On Waiting, Tim Kreider & Ralph Steadman

Well, my newest disappeared down the email chute a few minutes ago and I now have the nervous wait for judgement. Normally when I finish an article, I feel little except the excitement of what I'll write next. The article I've just sent away is different. It's something I must have been mulling over writing for a long time. When it emerged, it came out better than I hoped.

I am a lousy judge of my own work. The things I like, usually others ignore. The things I write quickly and very throwaway, usually attract attention. This article might attract attention because it has an edge and is partially a defence, homage, commemoration of Christopher Hitchens who dies almost four years ago, 15th December 2011. It might go unremarked but I'd put it up in the top 5% of things I've ever written. To have it rejected would, I think, make me go 'ouch'.

I also drew a cartoon for it or an illustration, depending on how lofty you view the difference between the two. And the illustration was also one of my better efforts. I've always worked well when I have confidence. When I'm down, I can barely punctuate clearly. The illustration will probably go unused and I'll end up posting it here. I was told this week by a reader over at TW&TW that they find the combination of writing and cartoon too much. Not sure why it should be the case. What difference does it make if a writer is also the illustrator. Perhaps it's just because it's such a rare conjunction. Now I think about it, I can only think of Tolkien (not a great illustrator, in The Hobbit, but always sad to see his line drawings replaces in special editions), Mervyn Peake (whose wonderful illustrations for Gormenghast are as dark and twisted as his prose), and then the brilliant essayist and cartoonist, much under-appreciated and, I guess, little known here in the UK, Tim Kreider.

[Scratches head. Opens browser. Hits links to Amazon. Types in 'Twilight of the Assholes' and clicks purchase.]

How stream of consciousness is this? Anyway, it's going to arrive in three days. I had a £10 voucher from my birthday sitting there for two months and I never had any idea what to buy until that moment I thought about Kreider whose website I used to visit daily. I always intended on buying his book but, as is life, simply forgot. Great cartoonist and fine writer. He did, if I recall correctly, a really close analysis of a Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which is worth a read if, like me, your a bit of  Kurbrick obsessive and think people really never understood the brilliance of that film. I remember sitting in our university common room trying to explain my theory about the use of colour whilst people looked at me like I was crazy trying to rationalise a film with so much female nudity. I am, of course, crazy but that's another story...

Where was I? Oh, yes. Kreider and other writer/illustrators.

No doubt there are more but those are the three that immediately spring to mind.

There is a fourth, of course, but to list him would be to cheat a little. Ralph Steadman is a pretty fine writer and it's easy to overlook the wonderful texts that accompany his drawings. My favourite of his books is his Freud and I'd be hard convinced to say that he has ever done anything better. Hmm... Perhaps his Da Vinci book.

Speaking of Steadman, I was in Waterstones in Liverpool the other day and saw his new book 'Nextinction'. I hate to say it but I find it a little bit depressing every time I see one of his pictures of a 'boid'. Not that they aren't wonderful but... Well, I wish he'd do something else. This is now two huge books of boids and, I'll be honest, I couldn't like the first enough to buy it (plus they are both hugely expensive and usually far outside my finances). I know the environment is something we should care about but if only he'd get back to drawing humans in all our ugly glory.

Ah, in the space it's taken me to write this (straight into the browser, unedited as usual), my article has been accepted for publication, possibly this weekend. Hoo-rah! I'll now take a deep breath and start the next, though knowing my chances of writing anything better (in my eyes, at least) is very slim. But we live in hope...

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.

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.

When God Met Stephen Fry

The response to Stephen Fry's rant against God has been telling. What Fry said about God wasn't exactly profound. It was no more than I'd hope any articulate atheist, agnostic, or even believer would ask when faced by their maker. What he said was a pretty standard attack on the cruelty of God and has been expressed so many times before to make this latest example seem pretty trivial. The reason it isn't trivial, however, is that it was expressed by Stephen Fry and some people's response seems to be one that would prefer if we phrase the question a different way. What would God say to Stephen Fry? Would God ask: what was it like working on The Hobbit? How did you get so many Twitter followers? Are you really as all knowing as you seem on QI or do you have the answers piped into your ear?

It's perhaps a symptom of the terminal decline of intellect in our postmodern hyper-celebrity-adoring age that even a mediocre attack on religion should receive such coverage. When a philosopher makes a sustained attack on God, their words are rarely reported and, certainly, never reported at such length. Richard Dawkins is quite possibly the most outspoken, well known, and 'followed' atheist of the moment and yet even his outbursts never receive such prominence, even in the broadsheets.

Again, it would appear that we are less interested in what somebody says and more concerned with the person saying it. It's a psychological response to how we view our fellow men and women. I know it myself because I'm not immune to doing the same thing. How I think about, for example, Ralph Steadman is very different to how I think about some anonymous cartoonist whose work I find on the web and whose style I particularly like. Steadman has an authority which the other cartoonist lacks and there has to be a process of familiarisation before another cartoonist becomes, in my eyes, quite so canonical.

