Gerald Scarfe

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

Presenter0:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a cartoonist. His grotesque characterizations of the world's most public figures have been a feature of our newspapers and magazines for more than twenty five years. His style is too distort. The people he draws bulge and sag, form brutal shapes or turn themselves into monstrous objects. But from President Nixon to Mikhail Gorbachev, the characters, like their creator, are always recognizable.

Presenter0:55

In recent years his talent for the eye catching image has taken him into other fields, like set design, animation, and film making. He is Gerald Scarfe.

Presenter1:04

Gerald, do you find that people um expect you to be rather like your cartoons, that's to say, gnarled, distorted, and rather sinister?

Gerald Scarfe1:12

They do, yes, and I am in some ways, I think.

Gerald Scarfe1:15

Little bit gnarled. Inside. I'm gnarled inside. I

Presenter1:16

Inside

Gerald Scarfe1:19

Find uh

Gerald Scarfe1:20

things disturbing, and my drawings really depict

Gerald Scarfe1:24

What I find disturbing.

Presenter1:25

And are there always things political that you find disturbing?

Gerald Scarfe1:29

No, I think those are mainly the drawings that are seen by the public, because they have to be recognisable caricatures in newspapers, and they have to deal with known characters. They're usually about people in power, people who have power over us and are ordering our lives for us.

Presenter1:43

But we should explain how your having admitted to being gnarled, at least inside, that outwardly you are tall, dark and handsome, I think. Is that I mean, that's how people see you, isn't it?

Gerald Scarfe1:52

I've not

Presenter1:55

So do you have a terrible temper?

Gerald Scarfe1:57

I have a temper when I'm working, yes. It erupts when I'm doing a drawing and the drawing won't behave or come out the way I want it to. But I don't have a temper in public. I don't rant and rave in restaurants, as people expect artists to do. I think they're a bit disappointed that I don't stand on the table and shout at everybody.

Presenter2:14

But are people constantly amazed when you're introduced to them when you're out socially and people say this is Gerald Scarf? They say, Good heavens, I didn't expect you to look like that

Gerald Scarfe2:23

They do, yes, they frequently say that and uh

Gerald Scarfe2:26

I feel as though I've failed somehow and I feel as though I should dress more like an artist and behave more like an artist.

Presenter2:31

Well now, how do you view the prospect of this sojourn on a desert island?

Gerald Scarfe2:36

Well, I'm I'm used to solitude because my childhood was solitude. Um

Gerald Scarfe2:42

But on the other hand, I'm not very good at sitting still. I I'm a continual traveller.

Gerald Scarfe2:46

I don't really like going on holiday very much because I've got no patience when I'm there.

Gerald Scarfe2:51

And I'm sure I would try and escape.

Gerald Scarfe2:53

From the island.

Gerald Scarfe2:54

I don't like anywhere I am.

Presenter2:57

How would you try and escape?

Gerald Scarfe2:58

I'd try and build some sort of craft.

Gerald Scarfe3:01

I like building things, I like making things with my hands, and I try and build something out of bits and pieces on the island.

Presenter3:07

Well now what's the first of the records that you'd like to have with you?

Gerald Scarfe3:10

Well, it's a record by the Ink Spots, and uh this reminds me of my uncle. I used to spend my childhood holidays in Twyford in Berkshire, which is near Sonning and Henley, in that area.

Gerald Scarfe3:22

And my memories of my uncle he was the youngest uncle were that he was slightly irresponsible he drove an open top riley, and uh too fast through the lanes of Henley.

Gerald Scarfe3:32

And this bless you for being an angel reminds me very much of him.

Speaker 23:36

Bless you.

Speaker 23:39

Or being an angel.

Speaker 23:45

Just when it seemed that heaven was not for me.

Speaker 23:55

Bless you.

Presenter3:56

Yes, yes.

Speaker 23:58

Uh

Presenter3:58

Bless you for being an angel by the ink spots.

Presenter4:05

Could you draw Gerald from the moment you picked up a pencil?

Gerald Scarfe4:09

Apparently, yes. Uh it was the one thing I could do, and because I was bedridden with asthma.

Gerald Scarfe4:16

Apart from reading, there wasn't much else to do anyway. I didn't have a lot of friends, because children don't like to play with sick children, they want to be out and about kicking footballs around.

Gerald Scarfe4:25

And so I think uh drawing was my way of expressing myself.

Presenter4:28

What did you draw then as a child?

Gerald Scarfe4:31

I was very impressed by Walt Disney and I used to copy Disney.

