FOGHORN
The best of British cartooning talent
Issue 39
NEWS
FOGHORN Issue 39
Published in Great Britain by the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)
PCO Patrons Libby Purves Andrew Marr Bill Tidy Foghorn Editor Bill Stott tel: +44 (0) 160 646002 email: billstott@lineone.net Foghorn Sub-Editor Roger Penwill tel: +44 (0) 1584 711854 email: roger@penwill.com Foghorn Layout/Design Tim Harries tel: + 44 (0) 1633 780293 email: foghorn@procartoonists.org PCO Press Office email: media@procartoonists.org Web info PCO (FECO UK) website: http://www.procartoonists.org BLOGHORN http://thebloghorn.org/
What is Foghorn? British cartoon art has a great, ignoble history and currently boasts a huge pool of talent. It deserves a higher media presence than it currently enjoys. Our aim is to make sure it gets it. We want to promote cartoon art domestically and internationally by encouraging high standards of artwork and service, looking after the interests of cartoonists and promoting their work in all kinds of media. Copyright All the images in this magazine are the intellectual property and copyright of their individual creators and must not be copied or reproduced, in any format, without their consent. Front Cover: Steve Bell Back Cover: Denis Dowland Foghorn (Online) ISSN 1759-6440
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FOGHORN The magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)
“Ghurka MP Claims for Second Home in Tibet Scandal!” And it’s not officially silly season yet, but MPs have joined the Bankers in Trough Alley. Mind you, by the time you read this, all that will be Old News and lots of new nasties will have come wriggling out of the woodwork. Foghorn clairvoyant and tea – person, Eloise Hipgripper muses on what they might involve. - H M Queen Elizabeth 2 unmasked as imposter. Real Queen kept plied
with Night Nurse at 32 Bulganin Close, Glossop since 1978. - Fred Goodwin buys Scotland. - Eastenders episode features no violence, substance abuse, fornication or dancing pangolins. Ratings slump. In the meantime, have a laugh at what follows… Bill Stott, Foghorn Editor.
Shrewsbury hits a six
Roger Penwill looks back on this years festival. From all round the globe, (well, the UK, Czech Republic, Swiss, Greek and Australian parts of it) cartoonists descended on the Shropshire market town of Shrewsbury in April for the 6th International Cartoon Festival there. For a couple of days the historic Market Square was temporary home to a crack team of caricaturists, a bustling, beavering mélange of knee-worn cartoonists painting significant square meterage of Big Board cartoons and, new this year, a splattering of Little Big Boards. A timely full page article by PCO and Festival patron Libby Purves in the previous weekend’s Sunday Telegraph extolling the delights of cartoons in general and the festival in particular unquestionably swelled the crowds. Cartoon fanatics made special efforts to travel there from considerably flung parts, like Cornwall and even Colchester. Traditional Shrewsbury good weather also timely arrived, confounding the iffy forecasts. 2009 is the year that the town
Shrewsbury has been celebrating local lad-made-good, Charles Darwin, so it would have been remiss of the Cartoon Festival to ignore this anniversary. The theme was the broad heading of “science”, but plenty of evolution gags were on display. Over 250 cartoons were submitted for the main exhibition (“Boffination”) from which 80 were selected to make a collection of high quality. The other exhibitions featured Czech cartoonist Miroslav Bartak, the supreme master of the captionless cartoon; our own Steve Bell and Kate Charlesworth and a historic collection of science cartoons, curated by another festival patron Professor Colin Pillinger. A cartoon trail (the Shrewsbury S-mile) around town created a straggling exhbition in shop windows. As ever, talks, workshops and clinics completed the festival mix. Another successful celebration of the best of cartooning out of the way, eyes are now firmly down planning the next incarnation. WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
FEATURE CATHY SIMPSON