The same is true of writers. I might read something by Will Self and enjoy it but it means something different to an article which doesn't have such a high profile name attached. There's something in 'celebrity' or, at least, 'being known' that carries an air of authority. Stephen Fry's rant about God was an authoritative  pronouncement that is far more significant than any learned paper written by a respected but little known professor of theology. It was significant because we know everything about Fry and this latest pronouncement fits into that known background. His is a life narrative being written in the public space. This latest event is a twist in that tale.

The reasons for this are probably layered into the collective psychology our society. It has something to do with the explosion of communication that happened over the past half a century. There is simply too much communication and no single person can ever hope to hear it all. Celebrity is the function that filters out the noise. Yet lost in the noise is the articulate and sane, the wise and the learned. All we hear are the trivial but loud. And that's where the problem lies. Stephen Fry's words, whilst neither dumb nor particularly profound, were loud. They were loud simply because he is Stephen Fry. His voice booms louder than any other. Louder too, it seems, than the voice of God.

If I met God, I think my first question would be: why did you create Stephen Fry? But, then, I suspect God might be thinking the same thing.

Yet if there is a God, then perhaps it was God who brought mugging victim Alan Barnes to the public's attention. God moves in mysterious ways and, in this instance, the mysterious way was beautician Katie Cutler who set up the appeal to help the sixty seven year old after he was knocked to the ground by a mugger resulting in a broken collar bone. The fund was aiming to raise £500 but currently stands at £322,899 with 24,322 raising that money in only 5 days.

Yet God didn't work quite so mysteriously in the case of Paul Kohler who was 'savagely' beaten by four burglars. He was in the papers this last week after four Polish immigrants were jailed for the assault which left the university lecturer with a fractured eye socket, jawbone, nose and his facial bruising was so bad that he was unrecognisable.

There are, of course, stark differences between the two cases and a clear reason why Mr Barnes' story touched the nation's heart as well as its purse strings. Yet is it right to ask what kind of God would make Mr Barnes suffer a life with his disabilities but wrong to ask why the media highlighted one case over all the other sad stories that routinely pass for reality?

Nobody asks that because none of it ultimately means anything. Even the loudest bray of stupidity ends like the utterance of the wisest thinker. It's all meaningless noise and life is just one hellish lottery played by a blindfolded gambler with the odds stacked very much against him.

I Hate Colour Cartoons

Another doodle last night and this morning I quickly coloured it in using a new paint app I'd found for Android. Can't say I like the result. I rarely like putting colour onto my cartoons but I often feel compelled, simply because I think it's becoming the norm. Perhaps I don't like the result because I haven't any skill with colour. I think, however, it's that I simply prefer black and white cartoons.

Everywhere I look, cartoons are being done with colour. I love Scarfe's work but I always maintain that his best stuff is (and was) done in black and white. I own pretty much all of Scarfe's books but you'd find that they naturally fall open on the work from the 1960s and 1970s. The same is true for nearly every cartoonist who comes to mind. Even Kliban's 'Luminous Animals', postumously published and now worth a small fortune, contains colour cartoons which just don't have the same appeal. I'll even admit (very quietly because this isn't a criticism, merely a preference) that I'm not even a big fan of Steadman's recent book of birds. My favourite books of his are his Freud and Alice, books that are predominately black and white, or use colour as a way of enhancing the black and white lines. Too many cartoonists are being forced to become painters (obviously at the insistence of newspaper editors) and I think that demeans the art form. Cartoons should be about bold shapes and giving clarity to the inanity of the world. Colour pushes them closer to that reality. As soon as cartoons move towards realism, their message is lost. It's like reading an instruction chart drawn in colour. They're never quite as clear as those drawn simply with black lines on white paper.

From Steve Bell to My @MartinRowson Moment and then Nixon’s The One

I drew a cartoon for today but I liked it so much that in a moment of deluded arrogance I sent it off to The Guardian’s Comment is Free hoping the catch the attention of the cartoon editor. Had I the email address of the cartoon editor, I might feel I had a slim chance of a reply but, as it is, I launch into this adventure with blind optimism. I was inspired to do so by today’s cartoon by Steve Bell, which used a similar ‘Cnut’ joke I used yesterday. They say that great minds think alike and all that or perhaps it’s just vulgar minds that think alike.

Speaking of truly great but vulgar minds, the wonderfully vulgar Martin Rowson followed me on Twitter yesterday. It might not seem like a big thing to you but when you’re stuck here in the north, far from the epicentre of world events and you’re struggling to keep your brain from going into sleep-mode whilst you edit a ten minute video of still photographs of a Nigerian housing estate, the fact that you’re followed by one of your favourite cartoonists just keeps the dark thoughts from the door.