Gerald Scarfe4:35

But I remember a teacher saying, when I did eventually go to school, What's the matter with you, Scarf? Why do you always draw disasters? And I was always drawing volcanoes erupting, mines collapsing, and ships going down at sea.

Gerald Scarfe4:46

Natives uprising, they were all disasters. And I think they were just things that I was worried about, frightened about.

Presenter4:53

Do people still say to you, Why don't you draw something nice?

Gerald Scarfe4:57

They do. Well, my mother used to say that a lot to me. Uh but uh and I do always at the end of every exhibition put a

Gerald Scarfe5:05

little drawing of some flowers or something for my mother, although the rest of the exhibition is pretty grotesque.

Speaker 15:08

To the exhibition

Gerald Scarfe5:10

It has been pointed out that they are usually poppies which are go with go with the dead.

Presenter5:14

So even as a child there was this rather disastrous trip in the middle of the morning.

Gerald Scarfe5:17

I didn't really think it was my way of protecting myself from the world. And you asked, do I still do it now? And I do. I still.

Gerald Scarfe5:25

Yeah.

Gerald Scarfe5:25

I think people misunderstand wh uh

Gerald Scarfe5:28

When they see my drawings, they feel that I'm advocating violence and misery. I'm not. I'm crying out against it. I want it to stop. I've had enough of it.

Presenter5:37

So you're exorcising it.

Gerald Scarfe5:38

I'm exercising it, yeah.

Presenter5:40

I read that you you once won a um an art competition run by the Eagle Comic, is that right?

Gerald Scarfe5:45

That's right, yes.

Presenter5:46

And that a consolation prize and hearty congratulations went to one David Hockney of Bradford.

Gerald Scarfe5:52

That's right, yes, yes.

Presenter5:54

Yeah.

Gerald Scarfe5:54

Davis was one of the runners-up.

Gerald Scarfe5:57

Since then I've been the runner-up, I think.

Presenter5:57

And so I

Presenter5:58

Have you? What to hope me?

Gerald Scarfe6:00

I think so, yes. Well, I mean, certainly he uh has tremendous success and I like his work very much.

Presenter6:05

You've not been lacking in success yourself, it has to be said.

Gerald Scarfe6:07

No, I haven't. I've been very lucky. It's a dodgy business being an artist, and uh I've been very lucky.

Presenter6:13

Let's have your second record.

Gerald Scarfe6:15

My father and mother sent me frequently to France.

Gerald Scarfe6:20

where there was a spa called La Beau Boule in Auvergne, and there I was treated for

Gerald Scarfe6:26

For my asthma.

Gerald Scarfe6:27

And this record by Charles Trenet, La Maire always always reminds me of France.

Gerald Scarfe6:33

La Main

Gerald Scarfe6:37

Uh

Presenter6:37

On va docism.

Presenter6:39

Leonard.

Presenter6:40

Recall the

Speaker 26:41

Maybe

Speaker 26:44

Ardi was late, Davison.

Speaker 26:47

La Me

Speaker 26:50

They were finished all around.

Speaker 16:52

God please

Speaker 16:57

La May

Speaker 26:57

Uh

Presenter7:00

Charles Trunet, singing La Mer. Can we talk then, Gerald, uh about your illness and how it affected your life? You were a a chronic asthmatic.

Presenter7:10

But how bad does that mean you were? What was it like?

Gerald Scarfe7:12

Well, it means that I was pretty crippled with it. I was a hunchback and I spent

Gerald Scarfe7:18

perhaps a week in bed and then I'd be up for a few days and I'd collapse again

Gerald Scarfe7:23

with more asthma, and at the time I was growing up there weren't the sophisticated drugs that there are now.

Gerald Scarfe7:29

And uh so I was continually in bed and I spent a lot of time in hospital as well. I remember being in lots of adult wards rather than children's wards and seeing some horrific things there.

Presenter7:39

Must have been very frightening.

Gerald Scarfe7:41

It was very frightening, yes. Although, of course, children accept anything. I it to me it was just my life. Only by comparison with other children could I see that I was different.

Gerald Scarfe7:50

It didn't worry me hour by hour. As soon as I was better I was up and running around with the best of them again.

Presenter7:55

But you weren't allowed to do much sport, were you?

Gerald Scarfe7:57

I wasn't really allowed to do sport, no. My mother f for instance thought that if I went swimming I would catch a cold and that the cold would lead on to asthma, which the colds did.