This is very firmly in the past. In no way does it relate to advertising today... The scene: an art college in central London, yet to be called ‘University of the Arts London’, ‘The Central London Institute’ or ‘Central St Martin’s’. The students: doing a course which is yet to be called ‘Visual Communication’. They come up with concepts, do roughs and hand lettering. That sort of thing... The happening: the students are receiving a talk from Barry Lyon-Toerag, someone from the Mincing Pratt advertising agency; an effort to introduce the students to the real world. And to the world of advertising. One of the students voices her concerns: ‘I believe that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.’ Her black-lipsticked, pierced lip trembles. ‘But I just heard an advertising jingle .....“If your poochie’s out to lunch – give him a treat with Woof-OMunch!”’ Then her other, unpierced, lip trembles. ‘The dichotomy is obvious - the tossers who write this crap are the self same people we’ll try to persuade to use intelligent humour to sell their clients’ products.’ Her pierced eyebrows perform a little dance and her little blue eyes fill with tears. Barry Lyon-Toerag makes mental note to look up ‘dichotomy’ and clears his throat. “No no no no no, my dear… those tossers won’t be going anywhere near client meetings. You won’t try to sell them anything. “No, they’re called copywriters. Tucked away on the third floor of agencies, safely out of the way of clients. Like all the so-called creatives. One of our clients once accidentally caught sight of one - poor bloke needed artificial resuscitation and a gin and tonic before he could stand up! The MD had to pretend that it was a passing refuse collector who had somehow got past Cerberus on reception. Close call, WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
Adventures in Advertising Cathy Simpson spills the beans. that!’ Barry Lyon-Toerag looks round at the circle of hostile stares, polishes his right shoe on the back of his left trouser leg and continues..... “You need to understand how advertising agencies are structured. Firstly, there’s Account Handling… composed of people whose suits actually cover their private parts. They’re the ones who get to meet clients. It is they who’ll try and persuade the client that ripping off someone else’s idea but changing only one word is a Good Thing. They tend to get shuffled around a lot, for some reason. “Then there’s the Media Department. They’re the guys who will buy a whole page in, say, The Times, for £1,000. Then they’ll put four ads in there, sell the space to the clients for £1,500 a throw and persuade the poor sods they’re getting a bargain. Clever, huh? Mind you, without them – none of the rest of us could afford our white suits…” ‘But where do we …?’ begins one of the students. But Barry is in full flow. “And then there’s the Creative Department. You know it by the grass hanging out round the edge of the closed door. Dodge the spears if you’re brave enough to open
it. When the agency needs some work done, they go to a creative consultancy. There’s a good one run by two brothers – worst that can happen there is waiting for them to stop fighting each other before you get any sense from them. “The really big boys, the International ones, have a department that checks out details, like ensuring the brand name doesn’t mean something like ‘colostomy bag’ in Outer Mongolia. Still, even they slip up … that’s why Coca-Cola in China translated as “Bite the Wax Tadpole” or “Female Horse Stuffed with Wax”, depending on the dialect. But sales soared…” Another of the students interjects “But where do we fit into a setup like that?” “Good grief!” Barry recoils in horror. “You don’t think you’re going to end up working in advertising, do you? A talented bunch like you? From an art college with an international reputation?’” His eyes widen. “If you haven’t got the nous to set up on your own, then jolly well go and get a proper job … my, I have a train to catch … thank Crunchie it’s Friday …” Exits stage left. (Lights fade, accompanied by the soundtrack to ‘Um Bongo, um Bongo, they drink it in the Congo’). THE FOGHORN 3
BLOGHORN
Cartoon book has that Friday feeling Royston Robertson talks to Alex Matthews. Alex Matthews has published a book of cartoons with the rather unlikely title of Crystalline Structure Friday. It brings together dozens of single-panel “Alexander” cartoons from magazines such as Private Eye and Prospect, along with previously unseen work. Bloghorn is amused by Alex’s twisted and surreal view of the world, so we cornered him and asked him some questions. You’re relatively new to the world of magazine cartooning, why did you decide to do a compilation of cartoons at this stage?
I felt that the first stage of my cartooning career, where I was learning how to write gags, developing a style, and trying desperately to get my first cartoon published, was over. I also had a lot of good gags that had never seen print, so I stuck the best ones in there. It’s a really good thing to be able to give potential clients a book of your work. Better than scribbling down a website address. They’ll remember you. What’s with the title? I wanted a title that would make people go “What?” And then, when they’ve read the cartoon that the title is taken from, they get it. And are perhaps a little disappointed. It fits with the black cover and general feel of the book, I think.