I’ve written many times about Rowson and how his panels on display at the Cartoon Museum would have been the highlight of the day had that same day not included the chance to meet Ralph Steadman. Meeting Steadman was amazing but it was my trip to London that made me a true Rowson fan. I loved his Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels (though I preferred the pages where he used ink rather than paint) and I have some of my favourite panels scanned and hanging from my walls. One of my favourite TV shows of recent months was on Sky One when Rowson was in a particular savage but eloquent mood during his In Confidence interview with Laurie Taylor.

Anyway, my day will be more mindless video editing but checking my inbox every two minutes to see if The Guardian have replied. If they’ve not replied by late afternoon, I’ll post the cartoon here and you can appreciate the crazy level of optimism I had during the moments I sent it and just seconds before the self-doubt began to creep in.

Finally, a reminder to myself as much as anybody to watch Sky Arts 1 at 9pm tonight. It’s the second part of Nixon’s The One. The first part was simply the best thing I’ve seen on TV in a very long time.

Okay, I have an inbox to check…

Talking Cartoons

My Monday was very busy so I’m afraid I didn’t have time to write anything more polished or shorter than the video I’m posting here. This another over-the-shoulder view of my drawing a cartoon on the Samsung Note 10.1 and I’ve again provided some commentary. None of this is scripted, so I’ll have to ask you to excuse my stuttering, some terrible phrasing, and general ignorance and mispronunciations. However, I try to talk about cartoonists I enjoy and explain why I love the work of Robert Crumb, Ralph Steadman, Gerald Scarfe, Martin Rowson, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Bentley, Alex Gregory, Thomas Nast, Bruce Eric Kaplan and well as some of the old Punch cartoonists of the 1930. Even if watching me draw isn’t that interesting, I hope I at least say something to hold your attention.

It was also probably a good idea to record this whilst I can still speak. This post was timed to appear at exactly 9.10am, which was exactly the moment I’m due to sit in the dentist’s chair and have my finances probed. After that, I doubt I’ll be in the mood to blog. In fact, I’m considering getting out of town as soon as I’m out of the surgery. Manchester will be my small reward for actually going through with the appointment. I’m just hoping that I’ll need less than a dozen fillings and praying there’s no need for anything more involved that might mean putting my Samsung Note up for sale...

So, I Actually Met Ralph Steadman...

The travel tablets were a month out of date but I knocked one back at the Pendolino’s first roll. I’m not sure if anything that happened thereafter was real. It didn’t feel real. It felt like how I'd imagined my ideal visit to the Cartoon Museum would go, except in my imagination I wasn’t such a monumentally dull and mumbling arse.

The 8.20am train was only half full, testament to the ridiculously high prices they ask for these weekend trains to London. I’d been given the ticket but the £77 return price still made me wince and thankful that I hadn’t had to pay.

We arrived just after 11. Arriving at Euston always feels like a craven way of entering the city, as though you've crept under the floorboards. I emerged from the dark concrete basement into the heat and the madness.

As soon as I step out of Euston, I’m faced by a tall man crying biblical prophecy. I guess there’s no hour in London that isn’t enjoyed by the God freaks or the drugged madmen with wild eyes. At the first pelican crossing, two cars jumped the red light nearly taking pedestrians with them. I remind myself that I'm a long way from home. I pull down my baseball hat and start walking. A line of Boris bikes was the second thing that grabbed my eye. They are a brilliant idea on TV but seen at street level they are insanity given pedals. Soon all manner of human beings are lurching around me, indifferent to danger as they weave through the traffic. I imagine taxi drivers loathe them. As a cyclist, I loathe them. As a coward, I also choose to walk.

I intended to take my time before going to the Cartoon Museum but resting in Bloomsbury Square Gardens made me feel too perverted. The whole of the city seemed to be going without their damn clothes. Four shapely blondes lay out on the grass right in front of where I’d sat. They were wearing bikinis which they’d occasionally unstrap to help get an all over tan. ‘Don’t look, you dirty old bugger,’ I mumble to myself. ‘We’re here for higher things…’

Five minutes later, I walked into the Cartoon Museum and paid five pounds at the front desk to see those higher things.

‘Are you here for the exhibition or the signing?’ asked the pleasant girl handing me my change.

‘The Steadman exhibition,’ I said. ‘Why? Who’s signing?’

She gave me a puzzled look. ‘Steadman, of course.’

My first thought was “Hell! That’s ruined my day!”

‘Hell,’ I said, my nerves immediately betraying me. ‘That’s ruined my day.’

