an appointment to see a consultant. I expect nothing from the appointment other than a sense of frustration. However, deep breath and hope for the best.

In the meantime, I might as well post my original James Harding letter here so as to keep my records in order. The story so far: Tim Marshall announced that he'd left Sky News and I was determined to do something about it so I dusted off my Stan Madeley mask and once again became my alter ego as the UK's top Richard Madeley lookalike and cabaret chisel thrower to the stars.

The Tim Marshall Letter

Well, I found a stamp. My 'Tim Marshall' letter has gone. It's now on the long two hundred and six mile journey to London and BBC headquarters where I hope (but doubt) it will cross the desk of James Harding, aka 'Harding the Hack', aka BBC's Director of News and Current Affairs. I felt quite nostalgic writing the letter. Perhaps there are lots of crazy people out there who write letters. I've never considered myself one of the 'crazies', though no doubt some people have questioned (and will question) my sanity. The 'comedy' is merely the justification for writing otherwise serious letters which, in truth, it really would be mad to send to people in authority since, in reality, what are our opinions really worth to them?

At one time, I was writing three letters a day and I did that like a religion for about 18 months. It cost me a small fortune in stamps but I think I learned quite a bit about letter writing. I find writing them a wonderful outlet. In them, I become the person I wish I could be. Gone is the indecisive man who cares too much about his work yet questions himself to the point of impotent indecision. Instead, I adopt this strangely confident voice which isn't my own. I love calling people by their Christian names and being chatty and informal and terribly direct. My letters have a cocky swagger which isn't me but probably is me at some deep level where the id rages. I suppose in a way they're the expression of my rebelliousness. I refuse to address anybody other than as a fellow human being. In that respect, letters are wonderfully egalitarian and an expression of our simple shared humanity.

Perhaps I'll get an answer. Perhaps I won't. My success with the BBC has always been around 50/50. Some of them clearly enjoyed my letters. Others, by their silence, either didn't or never received them. I suspect quite a few of them suffer that terrible dullness of 'professionalism' which means they take what they do far too seriously to understand the serious edge to my apparently trivial letters.

Printing the letter has itself been quite the struggle. I haven't used my printer in a long time and I was disappointed to discover that I didn't have any yellow ink left. I use an old Canon printer for which I used to buy cheap cartridges without security chips. I had some reprogrammable security chips I could stick in them using a chip reprogrammer. It saved me a fortune over the years but now I find I have a draw full of yellow ink cartridges but no chips. Even if I had the chips, I think my reprogrammer has bust. Stan's head came out looking purple. It means I couldn't print my letter with the usual handsome face at the bottom right corner.



Strange looking at this face. I got such mileage from such a simple combination of a comb-over and Richard Madeley's face. I had such great hopes for those books. I still maintain my second book is even better than the first and the first was the best thing I've ever done. Poor Stan. Staring into those big bright optimistic eyes, it's hard to believe that so few people got the joke. Perhaps Jim Harding (or his PA) will. Perhaps he'll be on the phone to Tim Marshall over the weekend and he'll stop the world travelling even further down the road towards the banal and bland. Probably not. The point is: I tried my best and I can do no more.

Wish I could go back to letter writing. Of all the things I've done, it was the only one where I actually felt quite at home.

My @Itwitius Letter Campaign

Typical of the lull I experience between projects, I had trouble getting my mind working yesterday. I have a vague idea about writing some web-related software so I took my first steps in WPF programming. However, late last night, I eventually succumbed to the lure of Sergeant Bilko. There's something about American sitcoms of the 1950s that's unlike anything we've had since. My network hard drive has the entire Bilko, Car 54 Where Are You and, if I can handle the shouting (sometimes I can't) the 'classic 39' episodes of The Honeymooners. It's perfect stuff for doodling.

