ISSUE 409 – MAY 2008 TheThe Jester Jester CANDID PHOTO SPECIAL! SHREWSBURY PIX, PIX, PIX AND MORE PIX AGM REPORT AND PHOTOS LOUVIERS FESTIVAL REPORT “HEADCASES” DID MY HEAD IN! QANDA EVENTS DIARY GOES FAR AND WIDE TheNewsletter Newsletter of of the the Cartoonists’ Cartoonists’ Club Club of Greatof Great Britain Britain THE JESTER ISSUE 409 – MAY 2008 CCGB ONLINE: WWW.CCGB.ORG.UK The Jester Issue 409 - May 2008 Published 11 times a year The Chair by The Cartoonists! Club of Great Britain The CCGB Committee Dear Members, Chairman: Terry Christien 020-8892 3621 It!s all about the AGM! What a took the opportunity to do the tour- [email protected] cracking afternoon and evening isty sightseeing bit on the way in - thanks to all you lovely Club Secretary: Jed Stone a proper first for me - Paris in the member people. It was great to springtime an! all that! Simon Elli- 01173 169 277 see you. nas, John Landers, Guy Carter [email protected] For those of you not able to make and myself drew our proverbial Treasurer: Anne Boyd it, don!t beat yourselves up, we were socks off but the work was pleas- 01173 169 277 able to take in your food and wine antly offset by many a repas et vin. [email protected] comfortably - well somebody!s got The cartoon image is so much to etc...etc... Membership Secretary: more prevalent in France than it is And thank you big Bill Stott for your here. Why should that be? No won- Jed Pascoe: 01767-682 882 cartoon stand-up - it went down very der it feels like a constant uphill [email protected] well, we knew it would! Thank you struggle! Simon files a report in this too to Mike T and Neil Dish for the issue. Clive Collins: 01702-557 205 raffle and Jed P for the longest quiz And lastly, Three Decades of Car- in the world! [email protected] tooning by the late Dave Follows - When I was wandering down the a wonderfully contemporary and well Neil Dishington: 020-8505 0134 Chairman!s memory lane of the observed look at life at The Potteries [email protected] Club!s social events in recent years, Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on- Ian Ellery: 01424-718 209 I clean forgot to lead us through the Trent 19th April - 29th June 2008. A [email protected] traditional verse of "Happy Birthday! bunch of us are getting together in Graham Fowell: 0115-933 4186 ...to who? The Cartoonists Club of Stoke on Saturday the 17th May course - 48 years on that AGM [email protected] following a visit to the Gallery. Those Tuesday - no mean feat - Happy wishing to attend please contact Pete Jacob: 01732 845 079 Birthday CCGB so nearly half a [email protected] to RSVP. Jill Kearney: 0115-933 4186 century! [email protected] And back to thanking mode, I would Until soon. Cheers! Helen Pointer: 01883-373 202 on behalf of The Club like to express sincere thanks to the voluntary ef- [email protected] forts of our committee and note the Terry Christien Roy Nixon: 01245-256 814 extra special efforts from the offi- Richard Tomes: 0121-706 7652 cers; Secretary Jed Stone; Treas- [email protected] urer Anne Boyd and Membership Mike Turner: 01206-798 283 Secretary Jed Pascoe...and though [email protected] not an officer, recognition and thanks to Ian Ellery for all his work Steve Bright: 079 5270 3845 on the Club website without which [email protected] we would not be part of this mad Pete Dredge: 0115 981 0984 world! mobile: 0788 421 1322 Les Barton (get well mate), Derek [email protected] Quint and Jock and Trish Davies have stepped to one side and made Noel Ford: 01974 831468 room for Tim Harries, Pete Dredge, [email protected] Steve Bright and Noel Ford - so Tim Harries: 01633 780293 welcome to them. [email protected] At the time of writing this, a number of us are powdering our noses ready for the Shrewsbury International Jester Editor: Steve Willis Cartoon Festival bash - no doubt 01235 833 414 reported a plenty here. It!s all go - [email protected] four of us have just returned from a Front Cover: Qanda cartoon festival in France - a lovely Back Cover: Feathers little town south west of Paris. We 2 THE JESTER ISSUE 409 – MAY 2008 CCGB ONLINE: WWW.CCGB.ORG.UK tures as well as sketchbooks, on Friday May 2nd from 6.30pm NEWS journals and other material and any club members wishing to never previously exhibited. A attend should contact Alex on 020 fully illustrated catalogue is 8668 1134. Pont exhibition available. The Cartoon Museum is near Cartoonists @ What does it