And, in a way, it was true. I’d travelled to London just to look at his pictures. I wanted to be studious, writing down keen-eyed observations. Now I couldn’t do that with the same intent because I'd already turned into a bumbling wreck, walking into walls like that little midget robot in Blade Runner. Obviously I couldn't turn down this opportunity. I would have to meet Steadman and, in my experience, that would mean making a complete arse of myself.

The museum lady gave me one of those smiles as if to say ‘clearly mad’ and waved me through.



In the next room, I saw a figure sitting on a bench. His back was towards me but his hair, the shape of his head, and his waistcoat were all immediately recognizable, as was the rumble of his voice, like an underground train passing through the bowels of hell. I snapped one picture (right) and then hid. The hallucination was too grand for my mind to comprehend. I’d expected to be in the company of pictures drawn by a great hand. I didn’t expect to be in the company of that great hand.

Steadman quickly disappeared into a room where he was apparently doing an interview, posing for photographs, signing books for staff…

Meanwhile, I became absorbed in the exhibition which was everything I hoped for and a little more.

If the museum itself was about as big as I’d expected (that is: quite small) it was immediately apparent that I was in the company of original work. A very few of the exhibits were prints but the majority were originals, patched with whiteout. That was the first thing I noticed. Steadman’s whiteout remains very white even when the paper has yellowed. The descriptions beside the images suggest that he uses white acrylic. First tip of the day and possibly a good one: try using white acrylic. He uses far more whiteout than I’d imagined, not so much fixing mistakes (though there are plenty of changes of direction) but sometimes just refining a line or adding highlights to a dense patch of crosshatching.

Despite my thinking his work at large scale would be quite coarse, I was very struck by how delicate even his strongest lines are. In fact, that was the one of the main discoveries I take away from the exhibit and the same thought carried over when I was later standing looking at Martin Rowson’s illustrations for his Gulliver book (the other highlight of my day). In fact, much as I’ve always been a Rowson fan, his couple of panels of original work have encouraged me to buy his books the next time I have money.

But back to Steadman… Only by seeing Steadman’s work at first hand do you understand some of the techniques. The size of the page is itself something to behold, with him drawing on A1 sheets. Up close, you see the marks of the craftsman. Sometimes it's as simple as the pin holes where he’s used a compass. Many places the crosshatching lines has obviously been drawn with a ruler. He uses quite a fine nib at times (not a croquill but not one I could recognize immediately, perhaps a Gillott). I do know that I’ll be ditching the heavy duty nib I’ve been using recently. My lines look clumsy in comparison. In other pictures, you can see where he’s used a felt tip pen to create the mesh of fencing.

I can’t say there was one stand-out part of the exhibit because it was all sublime. His modern work was as good as anything from the 1970s and earlier, and it was fascinating to see the sheer originality of his thought. I was particularly struck by some work he’d done with Polaroid film, manipulating the warm ink before it hardened to the finished image. Having worked using Photoshop to produce similar effects, it was humbling seeing how he'd been doing the same before Photoshop even existed.

I was also astonished to see how he’d used Gray’s Anatomy for the famous Hunter S. Thompson portrait and others. I’d heard him talking about it in countless documentaries but, seeing the finished result was surprising. Parts taken from Gray's Anatomy just seemed to naturally fit the portrait.

I’d walked around the exhibit about half a dozen times before I went back to front desk and shop. I’d been told Steadman would sign two pieces: one exhibition catalogue and one other item. Fans were already turning up with old copies of his books and more collectable items. Obviously, not knowing he’d be there, I hadn’t brought anything to sign so I had to go and buy something. I was tempted to pick Freud, one of my favourites, but it was far too pricey. A copy of Alice was second choice and affordable at only £12.

As I’m browsing in the shop, Ralph Steadman's wife arrives. I recognised her immediately. I smiled as she walked past but she too was soon gone to the room where all the important things were happening.

I buy my books, chat again to the pleasant girl at the counter and I ask if she could point out the curator. I thought I was asking for the curator who had emailed me a few weeks ago to inform me that the exhibition would eventually move to Halifax. I was directed to woman standing close by who looked at me as though she should know me. I thanked her for the email she sent. 'What email?' she asked. I explained I wrote a blog where I’d mentioned that I’d never be able to afford to attend the exhibition. She didn’t know me and quickly disappeared into a room. Auspicious beginning, I thought, feeling about an inch high. Suddenly I felt bad about what I could say to Steadman.

I wait the rest of my time looking at the second floor exhibit. Not so much there to get my attention. I’d hoped to see more single panel cartoons but the display was mostly (I think) comic strips. There was one Peanuts strip drawn by Charles Schultz that made me smile. Not the strip but the fact that he clearly just drew two horizontal lines, boxed them off, and then used tippex to produce gaps between the boxes. Simply, rough, and probably the way to go.

I spend much of my time on the second floor just looking at the Martin Rowson panels. I think there were two or three and they were stomach knottingly good. Had the floor below not been filled with original Steadman, it would have been the best part of the day and alone worth the 400 mile round journey.

