Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Daily Mail cartoonist for 38 years, known for making dreary news brighter with humour and for hiding his wife in his cartoons.
On the island
Eight records
I first went to see Frank Sinatra in nineteen seventy, and he was absolutely fantastic. And I like this song particularly because it makes me think of my wife. Although the words in it are, your looks are laughable, unphotographable, and certainly she's not like that, she's very beautiful.
Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, Al Stillman
Well, when I was about fourteen, Frankie Lane was at the at his peak, and I had a very good friend called Lynn. And Glyn and I used to camp out in the summer in his garden ... We'd we'd get into a tent and we'd lie there playing on a wind up gramophone, Frankie Lane Records, and it was always I Believe.
I fell in love with this man's voice. He has such a wonderful melancholy and wonderful sadness in his voice. My two children got absolutely fed up listening to him when they were kids, and when they were young they used to say, Oh, not Jussie Blurhead again.
I was in Diggs in Henley, and there was um a man there who was a forester ... in the evenings, in the long wintery evenings, we'd spend a lot of time indoors and he'd play these classical records. And uh I got very, very, very interested in classical music, and um the one that we played most was Wagner.
I've Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
I've always loved the saxophone, and one day I heard Johnny Hodgetts playing I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good and it sends a tingle up the back of my neck every time I hear it.
when I met my wife, Liz, from time to time we'd go to a function or we'd go off on holiday and everybody was expected to do a little piece, sing a song, and all that kind of stuff. And Liz always sang this song from The Battle of New Orleans by Lonnie Donegan. It's the only song that she knows with all the words to.
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26: II. AdagioFavourite
He played Brooke's violin concerto once, and it stuck with me, and I haven't got any stories to tell about it apart from that. I just love it.
I've always thought that when I do eventually pop my clogs I'd like that s played at my funeral. So when I'm on my desert island, if I've got that record there ... I'm hoping I can heave myself off my my mattress and go across and put the record player on and have Peggy Lee singing this as I take my last breath.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:49What did Frank Sinatra want you for?
Frank Sinatra had been in the newspapers and been accused of being part of the mafia. and I decided I would do a cartoon about it ... and a month went by and I got a a letter from his agent, and his agent said that Frank had asked for the cartoon ... maybe six months later I got a letter from him thanking me, and saying that he had been going through a terrible time, and it was really nice to know that he had some support in Britain.
Presenter asks
2:42Do you like the idea that you are a hidden star?
A long time ago I I was on television doing something or other, and I was having a cup of coffee in a cafe, and a little boy suddenly came over to me and he said, Could I have your autograph? ... So I wrote my name and did a little quick little drawing for him and handed it to him and he said, What do I do with this? And I said, Well, you collect it and if you meet other people who have been on television, you might get their autographs as well. And he handed it back to me and he said, Now I collect Pokemon cards. So I was put in my place very quickly.
Presenter asks
5:27Why were you being shuttled [between Edinburgh and Birmingham]?
Well, we don't really know. My sister and I are always a bit puzzled. I think perhaps he just wanted a bit more time with my mother, really. But we seemed to spend an awful lot of time with my granny. And I would just be getting into the hang of talking Birmingham ... And then up we'd go up to Scotland. I was we doing here like this in no time at all.
The keepsakes
The book
John Steinbeck
I've always been a great fan of John Steinbeck. I've I've read most of his stuff, but what I would like is the collected work of John Steinbeck so that I can have all the time in the world to be able to read it thoroughly.
The luxury
Because I'll be able to get my embouchure right and learn how to play the saxophone. Not as well as Johnny Hodges, but I'm hoping that I can get better.
Presenter asks
7:49Did [the poverty of your upbringing] make an indelible impact upon you?
Well, we didn't really know that we were poor, really. That was that was life for us. I felt uh mildly jealous when I went to friends' houses,'cause they were in nineteen thirties semi detached houses, which seemed terribly posh to me. And I remember feeling slightly ashamed bringing people back to my house,'cause it was so ... Well, not squalid, but very, very basic.
Presenter asks
14:26Was there any sense in which you felt compromised or overshadowed by your father?
To be quite honest, at that time I was quite scared of my father. He was quite Victorian, and he was quite prone to give me a good slap across the head if I overstepped the mark ... What he wanted was he wanted a an academic, and I was never an academic ... And I was a big disappointment to him for not being cleverer than I was.
Presenter asks
15:39Did you ever confront your father?
We had a couple of big, big blow ups together, and he wanted me to apologise, and I w refused. And I said, Look, you've got to apologise to me, because I think you're just being over the top heavy handed. And my way of escaping was that I I left home and and w w went into the army.
“I think you'll find that most cartoonists who are working in Britain today would probably vote not for the politics of the person but because they've got a big nose and large ears. We'd like people that are easy to draw.”
“I draw to amuse me. I'll draw all my cartoons. I don't think about the policy of the paper. I don't think about what I think it might please the readers. I do it to please me.”
“I think perseverance is a quality I've got. But it just seems to me that I've been so lucky in my life, really, in that I've always been constantly surprised that I've got where I have done, and it it just seems that somebody up there is looking after me.”