Not in the mood to draw gag cartoons, last night I attempted a couple of Sky News caricatures. Sky News was at the forefront of my thoughts. My sister had excitedly told me that she'd found this blog when she was herself looking for news about Tim Marshall. 'You're at the top of Google' she exclaimed. I shrugged. I'm at the top of Google for quite a few things but it means next to nothing. Type 'Ed Milliband cartoon' into Google and mine comes at the top of the page. What was stranger, however, was the same thing happened to me later in the evening. I wanted to start drawing a caricature of Anna Jones so I went to Google Images, my preferred source of reference material, and I typed 'Anna Jones Sky News'. I was shocked to see a very old cartoon I'd drawn appear near the top of the page. It means nothing, of course, except I'm probably the only unsuccessful cartoonist with a particular crush on Anna Jones.

Thinking about Anna Jones makes me realise that I was probably a bit too harsh in what I wrote about Sky News last night, though it has definitely slipped to second in my list of most watched channels. I suppose the writing on the wall was to be seen back when I was writing Book 2 of my Stan Madeley letters. I had two successes from Sky News. I had what I assume was a mass-produced letter of apology from Adam Boulton, explaining why he shouldn't have got angry with Alistair Campbell. It was a strange letter because I'd written to compliment him for his passion and I'd demanded more outbursts.

I know you’re not looking to open negotiations with a simple viewer and I suppose you’ll receive quite a bit of grief about your bust up with that toxic toad, Alistair Campbell. However, I wanted to write to say that not a word of criticism will you hear from me! In fact, I might send a note to my old mucker, Quentin Letts, at The Daily Mail. He’s the salt of the earth and knows it. I’m sure I could get him to say a few words in your defence.

My second 'success' was a signed photo of Jeremy Thompson, though I'd never asked for one. What I'd actually written was:

Dare I say that Sky News really misses Bob Friend? Now all the best talent is wasted. There's not a better foreign affairs editor than Tim Marshall and Adam Boulton is top of the political tree. So why the obsession with showbiz? And who is that gormless gnome poncing around film premieres? He talks to actors as though he shared a Jacuzzi with them only last night whilst supping champagne from their publicist's keister. I want news, Jeremy, not promotional guff about a 19 year old airhead struggling with the duel ownership of plastic nipples and a pink Ferrari. I'm surprised you don't choke every time you squeeze the words 'Paris', 'Hilton', 'Osbourne', 'Jordan' or 'Andre' past your epiglottis. And it's all well and good, slapping all of Sky News' resources on one big story each year to win some ruddy BAFTA so your lot can vulgarly push it into our faces at every commercial break. How about giving us more meat throughout the day? The only note of sanity in the whole operation is that you've not started to wear those ridiculous pins they have on Sky Sports News. It makes them look like members of a cult, which I'm not entirely sure they're not. Have you noticed that their female presenters look like Stepford Wives? And, what's worse, so do the men.

My biggest Sky News disappointment was never getting a reply from Anna Jones, though looking through the thousand plus letters I sent in the course of my Stan Madeley career, I can't seem to find the two Anna Jones originals. I'm beginning to wonder if I even sent them, though I'm sure I did. I seem to remember the premise of my letters being my sadness upon hear she was leaving Sky News for a newsreading job in Bolivia.

But I digress.

I can't really write anything better than last night's response to the news that Tim Marshall is leaving Sky News. These things happen. There is a news cycle which cycles not just the news but also the presenters. Yet something about this just doesn't feel right. I don't know the reason for Marshall's departure but in a world where genuine talent stands out, the loss of Marshall is a big one.

Reading around his twitter account this morning, there was little hint about his future. He's talking about a new website but every fool has a website and where does that gets us? He jokingly asks one follower to 'Write to the newspapers, demand that I appear as an analyst.  Pitchforks, burning torches etc.' That suggests that the BBC aren't hammering at his door offering him a place in the foreign affairs department. That in itself is madness. Like I said last night: no journalist so obviously follows in the footsteps of John Simpson.