Around 12.30 we were told to queue and I found myself sixth in line. Six. Bad number. My least favourite number. I never do anything involving the number six if I can help it. Never leave a book on a page with a six in the page number. It’s a strange habit I’ve got into…

At 1pm, we’re led in. Steadman is at the front of the room. I want a photo but the curator arrives and looks unhappy with one person snapping pics so I keep the camera in my pocket. Slowly Steadman starts work, signing something for the guy first in line. Then number two. Number three. Somebody had clearly gone into the shop and bought on the £400 prints to have it signed. I felt slightly ashamed holding the £12 Alice in my hands.

Number four. Number five.

Suddenly, I’m walking up to Ralph Steadman. I’m lost for words.

He asked my name. ‘David,’ I said. ‘For me.’

‘Oh, I know a David who used to send chemicals from up North.’

‘Ah,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m actually the David who once sent you a book’.

A mixture of my nervous mumbling and Lancashire accept probably got in the way. I tried to mention I wrote to him in my pseudonym of Stan Madeley and about my book of spoof letters but I was tripping over everything I wanted to say. I mention that I try to draw cartoons though I don’t get things published.

‘I used to do lots for The New Yorker,’ he finally said, latching onto something he could talk about until this lumbering mess was out of his way. ‘I’d get tired of them asking me to make changes. It was impossible.’

‘At least it was work,’ I reply.

He nodded. ‘True,’ he said, though without much conviction. He was earning from cartoons when he was much younger than me. His bugbears are clearly of a higher realm.

‘Don’t give up’ he said. I said that I wouldn’t but the words rang false as I said them.

‘Rejected cartoons,’ he said. ‘Work them up. Improve them!’

More good advice which I’ll try.

‘Private Eye probably don’t look at them,’ I sighed. He shrugged.

‘Never pencil in first. Always ink!’ was more advice. I knew it already from hour upon hour of listening to his interviews. I’ve tried it but I usually just make a mess.

‘Try the internet,’ was his other advice. I tried to explain about my blog but I’m not doing well. He did his usual thing, drawing doodles on the page, signing his name, throwing ink at my books. (‘When I try that, it usually goes over the curtains,’ I quipped but I think he missed it). Soon it was over.

‘Make sure the ink doesn’t run,’ he advises as I turn to leave. ‘It can run but it can’t hide.’ I hear his laughter diminish behind me. Far too short a time to be in his presence. Like fate again tempting me with a vision of a better life filled with interesting people... It was probably what it feels like meeting the Pope only this meant more to me than meeting any representative of God on this earth.

The truth is: had I know he was signing, I wouldn’t have gone. There’s a horrible reality lurking behind any wish to stand in line to meet a person you admire. I’ve never done it before and, except for fate arranging this today, I wouldn’t do it again. I wanted to talk to him without feeling such a northern prat with aching feet, too little food on my stomach, holes in my five year old boots. I had so many questions about tricks, how he crosshatches, materials he uses, how he turns something his mind into something on the page, or, rather how he turns accidents on the page into something that is so satisfying to the mind. Standing like a gormless fool, cap in hand… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain but I guess it made my lack of success feel all the more acute.

I escaped balancing my two signed books and waited for the ink to dry. Downstairs, there were others like me trying to protect their scrawls and get them to dry quickly. I resorted to using a copy of the Beano to dry it, the symbolism of which was deep and mysterious. A child's comic drying a man's work...

As I waited, I started to talk to a pleasant and very knowledgeable guy who was working as the museum’s official greeter. He points to another cartoonist whose work I’ll now have to look up. He also mentioned the name of a publisher I would check out if I could remember the name. I thought he said ‘low down’ but I’m probably wrong. I tell him that I came all the way from outside Liverpool just to see the exhibit and hadn’t expected Steadman to be there. He imagines I live in the scenic countryside. I explain that north of Birmingham, almost the entire NW quarter of the UK is urban sprawl and chemical plants. We agree there are nice parts but that I don’t live near them. Yet leaving London, I realise that I do live in the countryside. Not great countryside but parts of it are green.

‘Get work for the local council,’ he advised. ‘Cartoonists can get lots of work turning local information into easy to follow cartoons.’

‘You mean like Bob comes to terms with bereavement?’

‘Yes,’ he chuckles.

I should probably have loitered in London longer but I wasn’t there to sightsee. And what could beat meeting Ralph Steadman, even for a minute or so? My legs were tired after three hours standing and walking, my back aching from my heavy rucksack. The heat was also that kind of heat that only seems to find in cities. It comes up from the ground as much as down from the sun. The crowds were everywhere. No escape from them.