As well as being a cartoonist, you teach art and design in Moscow. How do those two things complement each other? Teaching keeps my mind lively and explaining ideas about illustration helps them to become clearer in my mind. And because my Russian is so bad, I am more isolated than in England. That actually helps in thinking up ideas. I’m less distracted by other people, TV and things. People say Russia must give you so many ideas, but it doesn’t really. My gags are more about having job interviews with pelicans and stuff like that. Crystalline Structure Friday: A Collection of Cartoons by Alexander is available from lulu.com, priced £9.10
Artist of the Month for April 2009 was Noel Ford. Noel was a regular contributor to Punch magazine for almost 20 years and is a former editorial cartoonist for the Daily Star. Currently, he is editorial cartoonist for half a dozen national UK publications and he also produces work for calendars, greeting card and book illustration (including the Grumpy Old Men series of books). He has won a number of national and International awards including The United Nations (Cartoonists Against Drug Abuse), The Australian Cartoonists’ Association (The Lindsays Cartoon Awards) and the National Canine Defense League - in association with Bonio dog biscuits (for Dog Cartoonist of the Year) Yes, really - Ed. Noel told Bloghorn how he creates his cartoons: “The first tools-of-my-trade were the traditional ink line and wash media, colours being added with inks and, later, using Edding and Pantone markers. Around 1997, I discovered digital media and soon all my work was being created directly on-screen using a digitising tablet and stylus. The very
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first digital cartoon in Punch, a full page colour cartoon, was mine (though they may not have realised because I printed it out and sent it in as hard copy).
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FEATURE LADY VIOLET
Random acts of humour
Foghorn’s very own ‘Agony Aunt’ Lady Violet Spume, answers your nasty little personal problems. Hi Violet I’m reading a book called ‘the $ecret habits of successful ba$tard$’ and was wondering what your thoughts are about the book. Is it safe to read the book in public? PS: Are you related to Asti Spumanti? If so, send me a crate of your finest. Thanks. C.P. My dear child, I shall overlook your shudderingly awful over-familiarity and your use of that dreadful Trans-Atlantic term ‘Hi’ and merely say that I am not familiar with this particularly dreadful sounding book. Generally speaking, however, one should never be seen reading anything other than old copies of Tatler in public. A frightfully vulgar habit. Lady V. “Nice trompe l’oeil, Malcolm.”
“Any other perks to working in the ‘health and safety’ department, Trevor?” WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
Dear Lady Violent Spuke, I’ve got a problem. I started one of the ‘hard’ puzzles in my book entitled ‘Sudoku - the original hand-made puzzles’ and I’ve got stuck. Oh, and another problem. I had to give a talk about aromatherapy and I couldn’t because there was a hole in the ceiling. C.S. Puflet. Dear C.S. One despairs upon receiving this sort of senseless trivia purporting to be a serious problem worthy of professional discussion in an up-market publication such as this. I can only suggest you take a grip of yourself and rid your life of such ridiculous trifles. Both sudoku and aromatherapy are silly distractions favoured by young, flighty types. Lady V. THE FOGHORN 5
FEATURE JOHN JENSEN
The Great Divide by John Jensen
The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival’s farewell dinner was an evening of food and cartoonists bursting with guitaral talent, the whole climaxed by Big Bill Stompin’ Stott, white suited and burnt-umber voiced against a background of four dancing girls - Libby Purves among them, movin’ and shakin’ as only journalists and female cartoonists can. At the far end of the hall, at one of the two tables by the door sat two men, their faces frozen with incredulity - gobsmacked - by the relaxed mayhem on stage. The two men were Heinz Pfister, ‘Pfuschi’, and Miroslav Barták, two amazingly good and amazingly nice European cartoonists who, at that moment, presonified the differences between British and European cartooning and European cartoonists. The differences can be ocean wide. If you wade your way through cartoons of countless brick walls, prison bars, battered doves of peace and those witty word balloons that can pierce like a sword without a word being written in them then eventually you will find the common meeting ground: humour. It is there but must be fossiked for. Many Brits don’t have the patience for that. British cartoonists love the quickie: the cartoon equivalent of the standip comic’s one-liner. We have to love it. Publishers rarely accept or 6 THE FOGHORN