So, I'm now tempted to write to newspapers (and the BBC) and demand that he appears as an analyst. I'd do it too but I can no longer afford the stamps. If I could sell a few Gag Machines, then Stan Madeley might return for a proper letter campaign. For the moment, he might have to satisfy himself with one or two. I reckon I should begin with James Harding (Harding the Hack), aka the Director of News and Current Affairs at the BBC. It will probably come to nothing but watch this space. It will at least get my brain going on this cold day when a brutal snow is falling outside the window and I can't bring myself to face the thought of two more months of computer programming for zero reward.

Goodbye Tim Marshall, The Last Good Reason To Watch Sky News

It's 6.50pm. I've only just finished wailing at what I've just read on Twitter.

Tim Marshall has left Sky News.

I only have ten minutes to write this before I go out so forgive the typing... This is top of the head stuff.

This might sound hyperbolic (or just utter bollocks) but Tim Marshall was the last good reason to watch Sky News. He was one of the older crew who were around in the days when Sky News was a serious news operation. He never looked at home in the new rolling reality of their current 15 minute repeat and rinse coverage that never penetrates into the thicker fabric of the news. I regretted the day that Sky News started to boast about 'the headlines every fifteen minutes'. I never understood why they thought it was somehow commendable that they believed we might forget the news agenda every quarter of an hour. In reality, it meant that they never had time to get their fingernails dirty. They cheapened their output by repeating the same script every 900 seconds. It largely became unwatchable.

Marshall always stood apart from that reductive approach to the news. He would always explain things in interesting ways. He'd educate me like I've not been educated since I stopped sitting on my PhD supervisor's sofa at university and drinking his horrendous Turkish coffee. Tim Marshall explained why things weren't black or white. He understood the world's grey zones; where politics merged with tribal customs and the 'truth' wasn't easily summed up in a neat headline. Sky News can still hold its own but only during specially selected events when some chief in the News International hierarchy gives the go-ahead to pump resources into coverage. When bad things happen, Sky News are great. Between those times, the coverage is thin, vapid, lacking substance. In other words: lacking everything that Tim Marshall brought to their glassy table.

I'd noticed he'd gone missing months ago. I think I'd secretly hoped the BBC has hired him. He is the closest thing I've ever seen to John Simpson and, in my book, there's no greater praise. He always was Simpson's heir. I'm not sure what had happened. Marshall's role had been taken by lesser journalists who lack his key quality. That quality was hesitation and pause. It was the way he'd suck on his teeth and would reply 'well, not really' when asked what sounded like a simple question. Lesser journalists tend to say 'Yes, that's absolutely right, Kay' and repeat some easy to memorise formula. Tim Marshall would often wince when asked something straightforward. 'They're not of that tribe,' he'd reply or proffer a 'that's not strictly true' before launching into an enlightening run down of regional allegiances.

I watch very little Sky News these days. My loyalty has shifted to the BBC who have commendably discovered the more relaxed style that Sky News had made their own in the days of the great Bob Friend. It's now Sky News who have become the 'professional' news channel, with everything cut to fit seamlessly between the ads.  There's no hair out of place, no autocue missed. Yet it's precisely that spontaneous quality which the true news obsessive tends to cherish. It's what I miss the most.

I hold onto a distant hope that Tim Marshall will reappear on our screens. I know he'd find a natural home at the BBC and I hope (probably without much hope) that he'll eventually turn up on News 24. The fact that the BBC has become a natural home to Andrew Neil is proof that they cherish character, intelligence, and (a broad phrase but I'll use it) a kind of humanism that is so much better that the so-called professionalism you see everywhere else on TV as well as in life.

And that, I guess, is what I want from TV news. I'd like a channel that's the living embodiment of myself. It would be like this blog: random, full of humour (I hope), occasional (forgivable) rants, and a general willingness to understand a confusing and complicated world without falling into the trap of dogma or ideology.