The guy in charge of the Pendolino’s shop should have his own radio show. He couldn’t stop. I plug myself into music (Sparks Live in Europe, yet again). Then we're off. We pass through parts of the country I know by reputation but have never visited. The train crawls through Bletchley. The station looks like control bunkers from WW2. I wonder if this is where the codes were cracked. Somewhere in these sidings. Alan Turing probably conceived his death by poisoned apple.

I look out at the motorway and see somebody driving an open top red Ferrari with a blonde in the next seat. He looks like Tom Selleck. I, however, have two signed books by Ralph Steadman in my bag.

I'm not saying I wouldn't swap them for the Ferrari and blonde. However, for just a split second, it occurred to me that I might not.

Day 1

I passed by, looked in, decided not today. The Job Centre was busy, I was wet and getting even wetter since it was still pouring down with rain. I was also in a black mood made worse by the arrival of my twice yearly statement from the publishers. It was a bad day for it to arrive, as though some great force was determined to end this grim charade.

I didn’t expect any surprises from the statement, though I’d actually sold more copies of my book than I’d expected. Not enough to make a difference but enough for people close to me to choose this moment to remind me of dark truths.

‘Makes you wonder why you bother,’ was a hint of what was to come.

‘Makes you wonder if it’s worth it,’ was the second push of the very sharp blade.

Each successive jab gets closer to the heart of the matter.

‘It’s like expecting to win the lottery,’ was the first hint of the true theme of these conversations.

We all want to make money from what we love to do but it’s the job of relatives to inform you that you should make money at the expense of what you love to do. It's a great leveler, a way of saying that all you've achieved amounts to naught. When people throw these accusations around, I can never decide if it’s a kind of clear-eyed honesty or a twisted delight in exposing raw nerves and inflicting pain. And the pain is real and very deep.

The bitch awful truth is that it is difficult to make money from creative labours. I’d already sketched out this argument earlier today in a post I’d originally labelled ‘Sunlight’ because I was feeling brighter and better. The arrival of the post and my relative’s badgering turned that around and made a good day very bad.

However, I have made strides following Leg-Iron’s advice. I’ve written about an IT Web Administrator position. Chances of my landing it are slim but we’ll see. There’s also something else I’d spotted on Gumtree. I was intending to send a CV until I just realised it was three months unpaid work as a web designer. Yes, that’s right. Unpaid but with the chance of a job after that… I might be a fool but I wasn't born yesterday. A shame it wasn't even a little bit of money. The irony is that I live the most frugal life I can possibly lead in order to do what I do. I’m not looking for a fortune. Just enough to live on. That I can’t even make that is probably a terrible indictment of my talent or my ability to promote myself or possibly a mixture of the two.

There’s a Ralph Steadman documentary due in cinema sat some point this year and I was watching an interview with the great man on Youtube where he said that all his books have eventually been remaindered. That’s sobering in the sense that if there’s no market for Steadman’s work, then there can’t be such a market for anybody’s work. It’s another facet to the internet culture where jokes, cartoons, and funny graphics have become a currency without value. Everybody trades them but nobody ever seems to pay.

Take for instance, the last strip I drew. I spent five or six hours working on Sparks Episode 4 which I now see posted on a number of accounts across Tumblr. Now what is that cartoon worth? The minimum wage is £6.19 so you might say that strip is worth at least £30.95 for five hours work. Hell, I think I’d be delighted to have earned that much. As it is, I earn nothing whilst the owners of Tumblr wrap their advertising around my content.

This is the problem for all creative people working these days. We work for nothing hoping that somebody somewhere will spot out work and say ‘I want to pay for that’. Yet it rarely happens.

So, that’s where I am now. Deeply funked and not sure what to do other than send off my CV to anything that looks promising. To add insult to injury, web traffic has completely dried up. This is possibly going to be the slowest day I’ve known in months. That divine force is trying desperately hard to send me a message and, unfortunately, I am listening.

Random Thoughts - The Uncensored Parts

Okay, I ballsed this up. I originally wrote the piece called 'Random Thoughts' and included these two addition thoughts which I decided to delete before I posed the article. However, stupidly, I forgot that I'd already set the article to post itself. Hence, there are two posts called 'Random thoughts'. These two additional thoughts were just me being self-pitiful, and I apologise that they were published. It's true that I'm getting a little jaded by the web but this has been true for a very long time. I probably don't mean half of what I say here but I'll keep them to show that I can be a monumental prat.

• I’ve decided to stop leaving comments on other people’s blogs. Not out of any personal malice on my part but it’s bad enough leaving comments on a blog and it going completely ignored by the blog owner who can’t even be bothered to say, ‘Thanks for the comment.’ But, on four or five occasions now, I’ve written comments that the blogger just hasn’t bothered to publish. And they weren’t short comments. They were lengthy but positive comments that had taken time and effort to write. I’m not sure why this happens. I guess you can’t peer into another person’s heart and figure out their motives. Whatever their reason, they’ve accomplished one goal. They have one less reader and there’s now more cynicism in the world.