commission anything bigger. European cartoonists, however, and their readers enjoy a leisurely mull. They appreciate wit and the rippling out of contemplative ideas. We don’t go in for philosophical introspection. give us the ol’ knee-jerk reaction to the here and now: topicality not
universality. We don’t ask for the Meaning of Life in a wordless cartoon but we do want to know what in God’s name is Gordon Brown talking about! At the end of a festival, the guys get out their guitars and their 70s songbooks and give nanny a hoot. WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
FEATURE JOHN JENSEN
Europeans, particularly East Europeans would, I feel, maybe unfairly, prefer a game of chess and a glass or three of schnapps, followed by discussion, argument and then home, unsteadily to bed. We British go unsteadily to bed with far less bother. I appreciate both worlds and envy the way Europeans are treated by their readers and the Press. To be called ‘Sir’ is a pleasant suprise (unless you’re a woman) whilst, better still, ‘maitre’ gives a nice cuddle to desperate British egos. In Britain such terms would be risible or an embarrassment. European cartoonists get respect over there and big fat books of their works are published. To be sure, there is the matter of finding a market in which big drawings are printed and an interested book publisher found to tie them all together. Here, as we all frustratingly know, among the forests of paper newspaper publishers each day, only a miniscule amount is devoted to cartoons and no editor, or graphics editor, let alone a publisher, seeks out young aspiring talent, let alone that of the oldies who have something new and different to offer. Nor will they while newspapers remain an endangered species. Many papers have recently closed and many more asre as shaky and pale as their accountants. Our talent turns to the web and all the possibilities of out-there. Regardless of where our work ends up let’s hope the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival thrives and grows - and that visitors are not only encouraged to buy, but to do so because they love what they see. A difficulty with this is that topical humour dates quickly and the humour, so funny when it is published, dies with it’s subject matter. Cartoon buyers want a picture which is not only funny but retains its humour over the months and maybe years. Maybe the continentals have got it right. WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
Random acts of humour
“Bloody hell, Mavis - the earth DID move!”
“He’s on a non work experience placement.” THE FOGHORN 7
FEATURE CLIVE COLLINS
Clive Collins
Never borrow, never lend… cartoons Anyone you lend cartoons to, in order to set themselves up in business, always turns out to be problem. Not bona fide galleries, but people who have a dream, to – say - open a shop that sell cartoons (‘…and yours are just the ones that could help me get started’). I’ve lost count of the people who’ve asked me – and other colleagues - for original cartoons in order to set them up in business, and even
while my brain is screaming ‘DON’T DO IT!’ I’m riffling through the files for something that might be the very thing they’re looking for. I even agree a minimum price (and by now my brain is lost in hysterical laughter). Nothing is ever heard from these people again, despite threatening letters. An old mate from the Sun Racing Desk – where I was a tipster - bought 8 THE FOGHORN
a franchise for a sandwich shop in the ‘dead area’ running from inside South Kensington station, to the tunnel that led to the Museums. He called it ‘Noshtalgia’, and asked me, as I sat along the desk from him, if I’d lend him – for a while until he could organise some vintage posters – some original cartoons. I’d drawn a number of vintage film-orientated themes for Punch and various magazines, and so I lent him a dozen, which he got framed up and placed round the walls, and even though I say it myself, the place looked good. It came to pass, that Con (his real name, believe me) left The Sun and became a freelance racing journalist, but as I had his contact details, we’d meet occasionally in Acton for a pint and a sandwich while we mulled over the events of the racing world. My own fault, I know – but it never occurred to me to ask how Noshtalgia was going; other work was occupying my mind, and then I left The Sun to go, at the invitation of great editor Richard Stott, to The Mirror to be part of a general illustration team and, since I hated the whole Wapping thing, I jumped at it. Our meetings became less and less frequent, and time passed. One day I happened to be in South Kensington, so I popped down to Noshtalgia, only to discover an empty space, and no sign that a little sandwich shop had ever existed there. I phoned his home number, which was now registering unobtainable, and letters to his home address came back unopened and