Gerald Scarfe8:07

Um but of course I think it'd probably have been a good idea if would have developed my chest and

Gerald Scarfe8:13

Been absolutely perfect for me.

Presenter8:15

People believe that you should really stay in bed and let an attack pass or

Gerald Scarfe8:20

That's right.

Presenter8:21

Look after yourself, keep yourself warm.

Gerald Scarfe8:22

That's right.

Presenter8:23

Don't do anything.

Presenter8:26

But how were you treated? What kind of cures were attempted on you?

Gerald Scarfe8:30

Well, my poor parents tried everything. We tried all obviously all the the normal things, but I was, um

Gerald Scarfe8:35

rabbit punched on the neck by some

Gerald Scarfe8:38

chap in South Kensington, I remember. I uh

Gerald Scarfe8:41

I was douched in France with this arsenic water, and bathed in it, drank it, did everything possible with water. None of it did any good. Another man thought that I wasn't swallowing properly, and gave me a plate.

Gerald Scarfe8:52

to wear which so I had to swallow properly, and so forth.

Presenter8:55

And all of this was pointless, all of it was useless.

Gerald Scarfe8:58

It did none of it seemed to do any good, no.

Presenter9:00

There was another man, wasn't there, who made you run up and down stairs in the middle of an asthma attack.

Gerald Scarfe9:04

Yes, there was a doctor in Harley Street who uh

Gerald Scarfe9:07

said to my father, If he when he has the next attack, bring him here and my father rang up and said, I can't possibly do that. He's incapacitated, he can't move, he can hardly sit up in bed, let alone come there He said, Put him in a taxi and bring him here.

Gerald Scarfe9:19

So my father did that, carried me to the taxi, and took me to Harley Street.

Gerald Scarfe9:23

and when I arrived there the doctor had moved his consulting room from the ground floor to the top floor on purpose, so I had to walk all these stairs, up all these stairs in Harley Street.

Gerald Scarfe9:33

And uh when I got to the top I was absolutely at at death's door, I felt.

Gerald Scarfe9:37

and he said lie down on the couch and breathe carefully, and he just placed his fingers on my chest.

Gerald Scarfe9:45

and it was like magic within about three minutes. I was perfectly normal. So it's also a very psychological disease. I don't know what he did. I've never been able to work that out. But I was one moment at death's door and the next moment I was walking around. I walked out of the s the Harley Street doctor with perfect health.

Presenter10:03

So do you believe that a lot of it is in the mine?

Gerald Scarfe10:05

Yeah, it is. But it's very difficult to uh to combat that, to trick yourself into uh

Gerald Scarfe10:11

To to putting it right.

Presenter10:12

So what happened? Did it suddenly, miraculously, one day stop?

Gerald Scarfe10:16

It stopped, I suppose, when I began to get more independent. I left home at the age of about nineteen, and uh then fending for myself, it seemed to necessitate me being better a lot of the time. Although I still get it now, of course.

Presenter10:32

Doom?

Gerald Scarfe10:33

But very mildly. And there are some wonderful drugs these days.

Presenter10:36

But do you get it on specific occasions? Is it linked to any kind of anxiety or desire to have it?

Gerald Scarfe10:40

It could happen when there's anxiety or it it may not. It it that I cannot work it out. It's mysterious.

Presenter10:47

Another record, please.

Gerald Scarfe10:49

Right, well because of my my continuing asthma I was desperate to find humour anywhere, anything funny, and I used to listen to all the old programmes, It Itmar and uh Take It From Here and so forth. And so I've chosen uh a piece by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, um both of whom I admire, just because it makes me laugh.

Speaker 111:09

The thing what makes you know that Vernon Ward is a good painter, if you look at his ducks, have you ever looked at his ducks? Yeah. If you look at his ducks, you see the eyes follow you round the room. Do you notice that? If you see 16 of his ducks, you see 32 little eyes following you around the room. No, you only see 16 because they're flying sideways and you can't see the other eye on the other side. But you get the impression, Dad, that the other eye is craning round the beat to look at you, don't you?

Speaker 211:19

Yeah.

Speaker 211:24

They're following me around.

Speaker 211:30

Now it's time.

Speaker 111:36

That's a sign of a good painting, Dad. If the eyes follow you round the room, it's a good painting. If they don't, it isn't.

Presenter11:42

The art gallery sketched from the album not only Pete Cook but also Dudley Moore.

Presenter11:47

I presume, then, um, Gerald, that your parents thought you would be a a a semi invalid all your life?

