Posy Simmonds

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 two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the cartoonist, writer, and illustrator Posey Simmons. Her razor sharp wit and merciless social observation first came to prominence in The Guardian, where, among their stripped pine lentils and patchwork, she depicted the lives of prototype woolly liberals Wendy and George Webber.

Presenter0:44

Since then, she's gone on to create highly acclaimed children's books and graphic novels, and has been described as one of the world's most sophisticated contemporary cartoonists, mixing her acute observations on our up-to-date mores with allusions to Flaubert and Hardy. Posey Simmons, you once described yourself as a visual engineer. I think that's a very interesting phrase. What did you mean by that?

Presenter1:07

It was on a census form quite a long time ago and uh my husband also described himself as a visual engineer. We thought that in future when the census forms were looked at people would know what that was, that we engineered the visual. And it seems a very precise phrase. And what you do has great precision to it, not just in the pictures but in the words too. Do you agonise over every detail? I try to get things accurate.

Presenter1:37

I hope people will recognise immediately.

Presenter1:40

who the people are that I'm drawing and what they're like just from maybe what they're wearing or the details that they have in their kitchen. Now you specialize in, I suppose I could call it skewing the uh the activities and the views of the aspiring metropolitan middle classes. Why are they particularly your interest, your your quarry, I might call them?

Presenter2:03

I know my quarry.

Presenter2:05

I would say they were not entirely metropolitan. I think it's anywhere where there's a university, there's a a shopping centre, there are big off-road prams around. And you've chosen them because that is what you know, or because you find them the people most open to being hypocritical, being absurd, contradicting themselves between what they say and what they actually do. Yes, I mean exactly what you said. I think it's the difference between having very good intentions and things not turning out quite right. Of course, the strip was in The Guardian, so in a way, my brief then, I was on the woman's page, was to create a family. So they were at the time kind of prototype Guardian readers. And it strikes me that the hypocrisy is very beautifully drawn out in your particular medium, because people can be saying one thing, which is the thing so often that's full of good liberal intentions as they would see it, but their facial expressions, their actions are betraying something entirely different. Yes, I think that's the advantage of having words and images. You've got a choice that your images can reflect what people are saying, or they can contradict them. It's another kind of voice. We'll explore your characters in a lot more detail as we speak, but for now tell me about your first piece of music. My first piece of music is an adagio from Haydn's piano sonata in E minor, played by Alfred Brendel. And why have you chosen this? And it's a piece of music I've played for a long time and I love it.

Presenter4:31

The adagio from Haydn's piano sonata in E minor, played by Alfred Brendel. So, Posey Simmons, you grew up in Berkshire. You were one of five children. Uh your father was a farmer. Yes. What sort of man was he? He was quite a short man.

Presenter4:46

partly because he had uh quite bad curvature of the spine.

Presenter4:51

But that didn't stop him being an immensely good rider.

Presenter4:55

He liked outdoor things. He loved going racing.

Presenter4:58

He loved his cows. He also at one time had an an auction room.

Presenter5:04

And he had a very good eye for things, whether it was a car or a piece of furniture or a painting. And what about your mother?

Presenter5:13

My mother my father was quite small. My mother was quite tall and willowy, and she was very pretty.

Presenter5:21

And she had the sort of mind that Bletchley Park would have probably found very useful in the war because she was just

Presenter5:30

Brilliant at codes and crosswords, she could do the times crossword in about ten minutes.

Presenter5:36

She very well read.

Presenter5:38

She used to write very good parodies of famous poems, she was a good dancer, and she looked after all of us.

Presenter5:47

And so you were plonk in the middle of five children. Did you do that thing that middle children do? Did you jump high and shout shout hard to be heard?

Presenter5:55

Yes, I suppose for a long time, because there was quite a gap between me and my younger two, my sister and my brother. So for a time I was the youngest with two older brothers.

Presenter6:07

And then

Presenter6:08

When they went away to boarding school in the term time, I became the oldest. So I've been a youngest and an oldest in in some ways, which is quite salutary.

Speaker 46:15

Duh.

Presenter6:21

Yes, balancing, I would imagine. And what about the drawing? Did it start with with the crayons and the pencils a as a tiny child?

