It’s not something that one necessarily tells people, what you might like to have been if you started again. My early ambition was to work in advertising and I did, in a way. People were generally just great and I worked among people who had lot of talent and a sense of humour. It was the ‘right time’ in many ways : the 1970s. After a brief time working in an ad agency, I then went ‘freelance’ and started diverting towards just drawing for a living, for the people, unlike me, who had hung on to their jobs within agencies. … Continue reading A big thank you to people I don’t know, and some I do.

The last of the series about why one should always back up one’s files on your computer. A small mouse in the office might make inadvertent mayhem. This done for my good friend Robina Burton when he was Marketing Director of Christie Electronics in Stroud. They built back up systems for companies so that no company need lose their data, come what may. The computer and the fountain pen sort of date it. Linework on acetate and then painted on the back for those bright punchy colours by Linda, office background done in magic marker by me. Fun to do, … Continue reading Eeeek!

It’s all the fault of Christmas. The bin men are in a right old tizzy, and the neighbours are, like us, looking out of the front window to see who has got it wrong. We have the bonus of Sharon across the road who has never to our knowledge got it wrong. So it’s in ‘Sharon we trust’. The council put the new collection dates out on the web, but some of our number prefer to go against the grain and complicate the issue by putting out the wrong bin on the wrong day. These are the natural anarchists in … Continue reading The tyranny of disrupted bin day.

Perhaps I’m in need of additional Ram! ( My Goodness a computer geek joke, give that man a dig in the digitals ) Or perhaps I’m in need of back up. Here’s another in the series of cartoon type illustrations I did back in the 80s for my good friend Robin, then my client at Christie Electronics down in wonderful downtown Stonehouse, just outside of Stroud. He was, and is still, a man of just impeccable taste and judgement, choosing moi for his advertising campaign. What’s happening here…He’s been out to get a file leaving the window open and a … Continue reading Your memory is quite different to mine.

On these dark January days it might cheer you to take a good look at this, it’s not that long away before this sort of thing is all the rage again. This was taken in May last year Continue reading Just around the corner

Promises Auctions are fun events used to raise money for schools and the like. They can be fun, and the one I went to way back when my son was around 10 years old was no exception. One of the items on offer came about, as the father of another pupil at the small village school where Joe went, was the Marketing Director of Endsleigh Insurance, a locally based national insurance company that was doing exceptionally well. The company sponsored the UK football league at the time. The item on offer was two tickets to a top game almost anywhere … Continue reading “He dunt run…

In days of yore if you worked in a large office then there might have been a tea lady. These fine servants of the company would wheel around a huge tea urn on a trolley and dispense much needed cuppas to the work force, sensible really as the workforce did not need to leave their desks. Urn brewed tea and a solid digestive made for great productivity. The introduction of computers, those beige blocks with electronics everywhere were also coming into view. This drawing, done for a campaign to encourage people to back up their data, was for Christie Electronics, … Continue reading Expect the unexpected.

I’d no idea of the meaning of the phrase when I was commissioned by Radio Rentals to produce a calendar for them back in the 70s when I was really just starting on my career as a cartoonist. The artwork does not exist as far as I know, any more, nor does Radio Rentals. They would hire a TV to you for a few quid per month. Those tellies were generally walnut encased monsters that sat in the corner of many sitting rooms with their 3 channels ready to leap into colourful action at the press of a button. Remote … Continue reading Politically incorrect?

I’m a big fan. There are some cakes that benefit from the introduction of industry to their production and to my mind fruitcake is one of them. It’s the sort of thing that one ponders at this time of year. The weight and substance of a decent industrially made fruit cake must be dense enough to make the feet warm and keep a draught from creeping under the door, in this sort of weather. When I left college I did for a while deliver slabs of this stuff to various bakeries in the North West from a very large factory … Continue reading Industrial Fruitcake

The new mode of customer service when you buy on line is to tell you exactly what’s happening, relentlessly. Even when it goes to other people to deliver it. Text number 1 “ Your parcel is on its way, your driver has it and is about to set off from the depot in a green van at 4 in the morning after a breakfast of toast and Tesco value jam, which is red but has never been near a fruit farm. You will be updated ( your name in here ) regularly on its progress, and be treated like a … Continue reading Your parcel is on its way.

Way back in 2016 I completed a series of drawings in celebration of Pont They appeared on my website and some of them have now been put on this one, just look for the page under cartoons. I’m retiring my old website and gradually moving images from there to this site. Pont’s drawings were a comment on British foibles, we have plenty of them still! Here’s one of my drawings done at that time. An appreciation of seafaring. I’ve taken a small break from blogging, been busy with sorting out stuff, but am back now and this is some of … Continue reading Pont, my appreciation.

Tony Woollaston , aka ‘Doove’ , a former student with me at Manchester College of Art, has died after a three and a half year battle against Motor Neurone Disease. Why he called himself that in those days, is a mystery to me these days, but it was a name he thought up at the time, the late 1960s. We shared a house together for a year in Whalley Range in Manchester. He had the sub basement and I had the front first floor bedroom, others in the house were Alan at the back bedroom, Jim in the sitting room, … Continue reading ‘Doove’ has died.