Gerald Scarfe11:53

Yes, they did. Yes, they thought I'd be reliant on them all all my life.

Presenter11:56

and not follow your father into banking, which um they would consider a proper job and and would like you to have done.

Gerald Scarfe12:03

Yes, yes. They certainly wanted me to do something reasonable. I've uh they were quite happy for me to be an artist, um, and to do it in the evenings and at weekends, but not to try and make a living out of it. And I of course they're right, because

Gerald Scarfe12:15

It is a very difficult way of life.

Presenter12:17

How early on then did you start drawing cartoons and jokey sketches?

Gerald Scarfe12:23

I think that that's something I always did as well. I always tried to put the humour, the the humour that I love so much, into the drawings. I eventually started sending cartoons to the papers. To punish

Presenter12:33

But first of all.

Gerald Scarfe12:34

The punch first of all, yes, and they accepted it and gave me seven guineas for it, which was like a fortune in those days, and I thought this is the life for me, and I just showered them with drawings.

Presenter12:42

They were topical cartoons of the time.

Gerald Scarfe12:45

No, I'm afraid that the cartoons of that period were all about mother-in-laws behind the door with rolling pins and, dare I say it, desert islands. And.

Gerald Scarfe12:54

I grew fed of fed up with those after a while.

Gerald Scarfe12:57

and uh felt that I ought to move on to other things and I discovered that I could make social comment through my drawings and that was really the breakthrough for me.

Presenter13:05

And was that when when you found Private Eye or Private Eye found you?

Gerald Scarfe13:09

Yes, Private Eye came along, and it was perfect for me, really, because I could do what I wanted to there. I could draw anything I wanted to. I could draw nipples and pubic hair if I I didn't know that I wanted to, but I could if I wanted to.

Gerald Scarfe13:22

And they encouraged me in that direction, and I was able to.

Gerald Scarfe13:28

Make the first political drawings, too.

Presenter13:30

And was it private I who encouraged you to be really vicious politically?

Gerald Scarfe13:35

No, I think that came out naturally. They didn't really tell me how to draw.

Gerald Scarfe13:39

They just said we want to have a drawing of Harold Wilson on the front cover this week.

Gerald Scarfe13:44

looking at the Denning Report or something and then I was I would go on from there.

Presenter13:48

And did you feel at that stage and this would have been what the early sixties?

Gerald Scarfe13:52

Yeah.

Presenter13:53

Did did you feel when you met Richard Ingrams and Peter Cook and Auberon Waugh and all of that company, did you feel that you had arrived at where you rightfully belonged, as it were?

Gerald Scarfe14:03

Yes, I did. For the first time I felt uh although I didn't know them particularly well, I didn't I'd come from a different area. They were all very much establishment figures. I mean they'd had an established public school upbringing, which I didn't have.

Gerald Scarfe14:15

But I still felt a kind of kinship with them because we were all

Gerald Scarfe14:19

doing the same thing.

Presenter14:22

Let's pause for some more music.

Gerald Scarfe14:24

Kate, my daughter, is now fourteen, and I've always wanted

Gerald Scarfe14:28

ever since she was a tiny child to listen to her playing the piano, and that she does frequently now. She's now taking her Grade Six exam, and um this Chopin nocturne reminds me of her as it fleds through the house usually.

Presenter15:43

Chopin knocked her number two in E-flat, opus nine, number two, played by Claudio Arrow.

Presenter15:50

Gerald, you have something else to thank Private Eye for, I think. Um it was actually through them that you met your wife, Jane Asher, wasn't it?

Gerald Scarfe15:56

Yes, it was one of their anniversaries and we all went down on the Brighton Bell.

Gerald Scarfe16:01

To uh

Gerald Scarfe16:02

Spend the day in Brighton.

Gerald Scarfe16:04

And uh I met Jane on the train.

Presenter16:06

Well, now you have three children, um, one of whom plays the piano, uh and you live in a a lovely house I know on the on the Thames embankment. Would you say you're an easy chap to live with, or do you have deep, dark moods when you need to be alone at your drawing board?

Gerald Scarfe16:21

I do, yes, I have deep dark moods uh when I'm about to work and sometimes I think it's only the work that can release those moods. Once I've worked a bit I feel

Gerald Scarfe16:32

uh released and um

Gerald Scarfe16:35

So I'm probably not very easy to live with, but I don't think I'm all that difficult.

Presenter16:40

And is Jane critical of your work? Do you show it to her before you send it in to whoever's commissioned it or?