Posy Simmonds6:22

Yeah, and forces.

Presenter6:29

Yes. As soon as I could hold a pencil I was off. I I loved drawing. It was the thing I liked best. It was the thing that got me out of playing Monopoly later on, which I I couldn't stand.

Presenter6:42

It's the thing I did all the time. Can you remember how you felt as a as a tiny child drawing?

Presenter6:48

It was a perfect activity because I talked to myself at the same time, so it was it was the best of everything. You say you talked. You talked about the pictures you were drawing, the characters? Yes, yes. I'd make up stories about as I went went along.

Speaker 46:58

Yeah.

Presenter7:03

And were you the first in your family to draw? I mean, did your brothers and sisters draw? Was it a house with art in it already?

Presenter7:09

Nobody else really drew very much. Way back in my family, in my mother's family, there was a very good water colourist, a a woman, in the nineteenth century.

Presenter7:19

called Mary Porter, who didn't do Dainty Lady.

Presenter7:23

watercolours. These were very big, very, very confident, very

Presenter7:27

Um, professional sort of watercolours, so I don't know where that is. How interesting. Were any of those hung?

Posy Simmonds7:33

Yes, I've got

Presenter7:35

Tell me about your next piece of music then. My next piece of music is really to remind me of where I grew up, around Cookhum, and it's a carol, Dolce Ubilo, sung by the Cookhum Church Choir.

Speaker 47:54

Oh, greatness of all.

Speaker 48:02

God's joy be done.

Speaker 48:18

We see prayer.

Speaker 48:22

How is it more?

Presenter8:31

Indulce Iubolo, sung by the Cookham Church Coch Choir. So you went to boarding school then? Did did it suit you? Yes, it did. Obviously I was homesick.

Presenter8:41

To begin with. I mean, like, everybody and you got over it. Everybody was in the same boat. So you just sort of buckled down. You buckle down.

Presenter8:48

And what about the academic side of life? I mean, we know even as a a little child you were artistic in expressing yourself that way. How were you good at lessons?

Presenter8:57

I was very lopsided. I was good at English and languages. I liked Latin and French. Terribly bad at maths and science. It was at school which was very strong on sports too. I was pretty bad at that, except for cricket, because my brothers had taught me how to bowl. So I was a slow left arm bowler and I used to bowl tweakers. Tweakers, I have no idea what a tweaker is.

Posy Simmonds9:20

But we correctly

Presenter9:23

Display migrants, but I'm impressed that you could bowl a tweaker. And what about the drawing? Was the drawing a I mean obviously you'd have art classes in school, but were you drawing all the time privately? Yes, I was. I was making little magazines and little comics. Can you remember any of the characters? One of the comics is called How to Turn Yourself into an Up-to-Date TED.

Presenter9:44

I.e., a teddy boy. I used to see them on the bus in Maidenhead. Um so I was fascinated by them. They used to wear huge shoes with great big soles and things. So that was about them and their socks and the things they might carry, the poison, the bike chains. I suppose I I didn't know much about it, but I invented things. You said one of them is cold. Do you still have those magazines? Yes, yes I do. My mother kept them, and so I bought them. Do you look back at them?

Presenter10:11

Well, I I look at them and think, good heavens One of them is called How to Make Love and Be Loved in Four Easy Lessons, and I did that when I was about nine.

Presenter10:21

It's very innocent because I knew nothing much at all. Um it's about dropping handkerchiefs.

Presenter10:26

Just the four lessons. I'm impressed.

Presenter10:30

So did you know, then, that you wanted to go to art school? Was that clearly the path that you had defined, at least in your own head?

Presenter10:36

Yes, yes, I did. My parents were were very encouraging. I remember my father giving me a ream of

Presenter10:43

paper when I was about eight. That's five hundred sheets of very big paper, s in Imperial size, and I can remember him just tapping the bottom of this chest.

Presenter10:58

and saying, look in there. And it was very, very heavy.

Speaker 411:01

Yeah.

Presenter11:01

And inside I could see all this paper, and it lasted most of my childhood. And is it true that you gave up on your other A levels? You decided just you were able to just do an art A level?