marked ‘gone away’. A mutual friend then told me he’d died, aged 80, and - thanks to a portfolio of West London property that none of us knew about - leaving £6,000,000 plus. I asked if there’d been any mention in the Will of a dozen original cartoons, but can only assume they went into the flames with him. Even Punch tried to get in on the ‘borrowing’ act towards the end of its life, under the grisly ownership of ‘Chairman Mo’ Fayed. He’d decided that as they weren’t using all the cartoons they’d bought, he would hang on to future submissions and not paying for them until such time as he decided to print them - sometime around the 12th of Never it was reckoned. Noel Ford successfully spiked his guns on that one, by suggesting that we borrow stock from Harrods, only paying for it when we decided to use it. The suggestion, I believe, was met without humour. In the days of non-digital art, Process Department was where artwork was often last seen before being carted off by total strangers purporting to act on behalf of the artist. I lost so much original caricature work that I would haunt Process the day after publication, ready to snatch up any work that bore my imprint. At one stage I was warned that preventing people taking my artwork might be seen as serious breach of the good relationship between the Unions and Management. At least one man I knew on the Sports Desk of a well-known red-top, had a gallery where he stored nicked cartoon originals by people he’d worked with, which he seriously regarded as a perk of the job. Obviously, it was all my fault for not bothering, or taking the time or trouble to follow the work through, and to collect it. As to lending my originals, I never do it anymore, and I am more than happy to be called a selfish old bastard. WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
LETTERS TO THE ED
Random acts of humour
Letters to the Editor Snail Mail: The Editor, Foghorn Magazine, 7 Birch Grove, Lostock Green, Northwich. CW9 7SS E-mail: billstott@lineone.net
“Sharon... Wayne... your three minutes are up!...”
Expenses Shocker Sir, In view of the recent revelations concerning MPs’ expenses I think that Foghorn would be well advised to publish in detail the facts and figures relating to claims made by Foghorn employees with regard to their expenses. Yours sincerely, F. Goodwin.[Sir] Soc. Chtd. Accs. & Spiv. (Editor’s note. In response to the above, Foghorn publishes herewith details of editorial staff expenses, 1/4/09 to 30/4/09) Mr Tim Harries. Four iced buns and a firkin of Old Heaver strong ale. One pkt Lakeland coloured pencils. Two erasers. One pkt paracetamol. Total, £23.42p Mr Roger Penwill. One Luvvachik Poultry set.
One [used] copy; “Understand Hens’ Bottoms” by Avril Broudie. Three iced buns and 27 cups of Horlicks Total, £32,976.27p. [nb On legal advice, Mr Penwill has already reimbursed PCO in full for the cost of the Horlicks] Mr Bill Stott. 42 iced buns, 6 Jumbo bottles of Tango and 3000 Marlboro lites, all of which were obtained via his free pensioners’ prescription arrangements. Just Kidding Dear Edz, Why don’t u have more kids stuff in your mazagine that we would think is funy? All the drowins that you have in it are four adults and that isen’t fair really and u r rude about Glossop were I live well in a village just outside. Lol. Yourz
Emily Cramp [aged 9]
The Gallery
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FEATURE GUIDE TO POLITICS
Like Swine Fever, politics happen all over the world. It’s a really, really complicated subject, so the Foghorn Guide will focus on UK politics only. Other countries like America, Italy and France have politics too, but their politics are different. American politics involves a lot of whooping. Italian politics are controlled by people who are in prison or who should be in prison, and French politics are dominated by midgets and models. In the UK there are lots of different political parties. These are not parties in the true sense of the word. i.e., all the blokes in the kitchen, but groups of people who all dislike the same people. The British National Party is the one which hates most people. The BNP hates anybody who is not white and anybody who likes anybody who is not white. Most BNP members are thick, except their leader, Mick Gribbin who is quite bright but insane. The Conservatives are quite a big party in the UK and they would like to be the boss party. They were once, when
Artist of the Month for May 2009 was Ken Pyne, a prolific gag, strip cartoonist and caricaturist. Ken has won a string of awards for his work including Cartoonist of the Year in 1981, Strip Cartoonist of the Year in 2001 and Caricaturist of the Year in 2006. He has exhibited work at the Cartoonists’ Gallery, London, the Barbican Centre and Burgh house in Hampstead. His work is also held in the permanent collections at the V&A Museum, the Cartoon Art Trust and Salon du Presse et d’Humour, Switzerland. When asked, he offered Bloghorn some trade secrets; “How do I make my cartoons? Apart from out of glue, scissors and old plastic cartons? I wait to be asked, think up jokes and draw them.”