Gerald Scarfe16:45

Well, I always say that Jane is my man in the street because, poor girl, yeah, she has to be shown absolutely everything and react to it. Um, of course she's not really a man in the street, she's got quite sophisticated tastes now and knows what I'm after, but

Gerald Scarfe16:58

Um she can she can say whether it looks like the person, she can say whether this image I want to is coming across. So yes, I show her everything.

Presenter17:06

And does she ever say, No, Gerald, you can't do that that really is just too cruel?

Gerald Scarfe17:13

No, she doesn't. There have been one or two occasions. I can think of one one drawing I did of women's lib that she didn't like.

Presenter17:20

But she would never say to you, You really can't let that out of the house.

Gerald Scarfe17:23

Oh no, she'd never stop me, uh, drawing anything. That would be be awful.

Presenter17:28

Well, now your room there is said to be piled high with drawings, because you're really rather loth to sell them, aren't you?

Gerald Scarfe17:34

Well, I'm not exactly loth to sell them. I do sell them now, but that's only happened this year. And Jane's been saying to me for years, you should s you know, the idea of being an artist is that you paint the

Gerald Scarfe17:44

paintings and then you sell them. You don't put them in a drawer.

Gerald Scarfe17:48

And she's right, because they're realizing quite good prices.

Gerald Scarfe17:51

But um it started when I joined the Daily Mail and the editor there.

Gerald Scarfe17:55

Said to me, Now you're on a public paper, you're going to get lots of requests for your drawings. Will you sell them or not? And I said,

Gerald Scarfe18:01

If I think they're good enough, I will, because.

Gerald Scarfe18:05

Cartoons are produced under tremendous pressure, like all press work, and sometimes one doesn't have time to finish the drawing, one doesn't have time to do it as well as one wanted to.

Gerald Scarfe18:14

And the idea of that hanging on someone's wall is is horrible. I don't I think anybody would want anything that they thought was their worst hanging on someone's wall. So I said to the the editor.

Gerald Scarfe18:23

I will if I think they're good enough and he said, No, you can't do that. You must either sell to all or to none because people won't understand it and I said okay, to none and that stuck for years.

Gerald Scarfe18:32

And also part of it was the embarrassment of mentioning the price, because I knew

Gerald Scarfe18:37

People had something like twenty five pounds in mind and I probably had five hundred pounds in mind.

Presenter18:42

However, um you say you've sold some, and I know that um at an auction quite recently uh one of misses Thatcher that you did um some six years ago, I think, as as the as the matron spooning out the bad medicine, sold for more than four thousand pounds, didn't it?

Gerald Scarfe18:57

Yes, mm, the the nanny, it was.

Presenter18:59

Daniel.

Presenter19:00

and and a rather inflated Nigel Lawson went for a similar price.

Gerald Scarfe19:04

Yes. That was called inflation. It's the picture of Nigel inflating.

Presenter19:08

Do you have, of all the ones you've done, do you have a favourite cartoon of your own?

Gerald Scarfe19:13

I don't know. In fact, once I've done them I want not to see them again.

Gerald Scarfe19:17

I don't usually have them hanging in the home, because it reminds me of what I've just done, and really I'm always have felt that time is short, partly because of my childhood, I'm sure. I feel as I'm behind in everything, and that there's so much to do, and I must get on, and anything that uh impedes my eye, like a drawing hanging on the wall.

Gerald Scarfe19:36

uh would make me think in the wrong direction.

Presenter19:39

Shall we have your fifth record?

Gerald Scarfe19:40

Well, I love Bach, and uh in my twenties I remember playing hour after hour his unaccompanied cello pieces.

Presenter19:47

Uh

Gerald Scarfe19:47

Uh

Speaker 220:10

Uh

Presenter20:47

Yo Yo Ma playing the prelude to Bach's Sweet for Unaccompanied Cello, number one in G major.

Presenter20:54

Can we talk now about your technique, your style, this exaggeration and and distortion of people's features? Is is that relatively easy to spot? Can you look at a public figure and think, I know how h how I could do him?

Gerald Scarfe21:06

Sometimes, yes, they automatically look like a rhinoceros or a a triangle or something, but um other times I have to work at it and uh do a number of drawings and each one getting more exaggerated than the last uh until I arrive at the right one. And I think I'm after simplicity and I'm after some kind of symbol that represents the person. Originally when I started I think because of my lack of art training, I tried to draw anatomically and that accounted for all the sort of warts and pimples that I used to put in the muscles and the teeth and the sinews.