Presenter11:12

I was very set on doing art and so I did A-level art in a year and then left and and went to Paris. Yes, so you went to Paris then, right at the beginning of the sixties. You had just turned seventeen. Was it to be finished? Were you going to be finished? Yes, it was to b to acquire a bit of French polish, I suppose. And and how were you when you arrived? I mean, for example, how did you look when you arrived in Paris?

Posy Simmonds11:32

And how

Presenter11:36

I'd got my hair off my face and it flicked up in the style. I might have even had a

Presenter11:42

hairband. I was wearing a nice tweed coat and I had a matching patent leather handbag and pair of shoes. And you'd never even been abroad before? No, I'd never been abroad.

Posy Simmonds11:51

Yeah.

Presenter11:53

And I have a very romantic notion of what Paris must have been like in the early sixties. Uh put me right, what was it like?

Presenter11:59

It was completely wonderful. Having been to a boarding school and having been at home, people knew what you were doing most of the time. Then to have a whole day where you just read or

Presenter12:11

sat in a cafe or

Presenter12:14

Just walked about. I loved walking. I mean, the the whole thing of being in a city which smelt of coffee and urinals and special French petrol. It was completely it was completely wonderful. It was wo it was a sort of wonderful freedom. So the young woman who went home finished, given her French polish, did she still have the uh tweed coat and the patent shoes and bag when she arrived back in England? No. I was entirely dressed in black. I had a black polo neck.

Presenter12:45

Black round my eyes, a black leather skirt I'd bought in the flea market, black tights, black belly shoes,

Presenter12:53

And a huge fringe, and I remember my mother saying, Ye gods, sounds wonderful.

Presenter12:58

Tell me about your next piece of music, then. Well this is to remind me of Paris and s Georges Brasson's singing Marionette.

Posy Simmonds13:06

Gund recour chanté maptit champson pour marinette, la belle, la tretre cetalais, à lau péra, aveg mapte trans javeler d'encom, mama, aveg ma tit chanson, javeler d'encomp.

Posy Simmonds13:22

Gon recourse portement pod mutar marinette. La belle, la treitre, save ja finitiné, avegment petit pour aveller d'encombe, mama, avegmont petit pour d'encombe.

Presenter13:36

Georges Brasson singing Marinette. You didn't sail smoothly into art school then, Posey Simmons. The plan was to return from France and go to art school. What happened? I applied too late at the art school of my choice, the Central School.

Presenter13:54

So I got a letter saying you haven't got in and uh so I was very cast down. I bet. What did you do? Well, I went into the Central School to pick up my portfolio.

Presenter14:06

And then I had a stroke of luck that I met in the corridor one of the staff who said, Oh, bad luck, didn't you get in? and I said, No and he said, Um well, I'm head of the foundation course. Uh do you want to

Presenter14:23

Apply, present your portfolio there. So I said, yes.

Presenter14:28

And so I showed my portfolio and I got into the foundation year. And what were you drawing at that stage? What was your style? What was your chosen medium? It was very uh representational. There were nudes I'd drawn in Paris, there were bits of buildings. But I'd also put in my comics, because I still went on making comics, and drawings of people in the street that I'd done, that sort of thing. You had an encounter with the cartoonist Mel Kalman, which seems to me quite crucial. What happened? Well, we had a diploma show and Mel, who at that time was drawing, I think, for The Times, said, If you need any help or advice getting work, give me a ring. Of course I did, and he was incredibly kind.

Presenter15:15

and um told me exactly the right number of drawings to put in my portfolio.

Presenter15:21

and suggested people to go and see you on magazines. Um incredibly helpful. And as a young woman you lodged with the Guardian journalist Jill Tweedy. I mean, did she help you out? Did she begin to put out the feelers, make contacts for you?

Presenter15:36

No, she didn't. But um lodging with her I I used to collect her son from nursery school and things like that. It was when I didn't have any work at all, so that was part of my job and I was charring and walking dogs and doing all kinds of other things. But I was aware of her as a working journalist. She was working for the I think for the Sunday Telegraph at the time. But I was certainly aware of life on a paper. It was rather interesting.