• On the subject of cynicism and comments, I’m also considering closing the comments on this blog. It’s becoming evident that few people ever wants to leave any feedback and the only comments that do arrive tend to be SPAM. Again, I find that my general faith in the world increases. Other than my Frank Lampard post which is very popular in Nigeria, most of my traffic comes from people looking for 'Warrington Prostitutes' or '3D Porn'. And here I was thinking there might be some intelligent beings on the other end of this blog; scientific types, studying DNA or the universe, who might enjoy what I do. I’m beginning to think my audience consists of penis stranglers clutching their Nintendo 3DS in the vague hope they’ll find something fleshy and peaked popping out of this blog to satisfy their sick bastard urges. Thoughts like that are the stuff of dark dreams that usually end up with me  closing the blog entirely and focussing my efforts elsewhere… I don't feel that bad yet but some days this whole enterprise feels very wasteful.

The Ralph Steadman Effect

Few things give me as much pleasure as Ralph Steadman’s books yet they can also awaken certain feelings of self-loathing in me.

When I was still signing my letters as Stan Madeley, the UK’s top Richard Madeley lookalike, back when I was still hoping to get a second volume of letters published, I would very occasionally write one to some personal hero whose work I genuinely admired. I once wrote to Robert Crumb and sent him a bad parody I’d drawn of one of his Amazonian girls. I walked down the stairs one morning about three weeks later to see a large white A4 envelope sitting on the doormat. The handwritten address was a work of art in itself and almost as good as the drawing Crumb had enclosed: his own version of my version of one of his Amazonians. Days like that made the failures worth it. And there were plenty of failures...

It generally didn't bother me when certain people didn't reply. I've bothered enough big names so that a rejection from Will Gompertz was never going to upset me too much, even if he did get one of my better cartoons. The exception is when a letter happens to be one of the few I've written which were special to me. Those were letters into which I’d usually put real effort, perhaps taken days to get the wording just right. I wrote to Ron Mael of Sparks who completely ignored me, as did Gerald Scarfe both of which were real disappointments. However, many others replied. I have letters from comedy greats such as Bob Newhart and Alan Alda, film greats such as Roman Polanski and Shirley MacLaine. John Landis sent me a CD and Martin Sheen a bag of whistles.

Yet nothing quite matches my Steadman reply. I wrote to him when I was feeling particularly down one day. It was probably after another of the endless rejection emails from ‘Private Eye’ and I was really considering… Well, I might say 'giving' up but I'm not sure that's right. I love to write comedy and I love to cartoon. The thought of doing anything else... Well, I don't go there. Unlike my usual spoof letters, the letter I wrote to Steadman mixed humour in with genuine sentiment. I also sent him a copy of my book which he probably used on his log stove. I didn't expect a reply so I was over the moon when I received a handwritten letter two months later. I felt all kinds of stupid when he told me to sort myself out. Slapped by Steadman! It should be the title of a book… I present the original letter and reply here for the first time. You see before you one of my most treasured possessions. Both pictures are clickable in case you'd like to read them...



But all that is back-story. I’m now sitting here wondering if I can make the STEADman@77 exhibition currently playing to lucky and no-doubt indifferent bastards at the Cartoon Museum in London. I’m itching to go but the small matter of a 400 mile round journey is getting in the way. The obvious answer is: if you really wanted to go, you’d find a way. Perhaps that’s true but the cost of travelling between any two points in this fine country of ours is getting out of hand. I don’t have a car and as much as I love cycling, I don’t think my old Raleigh X1 (and my even older legs) could make it to London and back. The train is pretty quick but it’s well outside the current finances of this humble pen scratcher. That leaves the coach...

My six foot two inch frame does not sit well on National Express coaches for a five hour journey. Leaving Warrington at 6.40AM, I’d apparently arrive in London at 11.40. Assuming the travel sickness hasn’t destroyed my insides by then, I’d have maybe five hours to find the museum, sob and drool over the Steadman exhibition, before I’d have to get the return coach that leaves at 6.30 and arrives home around 11.30. I feel nauseous just thinking about that trip. It was sheer hell the last time I travelled to London by coach but I’m beginning to feel like I’ll have to do it again or never see this exhibition…

When Londoners complain as they occasionally do on the rare occasion that an exhibition opens somewhere in the North, I wish they’d remember the thousands upon thousands of things we don’t get and never will get. Not that there isn’t adequate space to put on an exhibition. We have the damn Tate Liverpool which thrives on the abstracted junk they exhibit to American tourists and bored school kids. Last year they held an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ exhibition which ignored Steadman’s superior version in favour of some graphic design college nonsense. There is plenty of gallery space in Manchester when it’s not being used on some postmodern project that no bugger wants or visits. Would it be too much to hope that a collection by the UK’s most respected illustrators and cartoonists of the late 20th Century might actually travel this far north? I mean, Steadman was born in Wallasey, for Christ sake! A mere fifteen miles from my front door… Get a bloody blue plaque put up there or in in Abergele in North Wales which is where he was brought up and then bring his work up here. I can be in North Wales inside forty minutes...