Gerald Scarfe21:36

which added a certain grotesqueness to the drawing. But now I'm after simplicity and a distilling of the of the the creature that I'm drawing.

Presenter21:43

But you still quite like the um what one might describe as the the blood and guts, don't you?

Gerald Scarfe21:49

Yes, because we're all made of blood and guts. It somehow

Gerald Scarfe21:52

shows how fragile we all are.

Presenter21:55

You also um um I I think the technique is called transmogrification, isn't it? Actually turning people into things like Gorbachev into a hammer and sickle. Do you analyse that first? Do you think Gorbachev, oh yes, hammer and sickle, you know, is it as simple as that? Or is it something that grows from the end of your pencil?

Gerald Scarfe22:12

It's something that sometimes strikes me immediately. I generally draw misses Thatcher as a r a rather sharp implement, perhaps an axe or a a sword.

Gerald Scarfe22:21

And I might see Nigel Lawson as a spongy doughnut. They automatically suggest themselves as that. But I think draw transmogrification for me is a way of avoiding the boredom of the job because

Gerald Scarfe22:31

If you can imagine drawing misses Thatcher over and over and over again.

Presenter22:34

Which you have done.

Gerald Scarfe22:35

which I have done, it is incredibly boring, so I think just to please myself, try and turn her into a tank or.

Gerald Scarfe22:42

Into a

Gerald Scarfe22:44

An old boot.

Presenter22:46

You've turned Enoch Powell into a few things in your time too, haven't you?

Gerald Scarfe22:49

Yes.

Gerald Scarfe22:50

Well, he upset me when he was dealing with those racial issues back in the sixties, seventies, and I think that I turned him into a monster.

Gerald Scarfe22:59

Um

Presenter23:00

A monstrous union jack, I think you turned him into, didn't you?

Gerald Scarfe23:02

Yeah, this is one.

Gerald Scarfe23:03

British flag flying in Ulster.

Presenter23:06

I suppose um Macmillan as Christine Keeler was perhaps one of the most incisive and cruellest again, wasn't it?

Gerald Scarfe23:13

Well, that was yes, that was back in the sixti I think that's w when I really did begin to realize what I could do with my drawings and that caused a tremendous sort of interest and uh and set me off on on this path I've been on ever since.

Presenter23:26

So do you have to dislike the person to do it?

Gerald Scarfe23:30

No, not personally. I have to dislike what they stand for, really. And uh I'm sure if I met them

Gerald Scarfe23:37

At a party I wouldn't want to be unpleasant to them per personally.

Gerald Scarfe23:41

But they probably wanted to.

Presenter23:42

They probably want to be unpleasant to you.

Gerald Scarfe23:44

Well, I don't know. I don't know whether probably they would, yeah.

Presenter23:44

I don't know.

Presenter23:46

Have you ever come face to face with somebody of whom you have done a a really nasty job?

Gerald Scarfe23:52

Giustendis Healy came up to me once and said, My teeth aren't like that.

Gerald Scarfe23:55

And uh

Gerald Scarfe23:57

They were, of course.

Gerald Scarfe23:58

Exactly as I I saw them.

Presenter24:00

But you say you've got to dislike not necessarily the person, but what they stand for. At the same time, if you're working for a newspaper, there are certain stories that are in the news that you would have to do.

Presenter24:11

A cartoon about, probably, if you were doing your job, and you may not have a view on that particular.

Presenter24:17

Issue or person.

Gerald Scarfe24:20

I don't have to make a drawing of anything. The whole point of being an editorial cartoonist is you that you offer your point of view for the newspaper.

Gerald Scarfe24:27

And the most dangerous thing I think is that if you offer a point of view that is the newspaper's point of view, I think if it's a really good newspaper, they can afford to run

Gerald Scarfe24:36

An anti-party line.

Gerald Scarfe24:38

Cartoon alongside their leader which says exactly the opposite.

Presenter24:41

And you can maintain your journalistic integrity.

Gerald Scarfe24:45

Well, it's not so my integrity, not so much my journalistic integrity, it's just just I want to f I w wouldn't want a drawing that I didn't believe in to be printed. It's not possible. I wouldn't make that drawing. I couldn't make a drawing really that I didn't believe in.

Gerald Scarfe24:58

But I am to a certain extent a hired gun inasmuch as people can point me at.

Gerald Scarfe25:04

someone and say, We want you to do Nigel Lawson.