Presenter16:04

And your first proper piece of work, as it were, was for The Sun. It was quite a saucy little cartoon. Yes, and it was in nineteen sixty nine when The Sun first started. It was jokes like, you know, a bear saying to a dolly at a party, Can I press you to a jelly? I mean, really, very old jokes. Still funny, though.

Presenter16:24

Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music reminds me of the summer holidays that we used to have as a child. My father used to rent a small boys' school in a resort in Devon.

Presenter16:40

And it was one of those tall Victorian buildings with lots of floors. And for us children it was completely wonderful, because we could invite friends. And the highlight

Presenter16:51

was the third week of our holiday when a fair

Presenter16:55

came and camped opposite on the green.

Presenter16:58

During the day we'd be given our sixpences to go on the rides, which was

Presenter17:03

Great. But for me

Presenter17:05

It was at night that I found it so exciting. The din was terrible, so you couldn't sleep. So I'm thinking of very torrid August night with the wail of dynamos and shrieks coming from the big wheel, and there's a barker from the wrestling tent going, um He's wild, he's an animal, he's grappling to night and then over by the tennis courts there's some seats where

Presenter17:35

There are some couples which I told myself must be engaged couples, and there also.

Presenter17:40

Wrestling, and so it's hot and steamy and noisy, and over it all there's Elvis.

Speaker 217:46

You know I can't be found Sitting home all alone

Speaker 217:53

If you can't come around, then please please telephone and don't be crude.

Speaker 218:00

Two high is true.

Speaker 218:04

Baby informed that f

Speaker 218:07

There's something I might have said Please do not forget my past The future looks bright ahead

Presenter18:16

Elvis Presley and vivid memories there. Don't be cruel. Vivid memories of the Funfair coming to town. Um your own romantic life then blossomed when you were at college. You you fell in love with Richard Hollis, who was in fact one of the lecturers. At the time, was that scandalous? Not at all. I mean he actually didn't teach me, and it was my very last year. So you were properly a grown-up by then? Yes, and I don't and it wasn't a sort of big deal. And what was it about him? He was most wonderfully funny and slightly eccentric.

Presenter18:50

On our first date, he made me geranium ice cream.

Presenter18:54

And he lived in a tiny little

Presenter18:57

flat in Clarkenwell, completely furnished.

Presenter19:01

from Gammage's gardening department. Gammage's was a very old fashioned department store, so it was heated with greenhouse heaters, and it had wonderful garden furniture in it.

Presenter19:13

And so when you got married, he had been married before and had two children. How did you find being a stepmother?

Posy Simmonds19:15

Yeah.

Presenter19:18

I'm delighted to be a be a stepmother. I fi I found it wonderful. But of course it's difficult because there's no kind of manual, unlike all the manuals there are for being a being a parent. I think it requires tact and sort of realizing that you aren't actually a parent.

Presenter19:36

Obviously you've got an important role, but you're not their parent. I mean the reason I ask that question is I've noticed in much of your work there are very I mean incredibly honest, searing portrayals of being a step parent, you know, where the the stepmother is seething at her stepson who's not quite as she considers doing the right you know, he's got he's singing his football chants and he's wearing his nylon football shirt and she says, you know, there seems to be nothing that these children can't do without getting into a car or using batteries or spending money. I mean I you know i was that some of your own experience or is that more from observing other people step parents? I think that's more from

Presenter20:15

observing other people or or imagining or or invention. I must say my stepsons were

Presenter20:22

Extremely. And they they're extremely nice. Where did you get your inspiration from? Are you a watcher? I'm a watcher. I want I want to get things the look of things absolutely right. Sometimes people say, Gosh, he must be an eavesdropper, too.

Presenter20:37

I'd like to say, I'm not. I've never actually eavesdropped. People.

Presenter20:42

are kind enough to talk very loudly, particularly now on telephones. If they want to share their their lives with the whole of the bus, I mean, I'm there to luck it up. Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is from Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Bach is one of my favourite composers and I particularly like choral music. And this chorus is a sort of airy, wonderful, light construction with layers of voices. But underneath there's a lovely sort of turbo engine pulsing it along.

