Nobody famous as far as I know. When reading reports of famous people or even unknown people attending a particular school, journalists are always looking at where they went to school. When I was at school the only person of note was a high court judge called Edmund Davies ( no relation ) it was sort of suggested that he was someone we could all to aspire to.

Pop stars, criminals, writers and other such celebrities are amongst the sort of people who get a a mention, but not by the school only in the news item and sometimes in brackets ( “the same school where Vince Dresden attended back in the 1950s before his big selling kitchen sink novel “The Back Streets” was such best seller).

They never mention cartoonists, unless these cartoonists have literary credentials as well. Oh how I’d love to have gone to the same school as the late Bill Tidy, or the now almost forgotten “Larry”. Then if I did hit the headlines I’d be able to read that “the accused, who claimed to be a cartoonist, is thought to have gone to Prebbles, a private school where cartoonists Bill Tidy and “Larry” attended”. It is usually a private school and mention of the astronomical fees is likely.

I didn’t go to a private school, and Prebbles is probably a shop somewhere that sells gift items and greetings cards that are always in the best possible taste. I doubt that Bill Tidy or Larry went to a private school either. Perhaps the point of the reporting is that these criminals and celebrities have managed to trash there own reputations and wasted an expensive education.

Why does all this happen? Why doing cartoonists never get a mention? Well, the profession a school wishes you to aspire to is respectable. Cartoonists are not seen as in this category. It’s seen a s lightweight, so lightweight it is almost weightless, especially in this country. It’s quite different in France and Belgium where comic artists and cartoonists get a great deal of respect. An artist is, if he or she makes a success of it, may well get the mention, but the cartoonist who makes a simple joke will not, unless that joke becomes a line in a comedy programme in which case the cartoonist becomes a writer. Highly respected and worth putting in brackets after a report about someone else from the same school who has committed some sort of heinous crime.

An if you are wondering, I’m a cartoonist. I went to Hutton Grammar School in Preston, Lancashire and as far as I know, no-one famous went there, or has been there.

Thank you.

Don’t mention it.

Are these sheep all going the same way?