Gerald Scarfe25:08

and uh the budget's coming up or something like that.

Gerald Scarfe25:11

Give us your point of view.

Presenter25:13

Another record, please.

Gerald Scarfe25:15

Well, I spent a lot of my time in Wales growing up in Wales, and um I'd love to hear some of Dylan Thomas's Under Miltwood with Richard Burton.

Gerald Scarfe25:24

To begin

Speaker 225:25

Yeah.

Speaker 225:26

Yeah.

Gerald Scarfe25:26

Yeah.

Speaker 225:26

Uh At the beginning. Uh

Speaker 225:28

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and Bible black, the cobbled streets silent and hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black.

Speaker 225:41

Slow.

Speaker 225:42

Black

Speaker 225:43

Crow black fishing boat bobbing sea

Speaker 225:47

The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine to night in the snouting velvet dingles, or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the welfare hall in widows' weeds, and all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town.

Speaker 226:06

are sleeping now.

Presenter26:09

Richard Burton reciting the prologue to Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood, You do, of course, get it all on the island. I mean, that was just a snatch.

Presenter26:17

You worked, of course, Gerald, on the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times at different um the Sunday Times before under Harold Evans at different points in your career. They both tried sending you out to the front line, didn't they? To Vietnam, to Israel, to India. What happened?

Gerald Scarfe26:32

Well, I think that uh at that time my drawings were considered scurrilous and uncontrollable and I don't think they quite knew what to do with with me and uh Harry Evans hit upon the idea of uh sending me out to these far fung places. And I I went to f first of all I went for the Daily Mail to Vietnam and I think they probably thought

Gerald Scarfe26:50

a grotesque artist to a grotesque situation. And I found there for the first time that I was unable to draw what I found, because up until then I'd been drawing abstract ideas.

Gerald Scarfe27:00

um ideas from my own imagination.

Gerald Scarfe27:03

And Vietnam meant to me, um

Gerald Scarfe27:06

a map or some men jumping out of a helicopter on the T V News.

Gerald Scarfe27:11

And when I got there I found out it meant really women and children and caught up in a war that they didn't understand, but a very, very gentle people, the Vietnamese.

Gerald Scarfe27:20

And

Gerald Scarfe27:21

Also, uh even the American soldiers were young teenagers who'd been brought out of their colleges and sent to this unknown jungle, and I found it very, very confusing to on the at the ground level, because most of my cartoons stand back and judge it as an issue rather than

Gerald Scarfe27:39

From the point of view of the man in the street, shall we say, or the man on the ground. And while I was there, I I felt obliged to draw everything being an artist. I always feel that. And um

Gerald Scarfe27:52

I went to draw in the morgue at Tonsenut Airport in Saigon and I just couldn't cope with it because it never dis it had never struck me before that, um

Gerald Scarfe28:02

When men are shot in battle or blown up in battle, they're blown into bits and the morgue was full of bits and pieces, torsos without heads and legs and just bits of people there.

Gerald Scarfe28:12

And I'd always thought they fell over in one piece like John Wayne in a movie and were perfectly all right. But I found out very, very difficult and that was so close to the drawings I'd been making. Uh and I remember gripping my armpits and sweating like mad and I couldn't draw in there at all. But when I went to draw the chel cholera epidemic in

Gerald Scarfe28:31

in Calcutta.

Gerald Scarfe28:33

I I was amongst all these people dying in a hospital, and I thought this is a terrible invasion of privacy. And yet, the photographer that I'd gone with from the Sunday Times.

Gerald Scarfe28:43

was clicking away merrily with his Nikon, and I thought, of course, well, that's what I'm here to do, really. I'm to report the situation, so that either we can put a stop to it, or they can send some money, or whatever, and help the situation.

Gerald Scarfe28:54

And I then began to draw. And of course, once I begin to draw, then that takes over. And I'm concerned really with how to get it right graphically, really.

Gerald Scarfe29:03

and to a certain extent the humanity leaves me.

Presenter29:06

Let's have some more music.

Gerald Scarfe29:08

Well Jane and I love Mozart and uh we love Don Giovanni, so can I have some of that?

Speaker 129:25

Uh

Speaker 229:25

Uh

Speaker 229:27

Yeah.

Speaker 229:35

Yes all of them.

Speaker 129:44

Yeah.

Gerald Scarfe29:44

Yeah.

Speaker 229:45

On the

Gerald Scarfe29:45

Yeah.

Speaker 229:46

Uh

Speaker 229:49

Uh

Presenter29:53

Yeah.