Presenter22:14

Ares I got Inde Hoey from Basque's Christmas Oratorio, sung by the Monteverde Choir and conducted by John Elliott Gardner. So, Posy Simmons, how did The Webber family evolve, the first piece that you really became very well known for? Well, I'd been working as a a kind of dog's body at the Guardian, doing illustrations wherever they were needed. I remember I met the editor.

Presenter22:39

in the lift, and he said

Presenter22:41

Have you ever thought of doing a strip?

Presenter22:44

And I came up with this rather half-baked idea, based on a strip that had once run in a girls' magazine.

Presenter22:53

called the Silent Three, and I kind of updated it to them being guardian women who are now going to don cloaks in the evening and and set about adulterous husbands or whatever. And it was started rather too quickly.

Presenter23:08

I'd invented a lot of characters. I didn't know who they were. I had.

Presenter23:13

The wrong wife in bed with the wrong husband from Dave Hampens. Yes, it happens all the time. The first two months were incredibly difficult and it was a bit of a mess. And what about capturing characters? Because you do that. Anybody who's seen your work will see how brilliantly with apparently just one simple line for a mouse or a hair.

Posy Simmonds23:15

Yeah.

Presenter23:33

escaping in the wrong direction. You you capture the mood of a character, the the the feelings felt by a character. How much do you study the way people look? I mean, do you use yourself as a model? Do you use people on the street? I use myself as a model for expressions. I work opposite a big mirror, so I can check what

Presenter23:53

hands look like or how eyes go when they're angry and things.

Presenter23:57

But I do look at people a great deal. I like to get things right. Would you actually, when you're out and about, I mean, if you're stuck on a bus somewhere in a queue of traffic, do you have, in the same way that writers have notepads where they jot down odd phrases or ideas, do you would you ever draw something on the hoof? I might make a tiny little thumbnail sketch, or I might write um

Presenter24:19

Very shiny lipstick as an aide memoir. Usually, when I get back, I've got a good memory. I would then draw the person up in a sketch book. And you have this fabulous I mean, almost the perfect combination for the work that you have chosen to do, in that you clearly have a very, very good ear. I mean, when you were introducing that piece of music a couple of discs ago, the Elvis Presley, you did this wonderful impersonation of the guy at the Fun Fair, where you suddenly went from being this terribly well-spoken woman to being somebody who sounded as if they were covered in oil and tattoos. So you've always been able to mimic. Yes, yes. As a child I used to imitate animals quite a lot, like chickens and things. I always like trying out accents. Can you do a chicken now? I've never heard anyone do a chicken.

Presenter25:16

The only thing I can do is ask you for your next piece of music after that.

Presenter25:22

Um well, from chickens to something completely sublime. This is from the Marriage of Figaro. It's the Contessa hoping to regain the love of her husband.

Speaker 425:52

He worships thy labour.

Speaker 426:22

We all drive and soul.

Presenter26:36

Gundulo Janovitz singing Dovisono ibe momente from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Let's talk about Gemma Bovry then, this one hundred episode serial for The Guardian. It was in daily instalments, so it ran six days a week.

Presenter26:50

It sounds like a huge commitment, a huge pressure, was it?

Presenter26:54

Yes, it was. I didn't really know what I was taking on. I'd always wanted to do something with a beginning and an end.

Presenter27:03

I didn't realise how difficult it was chopping it up into little bits and every day had to had to have a slight cliff hanger to make you want to read on. Really, drawing a serial like that is is in a way like drawing a film.

Presenter27:18

And what about the gra I mean, we can we can now buy Gemma Beauvre as a graphic novel. There's another well known uh novel of yours, Tamara Drew. Both of them are narrated by outsiders. Why is it that you employ that technique as a story telling device?

Presenter27:35

I I remember when I began Gemma I did it in the third person for about six episodes, and because I'd never written much proper writing, I'd been used to doing balloons and things, it was completely leaden, and then I made the baker actually talk.

Presenter27:54

And I I immediately recognised his voice. And so from then on the writing got very easy because I I would talk it to myself in a slightly French accent what he was saying in in English. It was much easier, yes. And what about when you are working? And you I mean you've chosen an incredibly varied selection of music. Do do you listen to music while you're working? Yes, all the time. Not when I'm writing. I can't do that at all. But the drawing, in a way, is the nice bit. So I have lots of music. I'm afraid I sing dreadfully too.