mean to be British? the British Museum. Open This exhibition which opens at Tuesday to Saturday, 10.30 – Chris Beetles the Cartoon Museum on St 17.30, Sunday 12.00 – 17.30. George!s Day celebrates the Admission £4/£3, Free to Under CCGB members Andy Davey work of a very British cartoonist 18s and students. and Royston Robertson are - Graham Laidler, "Pont! (1908- among those whose work can 1940), who died at the early age Exhibition in be seen in the Cartoonists 2008 of 32 but left a rich legacy of show, currently running at the witty observations on British life Brighton Chris Beetles Gallery in London. of the 1930s. Pont was most It is the gallery!s second an- famous for drawing The British nual show devoted to the art of Character – a series of over 100 The retrospective exhibition of British cartooning, following on cartoons which appeared in cartoons "From the Croydon Ad- from its successful You Havin! a Punch lampooning the British at vertiser to The New Yorker" by Laugh? exhibition last year. home and abroad. Alex Noel Watson which ran very You!ll have to be quick though. Some of Pont!s cartoons show successfully for six weeks last The show, which runs until May how much Britain has changed Summer at the Croydon Clock- 3, also features such names as but others reveal "tendencies! tower Gallery, will be on show for Matt, Mac, Ronald Searle and which are as true now as when three weeks as part of the Fringe Tony Husband. Original artwork Pont drew them seventy years of the Brighton Festival from Sat- is on sale, at prices ranging from ago. urday May 3rd 2008. £50 to £5,000. Many of his drawings were The cartoon originals and prints The gallery, at 8 & 10 Ryder packed with tiny jokes in every are drawn from 70 publications in Street, St James!s, London, is corner and readers pored over several countries that have used open from 10am-5.30pm, Mon- them at length. One group even Alex's work over a period of 40 day to Saturday. Tel 020-7839 formed a "Pont Club! and met years. The exhibition is being held 7551. Or visit the website at weekly to discuss his cartoons. in the Gallery of the Dorset Gar- www.chrisbeetles.com Pont was also a master of the dens Methodist Church, just off pocket cartoon, revealing comic the seafront and close to Brighton glimpses of daily life we still rec- Pier. There will be a private view Below: Cartoonists at The Chris ognise today. Though he died Beetles Gallery nearly seventy years ago his contemporary admirers include Ronald Searle, Peter Brookes, John Jensen, Nick Garland, Ian Hislop, Richard Ingrams, Nick Newman and Posy Simmonds. Graham Laidler was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in July 1908 and trained as an architect. He contracted TB at the age of twenty four and spent most of the rest of his life living in Swit- zerland and Austria. His first cartoon appeared in Punch in 1932 and he produced nearly 500 more over the next nine years. He died suddenly of po- liomyelitis on 23rd November 1940. The exhibition includes some of his most famous pic- 3 THE JESTER ISSUE 409 – MAY 2008 CCGB ONLINE: WWW.CCGB.ORG.UK On the web... Without the CCGB forum, we I draw entirely on a tablet PC, start, and if the finished illustra- wouldn!t have had these two partly because I moved onto a tion then can further make the discussions below. narrowboat and needed to have writer laugh, you!re almost home my entire studio in the smallest and dry – just the simple matter First Nigel Sutherland asked: space possible, and partly be- of pleasing your audience after Computers in Cartooning - For cause I love gadgets. I moved that. or Against? off the boat recently but I am so Steve Bright attached to the tablet I couldn't I have the impression that there imagine creating my cartoons I probably wouldn't frequent the is a huge body of feeling against any other way. pages of Viz if I didn't collabo- computers in our business, rate with writer Barney Farmer. mainly by people who have little Spencer Hill Cartoonists are 2-a-penny for understanding of their worth, mags like Viz. It's all about the and usually the same people At this point it seems only fair script. who, ironically, then ask where to point out that if you ask Lee Healey all the work has disappeared to. such a question on a website forum, the balance of com- A funny thing happened on the Nigel Sutherland ments is extremely likely to be way to the AGM....really! I heavily “For”.