It was Varnishing Day at the studio this week. Not in the Royal Academy sense, but rather slapping on varnish that warms and softens the cool points on a painting that took two years in the making. It’s my magnum opus: five foot by seven, oil on canvas, a pastiche with a narrative (albeit a rather uncharitable satirical one) on the events leading up to and beyond the EU referendum. Using motifs from Hieronymus Bosch, I cast Boris Johnson, facing away, gazing into distant lands beyond Europe. But still I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the image.
Some time later I happened to be behind Boris as we made our way into church for a memorial service. He suddenly presented me with a gift of exactly what was needed: his shirt tail hanging out at the back. As soon as I got home, I immediately painted it in. I already had the title of the project before work began: Mustn’t Grumble.
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A friend thought it would be a good idea to bring along a colleague of hers who happened to be a Ukip MEP to the studio to see the painting. He took his time trying to identify the various characters then reprimanded me for not including Nigel Farage. I had many reasons for excluding him, partly because he’s too much of a one-man show. In fact, I’ve never really seen him as a politician at all, in the strict sense.
More importantly to me, I’ve actually never drawn him at all, ever, and it’s now developed into such an unaccountable superstition that I’ve turned down commissions involving Farage. If I drew him I know something awful would be bound to happen …
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To the Chelsea Arts Club for a quarter-final game in the annual snooker tournament for the Vyvyan Holland Trophy (though why the son of Oscar Wilde donated this silverware is a mystery). The full-size table has been dominating the bar area, known as the Billiards Room, since anyone can remember. When I first joined they had two tables until one gave way for more seating.
It was a close enough game but I lost. Was I gutted, to borrow the sporting parlance? Probably not as much as I should have been. It was pointed out that perhaps it was because I lacked the competitive edge necessary to achieve victory. A consequence of working in isolation?
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When I am introduced to new people, I always risk being labelled “the cartoonist”. I can see them thinking that they had imagined me to be much older (or perhaps dead). When asked, I usually reply grumpily that actually I don’t do jokes because, luckily, I’m blessed with having no sense of humour.
I was a cartoonist for a couple of years at the Sunday Telegraph. This involved inventing topical jokes meshed with the ability to draw. I would begin by scouring the press midweek to have at least four rough ideas to present to the editor by Friday. It’s was one of the few jobs you could be working away at by lying in bed. It was especially satisfying when one could intertwine two newsworthy items in a single image – which is when cartoonists really nail it.
Somehow, though, the editor seemed to choose what I considered the least effective of my ideas. The better roughs, in my opinion, went unpublished. I kept most sketches from that period. Looking at them again recently, I realised that I had an instant readymade book, complete with title, “Roughs and Readies: the Blair-Brown Years”.
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Ray Galton’s death the other day reminded me of sitting next to his writing partner, Alan Simpson, at a British Cartoonists’ Association dinner in the City a few years ago. He seemed introspective and a bit morose, which is fairly typical of a working humorist. I did manage to raise a grin out of him when I asked in a deliberately flat, disinterested tone where he got all his ideas from. What was somehow unforgettable was his purely Hancockian remark, tinged in wounded disappointment at being faced with the pea soup: “I knew it would be that colour …”
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One great humorist I knew, the actor Dudley Sutton (who played Tinker in Lovejoy), died recently. His coffin was borne from Chelsea Old Church perched on the back of a 1967 Oldsmobile Rocket 98 led by a New Orleans jazz band, flanked by bikers on Harleys, causing traffic chaos across the Royal Borough.
We went to the Chelsea Arts Club for his wake. There was Dudley on trestles next to the band, his coffin emblazoned with a “Save the NHS” banner. The place was heaving and there was much drink and laughter. Just about every member was in attendance. One thing struck me: I noticed that the funeral directors had a Royal Warrant. Dudley, of course, was a devoted socialist. Death, once again, was the Great Leveller.
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