To put it another way: my favourite night of the week is the night when I watch 'This Week with Andrew Neil' and follow it up with Bill Maher's 'Real Time' which I'll have found online. There's no show on British TV remotely like 'Real Time', though 'This Week' comes the closest. It's edgy, sometimes shocking, abrasive, argumentative, enlightening, unstructured, and compelling viewing. It's filled with intelligent people disagreeing and arguing and it's everything that intelligent TV should be. In an ideal world, that would be the stuff of my ideal news channel. It would the window onto a real newsroom, filled with non-photogenic journalists eating fast food whilst hammering out stories. It wouldn't break for ads to sell us TV channels we don't want. News wouldn't be an 'add on' to the sports and movie channels. It would be the pride of its network. It would take pride in being the best. It would stay with an interview for as long as the expert would be willing to keep talking. It would simplify but only in order to build on that explanation to further our knowledge. It wouldn't patronise us by repeating the same thing every fifteen minutes. It would assume we can wait for the top of the hour when it would present the updated headlines before continuing its debate with the audience. It would be pretty much like BBC News 24 is now but with some added Andrew Neil, plenty of Lyse Doucet, and a good deal of Tim Marshall.

I can't believe Tim Marshall has left Sky News and there's still only seven hits on my new website. I'm going to as poor as a computer programmer as I'm penniless as a writer and cartoonist. What an utterly crap day.

[Update 19/2/2015: We have to be grateful for small mercies. Tim Marshall has launched his own website. It's pretty good.]

Cartooning Hell: Even A Rejection Would Be Nice

Plenty of outgoing emails this morning and, so far, only one automated response suggesting that I’d managed to hit the nerve feeding raw photographs from field reporters straight into a newspaper’s command centre. My cartoon will clearly find the wrong person. I need to try again another day with another cartoon. Meanwhile, I'll have to throw last night’s effort away now that its moment has passed.

One of the biggest struggles I seem to face is simply finding the right person to talk to. Newspapers don’t list the contact details of the cartoon editor and newspapers increasingly don’t publish any email addresses of their staff. It’s an interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed as the separation of them and us gets ever larger. It’s as if news operates at a level above that of your common man; a conviction that grows stronger every day as the people who make news always seem to know the people who report the news.

The paradox is, of course, that the media continually tell us that they’re listening. They go to great lengths to throw up their Twitter handles and to tell us to get in touch, but that’s one of the problems I realised about Twitter a long time ago. Behind this supposed utopia where everybody is equal is a great publicity machine working against our ultimate emancipation. Because social media feeds the media with free content (‘Hey! Send us your photos of the storm [whispers] but don’t expect to be paid’) it allows them to stop listening, stop seeking professional services, and to keep the controls inside a very tight circle in the heart of London.

I come from a family of news obsessives and once 24 hour news started, we rarely watched anything in the day followed by the BBC News at 6pm, 9pm and Newsnight on BBC2. Sky News used to be the best news channel but they reduced their service to a rolling 15 minute cycle of perhaps 3 news items and the BBC has become our regular source of information. It’s a shame. Sky News used to be something compelling and really special; as special, in fact, as Sky’s sports coverage or their 3D service, which I’ve had chance to glimpse a few times and is amazing at its best. They also had some of the best young journalists and come the day that the BBC retires the great John Simpson, Sky News have his ideal replacement in the even greater (in my opinion) Tim Marshall.

But I digress. Sending cartoons, articles, and books away in the hope that somebody will be willing to take a moment and look at them can be a shocking business for your self-esteem. I’d always been prepared for rejection. I’ve had enough in my time and I welcome rejection when somebody actually tells me what I'm doing wrong. However, nothing ever prepared me for the reality of the silence.

To break into the news circle as either a cartoonist of writer is extraordinarily frustrating. I end up sending work to vague sounding inboxes such as ‘the news’ or ‘tellusabout’ or simply ‘contact’, which probably aren’t read by anybody .