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they were led by a lady who had stiff hair and scary eyes. Lots of Conservatives are toffs, except Boris Johnson who is a loony. Unfortunately, their present leader is an ex-toff with very smooth skin and a bike. The other big UK party is now called New Labour, a title invented by its last leader, Saint Tony of Blair. It used to be called “Labour” and looked after workers, encouraged strikes and kept whippets. New Labour’s present leader has quite a baggy face and a completely useless team of advisers who think Ghurkas are some sort of fireiron. We have another political party in the UK called the LibDems. They are much nicer than the Conservatives or New Labour and would like to be your friend. Sadly, their leader is only fourteen. On the other hand, the cleverest chap in the world, Vince Cable, is a LibDem person, but is hampered by being called Vince. For more in-depth analysis of UK politics, why not write to our esteemed Patron, Andrew Marr, who knows even more about it than we do.
“Henderson, sell my mother.”
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FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN
Steve and Posy’s Excellent Adventure Chris Madden observes and reports from Kings Place. Kings Place is an ultramodern building just to the east of King’s Cross Station. It’s so modern that some of its first tenants, the Guardian and Observer newspapers, don’t seem to have fully moved in yet. (By the way, for the benefit of any readers who get apoplectic about apostrophes and who are at this very moment getting agitated by a seeming inconsistency in the place names above: Kings Place is apostropheless while King’s Cross isn’t. I’ve checked – because I’m one of you). The Guardian and Observer are based in the offices in the upper part of the building. Downstairs is a huge “cultural space”. It was to this cultural space that I was heading, to see Steve Bell and Posy Simmonds (two cartoonists who are associated with the newspapers upstairs) talk to the art critic William Feaver about the art of cartooning. After spending half an hour wandering round the labyrinthine and signage-deficient bowels of the building I eventually found the hall in which the talk was to be conducted, and at which I learned some very interesting cartoon-related things. For instance, I’ve always been intrigued as to why Steve Bell – a very large man – draws his cartoons on so tiny a scale (He works more or less same size). It turns out that it’s because he’s left-handed. I wasn’t aware that left-handedness would affect drawing style in any way at all – unlike the way that it inevitably affects handwriting (after all, you don’t have to draw left to right the way that you do with writing) – but obviously it does. Due to the tiny scale of his drawing I’m seriously worried that as he enters whatever stage of middle age he comes to next, with its attendant decline in visual acuity, Steve’s going to find himself lumbered with serious problems seeing what he’s drawing (I speak from bitter personal experience, being almost his contemporary). Neither Steve Bell nor Posy Simmonds use a computer as a graphic tool in any WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
way whatsoever, for reasons that they didn’t get round to explaining. Posy doesn’t even possess one. She seems to be so talented as a draughtsperson that she can probably manage perfectly adequately without such a machine: instead she fills sketchbook after sketchbook with beautifully executed visual notes (When she draws real objects and real people for reference purposes she draws from memory rather than on the spot, having memorized the subject utilizing what must be an almost photographic memory). I hope that she donates the sketchbooks to the nation at some point. Posy spent her childhood in the vicinity of Cookham in Berkshire, where she used to occasionally see the town’s most famous resident, Stanley Spencer, wheeling his pram of artist’s equipment through the streets. One day Spencer gave Posy a Spangle in Cookham churchyard (For our younger readers, Spangles were a type of boiled sweet that I think doesn’t exist anymore, although I haven’t checked for forty years or so). Before you jump head first to the wrong conclusion over this incident, it was purely to get the noisy child to go away, as Mr Spencer had some important painting to do. Perhaps it was the important painting that is now housed in Tate Britain. While on the subject of the Tate galleries, at the beginning of the evening’s event William Feaver, the chair of the discussion, mentioned that just before they had come out for their talk Posy had related a joke of the utmost obscenity about the Tate Modern art gallery. Posy refused to relate it to the rest of us, unfortunately. I expect that it involved the chimney. Such jokes may seem strange coming from the lips of a person of such seeming refinement as Ms Simmonds – but remember that before she became a sophisticated Guardian cartoonist Posy was respon-
sible for the utterly un-Guardianish Bear cartoon in the Sun, featuring the exploits of an exceedingly lecherous ursid. (The morning after the event of which I write, while checking the traffic to my own website I noticed that someone had visited my site after typing in the search words “posy simmonds tate modern joke”. I bet he did it as soon as he got home, and I bet he was disappointed when his search of the net drew a blank – as did mine.)