Presenter30:05

Part of Mozart's Don Giovanni sung by Pater Burchaladze and Samuel Ramy with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter30:15

You have over the past few years, Gerald, uh branched out, in fact, into opera. You did the uh set for Offenbach's Orpheus, didn't you?

Gerald Scarfe30:22

Yes, it's wonderful, I must say, working in opera because it's talk about delusions of grandeur, one has this tremendous stage to paint, all those costumes on the chorus, forty chorus and all the principles.

Gerald Scarfe30:35

And then off you go and the curtain goes up and orchestras orchestra's playing away. It's the most wonderful thing to work on.

Presenter30:41

It I mean, it's been enormously uh successful, that particular production, but there were those who said that that your set and and and your costumes upstaged the opera.

Gerald Scarfe30:50

That's

Gerald Scarfe30:51

There was one uh review which said don't work with children animals on Gerald Scarf.

Presenter30:57

Uh

Presenter30:58

You also a few years ago worked with um the pop group Pink Floyd on their animated film The Wall, didn't you? Is that how you see your career developing now into all of these other fields in which you can apply your talent?

Gerald Scarfe31:11

Yes, well I I do love doing the political drawings, as we may call them, but I feel I've got m many more things to do, and I feel slightly typecast as a cartoonist all the time. So I have worked with with uh rock groups for the last fifteen years, I suppose.

Gerald Scarfe31:29

And uh I love doing theatre. It's just a wonderful it's I think it started when I um first began to give exhibitions.

Gerald Scarfe31:38

And saw people moving around the exhibitions, actually reacting to the paintings and laughing and.

Gerald Scarfe31:44

And it was the first time I saw an audience in front of my work.

Gerald Scarfe31:47

And I'm a v Jane always says I'm very much a showbiz artist. I want a reaction. I want applause, really.

Gerald Scarfe31:54

And now increasingly I'm putting my work before a public to get a reaction, which

Gerald Scarfe32:01

is a great antidote to the the loneliness of my my studio.

Presenter32:05

Can I ask you finally, just as a matter of interest, have you ever drawn or caricatured yourself?

Gerald Scarfe32:10

Yes, lots of times, yes.

Presenter32:11

What do you look like?

Gerald Scarfe32:13

Uh very ga haggard, gaunt, um very

Gerald Scarfe32:16

The dark.

Gerald Scarfe32:18

worried, whirling eyes with deep, sort of bushy

Gerald Scarfe32:23

Eyebrows above.

Gerald Scarfe32:25

And a long pendulous jowl, and a down.

Gerald Scarfe32:30

Turned mouse.

Presenter32:32

which is not how you look at all.

Presenter32:35

Shall we have your last record?

Gerald Scarfe32:36

Yes, well I've never really listened to the whole of uh Wagner's Ring and this seems a perfect opportunity to to do it and uh

Gerald Scarfe32:44

So may I have a bit of uh the Valkyrie?

Presenter33:48

The prelude to Act One of Wagner's Die Walkure, played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter33:55

So, Gerald, you now have to choose one of those eight records which you must have more than you must have any of the others.

Gerald Scarfe34:02

Well, if I'm going to be alone, and I want to be reminded of my family, and uh Jane, of course, I think I must choose the Mozart.

Presenter34:09

And your book. You have, I know you know, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you have the Bible. What else can we give you?

Gerald Scarfe34:16

Well, I thought if I'm going to be alone on this island, I I'm very bad at sitting on beaches and sunning myself. I'd be wanting to do things, move things around, reorganize things. And so I'd love a book by Capability Brown.

Gerald Scarfe34:29

uh so that I could re-landscape the the island.

Presenter34:32

Right, create a a nice pool in the middle of it, perhaps.

Gerald Scarfe34:36

I'll just move a hill here and there.

Gerald Scarfe34:38

Um a J C B would be useful as well, but I don't suppose you'll allow me that.

Presenter34:41

No, no, it's hardly a luxury. Too much practical value there. What is your luxury? Have you chosen one?

Gerald Scarfe34:46

Uh the luxury is um a turner. Could I have a turner there?

Gerald Scarfe34:51

Well, Turner lived by the river, and I lived by the river, and it's every morning when I wake up, the thing I see is the river in its different moods, greys and blues and pinks. And so any Turner painting of of the river would remind me of my my home.

Presenter35:09

Gerald Scarfe, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Gerald Scarfe35:13

Thank you.

Presenter35:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.