Presenter28:28

And what do you do first then? Because I imagined you were doing both things at once. Do you do the writing first and then the drawings, or the drawings first and then the writing?

Presenter28:36

Depends what's going on in the episode. Obviously if it's uh an episode which has got a big landscape or a big room full of details, I would draw the room.

Presenter28:45

But if it's a conversation.

Presenter28:47

or anything with a lot of narrative in, I would always write it out first, because then I would know exactly how much room I had for the pictures. Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is to remind me of Cornwall, which I've known ever since I was a child, but also

Presenter29:06

over twenty years when when we had a house there where we used to spend an awful lot of time.

Presenter29:11

And I love being there in the winter.

Presenter29:13

And um it seems odd because on my desert island I'll have a lot of sea round me, but um this is going to remind me of Cornish sea and spum.

Presenter29:52

Mike O'Connor with God's Dear Son from the Lost Music of Cornwall and chosen Posey Simmons to remind you of a place that you spent time there as a child, but also as a grown-up. You say you had a home there for twenty years. Um it's an interesting theme, actually, in a lot of your work, the the idea of this, you know, the middle-class idyll of the second home. You have a go at people quite often who have this idea that they're going to live the life

Presenter30:15

That's true to them, a sort of pure life in the country. Tell me about that.

Presenter30:20

Yes, it's as though the the beauty and the n and of the nature will kind of rub off on their own lives and make it very healthy and wholesome, which often sadly doesn't happen. You know, people get extraordinarily bored or things go wrong or they're too far from the shops. And is it true that one of the reasons you ended up giving up your home is that you had a a pretty horrible accident in the the mid nineties where you badly hurt your back, broke your back in fact. I cracked two vertebrae, yes. I I was one of those part of the statistics of people who fall down stairs wearing silly slippers. I was carrying a tray with a coffee pot on it and coming down the stairs at quite a lick and I just saw my feet come up in front of me and uh I landed on my back. But in fact I was quite lucky because uh I didn't have to have an operation.

Posy Simmonds31:05

Interesting.

Presenter31:13

It just um mended itself. It's partly where I broke them. But that injury meant that you couldn't make these very long car journeys. Yes. And and what about working?

Posy Simmonds31:22

But we're

Presenter31:23

And working it well, it was when I'd done forty episodes of Gemma Boberry.

Presenter31:28

And it was due to start.

Presenter31:30

And so I had to ring the guardian up and say, Look, I'm afraid I can't because I'm I'm lying on my back. And are you well recovered now? Yes, I have to be careful. I mean, I do a very sed sedentary job, so I have to remind myself to get up and exercise. And you and your husband both work from home. Do you have separate studios or you work at either end of a large studio? We have separate studios and Is that a necessity? Yes, I think so, partly because I talk to myself and I play music and I sing in a rather distressing way.

Posy Simmonds31:53

Is that

Presenter32:02

So we we're in our rooms and then we always meet at lunch time and have a proper lunch.

Presenter32:07

Tell me about your final piece of music. Pablo Casal's playing Bach's Cello Suite, number one in G major. And why have you chosen this? I simply love it. I can listen to it over and over again.

Presenter33:17

The prelude from Bach's cello suite number one in G major, performed by Pablo Casals.

Presenter33:24

So I will then, Posy, give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're allowed to take another book. What would you like to take? Could I have the London Telephone Directory, but the old kind. I'm afraid it comes in four volumes,'cause I want the suburbs as well. You certainly can have it. Am I allowed to ask you why you want it? Um because it's for people, and I can sit there inventing stories about them and uh cross-referencing.

Presenter33:54

M to R is always a very interesting bit of the telephone directory. It's yours. And what will be your luxury?

Presenter34:01

Could I have the crown jewels, please? Yes, yes you could. I could. Because I rather think that people become looking for them. Would you wear them? Yes, of course I would. I would strut about the sago palms in a lot. And if the weight of the crown would allow you, which um record would you run through the sands to save? Probably the Bach cello suite. It's yours. Posey Simmons, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much.

Presenter34:36

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