There was one point about the event that caught my attention even before the participants actually arrived on the stage. It was the audience. Their average age seemed to be about 75. Either they were all doing a course in media studies at the University of the Third Age and had bought up all of the tickets en masse, or cartoons of the Bell/ Simmonds variety just aren’t cool any more with the youngsters. I first went to events featuring artists such as Bell and Posy about thirty years ago, and the audiences then were predominantly young and radical (or so we liked to think). Now such events only attract old people. What’s going on? THE FOGHORN 11
CURMUDGEON
Show me the money It may surprise readers to learn that Curmudgeon is usually written on the spur of a bad-tempered moment, one involving something entirely personal… “Hello, my name is Gavin. Could I speak to the householder please?” which tells me about all manner of grants to have my loft coated in latex, or some other far more general malaise shared by the majority of the population. Like Banks. It’s months now since we proles learned that bankers are in fact, bastards. No, you don’t say! I’m shocked! Nevertheless – get used to it – even
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as I type, the greedy little tics who stole our dough are being urged not to take their bonuses. URGED!? Here in Ordinary UK there’d’ve been an immediate Act of Parliament sequestering not just their bonuses, but all their clothes, posh pads, pets, teddies where applicable, cars AND jobs. Orange jump suits would have been issued and accommodation on a couple of Birkenhead estates I can think of made compulsorily available. Instead, BBC Moneybox tells us that these financial whiz-kids, were they to be taken outside and given lessons in earthickening, might flee and take their expertise somewhere else. Where, exactly? And yet, and yet… whilst the Great British Public [that one that reads the Daily Mail] seems quite prepared to use disgraced bankers in live drag hunting, its thirst for news of the rich and famous because
they’re rich and famous brigade dribbles on, unslaked. Chelsea F C will have a new manager by *now, having dumped Snr Scolari a while back. During that process, Chelsea supporters were interviewed and asked their various opinions. Some were recently out of work. They still had opinions but couldn’t afford the 40-odd quid per game any more. Watch it on the box, doan I? Not one had an opinion about the multi – million pound weekly wage bill “their” team demands. Are Chelsea reducing admission charges? No. If their greedy demands aren’t met, what will they do? They will clear right off, possibly to play footie in Dubai or Qatar or some other place rich in sporting tradition but mainly just rich. That is what they will do. Rather like the greedy bankers. Thinks; better check the loft. *Apparently, its somebody called Gus Humperdinck. *Who, by the time you read this will have departed to make way for Dinck Huspergump. WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
CARTOONS ALEX MATTHEWS
“Stiletto heels were a bad choice for so many reasons today.” “He’s not one of the greats, but he’s good for a cat.”
“Is everything ok with your meal?”
“Sadly, close to 90% of these archbishops will be picked off by predators before they ever reach the safety of the ocean.”