However, it won't happen. I know I’ll have to overdose on Dramamine in order to pay homage in London. If I wanted to engage in pilgrimage, I’d have bloody well become a Catholic.

That Big Fat Gypsy Royal Wedding

Some two years ago or so, I was told by somebody close to an editor at a national newspaper that there’s no way that Photoshopped satire was ever going to succeed. At that time, I was producing one or two 'cartoons' a day. Occasionally a picture would get picked up by the newspapers and my blog would earn a mention. But as far as producing work for newspapers: they weren't interested. Editors, I was told, were very twitchy about the copyright issues of Photoshopped work. Like most people working in digital satire, I had to 'borrow' my source images from elsewhere. Working for nothing and producing no income from your work means that it’s impossible to pay photo agencies upwards of £50 a picture, which you then pull apart and combine with other pictures, also priced upwards of £50. It was a depressing thing to hear after two years working on ‘The Spine’ but I knew other Photoshop satirists were discovering the same thing.

Realising I needed to do something different, I quit the blog and went off to write a couple of books. Yet at the same time, I was also being enlightened by reading Nige’s blog. It was Nige who introduced me to the work of B. Kliban. I’d always been a huge fan of cartoons but I'd never studied them with any seriousness. It was through Nige that I started to form an attachment to the holy trinity of Ronald Searle, Ralph Steadman, and Gerald Scarfe. American illustrators interested me less, though I would eventually be drawn to the work of American counter-culture cartoonists, notably Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez and Drew Friedman, as well as modern satirists like Steve Brodner, Pat Oliphant, and Tim Kreider. Yet discovering Kliban was an utter revelation. His cartoons filled an empty space in my brain. The first time I saw one of his gags, the click was almost audible. I realised that I wanted to try real cartooning myself, that the execution mattered less than the joke, and that I should try to draw the kinds of cartoon that amuse me.

I began posting the results on my private blog. At the beginning, they were very basic line drawings created in Adobe Illustrator. I couldn't draw but that wasn't the point. I just wanted to create cartoons that made me laugh.

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I created hundreds of cartoons over a year or so until a couple of real artists who read the blog persuaded me to start using ink.

Ink! It was a horrendous feeling at first. I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no CTRL+Z to allow me to go back and fix my (many) mistakes. I also wasn't set up for using pen and ink. It was a matter of simple things like arranging a place to draw, buying a lamp, a drawing board (and eventually a chair and drawing table). It was finding the right instruments, struggling to understand how dip pens work, and to find which pens suited me. Then I had to find the right paper. I began drawing at A3 scale but discovered it was far too big for the one or two cartoons I was trying to produce every day. Then there was the physical side of sitting over a desk, living with my fingers almost perpetually covered in ink... But I was cartooning on a daily basis and I was enjoying publishing the results on my private blog.

Yet daily satirical cartoons have a short shelf-life and I realised that I might as well do something with them. I’m working on other things which keep me busy and it sometimes makes it a struggle to update here every day. Some weeks, like this last week, I'm not in an ideal mood to cartoon. Yet for all its sins, badly-drawn figures (sometimes, to my chagrin, commented upon, sometimes not), jokes which only I find amusing, and the horrorshow of the statistics, this blog has been something I’ve enjoyed.

Yet the world’s hard brutal irony has a way of creeping up on a guy.

I link to Gerald Scarfe’s website because he still has the devil’s flair. His strokes are wild, loose, yet absolutely precise. I buy his books. I search out his work in the newspapers. I check his online shop. I try to figure out his techniques and yet get nowhere when I study his crosshatching.

Today I noticed that there’s a new book listed there… It’s called ‘The Big Fat Gypsy Royal Wedding’ and it’s written by Scarfe’s two sons, Alex and Rory. It’s a clever idea, looks a funny book, and I'd encourage you to go out and buy it (though only after I've begged you to buy the book listed top right of this blog). But what frustrates me, leaves me standing against the wall banging my head against the plasterwork until my brains leak into the cavity beyond, isn’t the fact that it’s is a royal wedding satire when I couldn’t get a publisher to look at the book I’d written eight months ago…

It’s the simple fact that it’s not a book of cartoons. There’s not a single bit of splattered ink in sight.

What frustrates me, makes me gasp with sheer irony of it all is the one simple fact: the whole bloody thing is Photoshopped.