I thought writing books hard work but nothing was like the hard work of trying to get somebody read the damn things. It’s the same with writing essays and drawing cartoons. Selling them is the horrible side of the business when it should really be the easiest. I started last night cartoon’s about 5pm, worked on it at a relaxed (dare I saw blissfully happy) pace through the night and started to apply colour about 9pm. I was finished about 2am. It sounds like a long time and result isn’t going to set the world alight but then, I’m still learning and the time I take is time I put aside to learn this craft. Last night I also discovered that I can do a couple of things with my technology that I previously thought impossible. I wish my craft could make two breakthroughs a night. I should do some night school course on how to draw, though the thought of having to sketch some local hobo in his posing pouch doesn’t fill me with excitement given that very few of our local hobos look are as sexy as Kate Upton. But then again, neither are many cartoonists… It’s a cruel world.

An Apology For My Previous Post About Yam Smuggling

I want to apologise for last night’s post. 2000 words on yams, lesbians, and the youthful Béatrice Dalle... What was I thinking? I sounded like a man ruled by his sex glands, a bush creeping pervert lusting after every newsreader. That’s far from the truth. I can’t say I lust after any newsreader with the exception of George Alagiah. Also, I was only semi-serious about entering into a life of crime. In the cold light of day (actually, the dim light of a torrential October morning) I realise that I stand about as much chance of becoming a successful male gigolo as I do becoming a successful writer or cartoonist.

Today I feel little better (writing that out last night helped) but also a touch more frustrated. I’m walking around with the phone in my back pocket in case the competition people ring to tell me that I’ve won, thereby justifying the years of struggle and poverty in the eyes of my family, friends and the postman who will no longer sneer as he hands me letters for ‘Stan Madeley’. Perhaps I overstate the importance of this phone call but not the problem of the phone in my pocket. It’s a wired-in landline and I’m trailing a cord wherever I go. I think the government should clamp down on these competitions and bring in a rule that they have to ring everybody who entered, just to stop them fretting or accidentally sitting on a full-sized BT handset as I’ve done twice this morning, bruising one buttock (the right) quite severely. Thankfully the left buttock is still looking pretty good so if any work does come in for a male gigolo, I’ll have to work listing slightly leftwards. Now there's an interesting question that's never been asked before in the history of the world: how much work is there out there for a leftward listing male gigalo?

Of course I could go and look at the website where the winners of the competition are to be announced but, for the moment, I prefer to live with the slim chance that I placed in the competition rather than knowing that my effort was consigned to the scrap big alongside every finger painted story about fairies and psychotic rants from the criminally insane. Mine was neither of those. Well, okay, it was a psychotic rant about fairies but I’m not criminal for the reasons I outlined last night: a lack of opportunities and a shortage of sexual charisma.

I don’t have much confidence in my entry, which given all this talk about sex makes it sound mildly obscene. I mean my competition entry rather than the climax of my gigolo work. It was too misanthropic for the happy clappy types who usually get to judge these things. It was also a bit wordy and not that well drawn, as you’ll see in the coming days when I publish it here. You’ll then be able to sit there and shake your heads silently thinking: ‘He thought this stood a chance? He’s closer to that mental edge than I ever suspected. I must remember to visit his blog more often in case I miss his imminent nervous breakdown…’

But listen to me rationalising why I won’t have won. I’ve never won a thing in my life…

I tell a lie. I once won Cricketer of the Year at my school. I won a Martin Scorsese biography from a national newspaper. I also won tickets to a computer fair but I think everybody who entered probably won those. But that’s everything I’ve ever won in my time on this planet. Pretty depressing don't you think?

Yet here I am, in such a negative frame of mind, when I also know there are people out there reading this. It’s particularly good to see that I’m picking up new readers all across the globe. I’m hoping I’m connecting with an intelligent but slightly angry demographic who understand what I’m about. That said, it’s a bit disappointing when a man offers to send a free signed book to anybody that wants one – and not any of that vanity published crap either, I meant a proper book – and he also offers to personalise it with a cartoon. And not a single person takes him up on the deal. Perhaps you all thought I was joking. Well, I wasn’t. I never joke. Except about lusting after George Alagiah. That was a joke. I meant Tim Marshall on Sky News…

Violence Breaks Out In Sky News Studio