“Is it locally sourced?” WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG
“The operation was going extremely well, but then, very unexpectedly, he got trampled.” THE FOGHORN 13
BUILDINGS IN THE FOG
Bricks and blocks What makes a lot of buildings look like they are is bricks. They have been used quite a lot to enclose space and for quite some time. The oldest date back to 7500 BC in the Anatolia region of Turkey. Made of clay (apart from calcium silicate bricks which are made of something else), they need to be baked to make them hard and not susceptible to being washed away when it rains. The first bricks were sun-dried, like tomatoes but less tasty. The fired brick is baked in an oven or kiln, like bread but less tasty. Attempts to eat bricks immediately lead to the invention of cosmetic dentistry, which therefore would have been sometime before 2000 BC in the Middle East. Once baked, the exposed brick surfaces are pretty tough against the ravages of the weather. Having mastered stone construction and invented concrete, it had to be the clever-clogs Romans once again that got in on the act and used bricks, even having mobile kilns to fire them as they invaded. These mobile kilns allowed them to spread the use of bricks for building and battleground ordnance around their empire and have some great barbeques in the process. Bricks after that didn’t really change much for centuries but their use in battle diminished. Bricks were of little use to the Mafia, as brick overcoats lacked the simplicity and unskilled convenience of concrete ones. Compared to bigger things, bricks are small - developed to be the ideal size to hold in one hand whilst fiddling about with a trowel and dropping dollops of mortar off it in the other. A traditional English brick’s length is equal to twice it’s width plus a joint. An attempt was made in the 1970’s to change brick dimensions to metric. This was cleverly 14 THE FOGHORN
achieved in the brick industry by keeping the bricks the same size and measuring them in metric. No way were we going to change centuries of tradition for Johnny Foreigner. The long faces of a brick are the stretchers and the end faces the headers. With a traditional brick the indentation on the top face to provide a key for the mortar is the frog; I can’t think why. Bricks are usually laid frog side up. You don’t want upside down frogs. The smallness of bricks does mean that bricks can be used to create walls of endless variety. To make the wall work as a unit bricks are laid with staggered joints. The pattern which is created by this staggering is called the bond. These days, with the outer leaf of cavity walls just the width of a brick the bond is usually Stretcher Bond, that is is you see only the long side of the bricks. In older buildings where the walls are thicker the bricks where laid so that a mix of headers and stretchers appeared in the face of the wall. English Bond and Flemish Bond were the common bonds used. I don’t think the Welsh, Scottish or Irish ever had a bond. Strange that. Reasons on a postcard please. Brick absorbs and stores the heat of sun during the day and releases it at night. A
feature not often noticed in this country. So not only can brick enclose space it can heat it as well and it doesn’t have to be metered. Concrete blocks were invented as a cheap alternative to bricks used where they are going to be covered up in some way. Usually this means cavity walls, where blocks are used for all the internal parts of the wall. Normally blocks are much larger than bricks, usually the equivalent of 3 brick courses high and a couple of bricks in length. As a result they are much faster to lay. They usually weigh a lot less than bricks but can, if desired, be so heavy you really wouldn’t want to lift them. Not with your back. On site they’d sort the men from the Youth Opportunities. These days if an architect specified unnecessarily dense blocks, Health and Safety would be down on him like a ton of bricks.
Roger Penwill
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THE LAST WORD
The Critic Off! Off! Off!
Foghorn’s resident critic Pete Dredge watches telly so you don’t have to. The rain’s getting warmer so it must be summer already. Only a matter of weeks before the new footie season starts again, then! Time to remove the dustsheets from the BBC’s flagship Match of the Day set, re-master the intro theme and edit the posturing prima donna opening sequence bit. I’m not fifteen anymore so the prospect is not the mouth-watering one it once was. Now it’s more a case of pass the sick-bag as Lineker, Hansen and assorted pug-ugly pundits seek to further hone the necessary skills required in ‘stating the bleedin’ obvious’, aided by whatever new computer gizmo the BBC IT department have developed in the close season. Lineker, who started his post footie broadcasting career as wooden as the old Filbert Street main stand in front of which he first plied his trade as goal-poaching centre forward, did improve in the following years but
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seems to have relapsed into an, albeit much wealthier, grinning makeweight again. Awful, cringemaking punning intros and over-chumminess with his ex-pro pundit colleagues adds absolutely nothing to post-match analysis. Even 1970’s Mike Yarwood target, Jimmy Hill, brought some degree of serious, analytical know-how to the MoTD table but we did have to put up with the awful Bob Wilson (think
Alan Shearer but cuddlier and with personality). Lineker’s predecessor, the great Des Lynam, was, admittedly, a hard act to follow. But Des came from a journalistic background and could do ‘serious’ when the situation required. When the witty asides floated effortlessly from the housewives favourite’s moustache-framed mouth his delivery was deliberately light but with a hint of raffishness that suggested that his evenings work was far from done once the studio lights had been dimmed. So it’s time for a long overdue shake-up in the Match of the Day offices. Get rid of the old, tired, predictable ex-pro windbaggery of Lineker, Hansen, Stubbs, Lawrenson, Keown and their like.and bring in an anchor with fresh ideas, big hair, varnished nails, high heels and personality plus. Gaby Logan fits the bill for me, looks great and knows her stuff. I think Des would approve.
THE FOGHORN 15
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