Foghorn - No. 43

Issue 43The best of British cartooning talentFOGHORN

THE FOGHORN2 WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

NEWS

The magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)

FOGHORNFOGHORN Issue 43

Published in Great Britain by theProfessional Cartoonists’Organisation (FECO UK)

PCO PatronsLibby Purves Andrew Marr

Bill Tidy

Foghorn EditorBill Stott

tel: +44 (0) 160 646002email: [email protected]

Foghorn Sub-EditorRoger Penwill

tel: +44 (0) 1584 711854email: [email protected]

Foghorn Layout/DesignTim Harries

tel: + 44 (0) 1633 780293email: [email protected]

PCO Press Officeemail: [email protected]

Web infoPCO (FECO UK) website:

http://www.procartoonists.org

BLOGHORNhttp://thebloghorn.org/

What is Foghorn? British cartoon art has a great, ignoble history and currently boasts a huge pool of talent. It

deserves a higher media presence than it currently enjoys. Our aim

is to make sure it gets it. We want to promote cartoon art domestically and internationally by encouraging high standards of artwork and service, looking after

the interests of cartoonists and promoting their work in all kinds

of media.

CopyrightAll the images in this magazine are the intellectual property and

copyright of their individual creators and must not be copied or reproduced, in any format,

without their consent.

Front Cover: John JensenBack Cover: Colin Whittock

Foghorn (Online) ISSN 1759-6440

Glossop Watch: 3

“Full English, Sir, or a dead camel’s bladder as if you wereactually out there filming your ‘Survival’ series?”

Whoa! It’s that time again, and here is your superbly designed Foghorn, with all the sticky-out bits protruding nicely. Quite apart from the wholly unreasonable weather presently shiv-ering most timbers, there are other un-doubted downers, too. Bill Ritchie’s passing is ineffably sad. Mind you, “passing” implies having gone away, but looking around my studio, Bill’s still very much here. And will remain so.

Those of you who love silliness [that’s everybody. Ed. Ass.] will be itching to get on the Trevelyan bandwagon [q.v.] whilst those of you who are just itching should really do something about it.

Bill Stott, Foghorn Ed

The UK Political Cartoon Gal-lery is to move from its premises on Store Street, near Tottenham Court Road in London.

Owner and publisher Tim Benson told Bloghorn;

I believe we have gone as far as I think we can [at the Store Street ven-ue] without becoming stale and re-petitive. Staying in London I believe is also no longer any great advan-tage. There is just too much competi-

tion for publicising what we do. Out of London we believe, we will get far more interest and far more local coverage. A change of direction will breath new life into the society and our new prospective venue will allow us to do far more in the way of exhi-bitions than we have done before.

Tim would like to thank all those who have supported the gallery over the last five years – and confirms there are four new books planned for publication in the New Year.

THE FOGHORN 3WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

FEATURE CLIVE COLLINS

WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

The power of the olfactory senses and memory eh? For me, there are two that can’t be beaten: the smell of steam trains is Paddington station, and arriv-ing from Weston-super-mare after the war, and the other, the heady mix of cigarette smoke, mingled with the aro-ma of proprietary brands of flea-killer, was any one of seven cinemas in the Hounslow area near my first childhood home in Isleworth, West London. They consisted of a Regal, a Gaumont, a Rex, an Empire, two Odeons, and one Classic, which showed foreign, or art-house films, mainly bleak, post-war Italian ones set among ruins and featur-ing hollow-eyed actors and actresses whose names I still can’t remember to this day. All are now gone as cinemas, though one shell of an Odeon remains, whose art-deco exterior fronts a block of up-market flats, and those buildings that weren’t demolished became the ubiq-uitous Bingo halls. I spent most of my school holidays and weekends watching 50s celluloid; classic films noir - which I am now watching again on DVD and trying to recapture that first-look excitement – some crap cheapo films with Z-list stars, and blessed Ealing Films - The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts & Coronets, Passport to Pimlico (actually filmed in Vauxhall) and more. The posters of those days were part of the appeal, and unlike present day movie advertising, were more than a mere narcissistic photo shoot of the stars, but were either paintings, or art-fully crafted stills from the film(s). The comedy films even had credit sequences drawn by famous cartoon-ists – Larry, ffolkes, Searle, Emmett, Hirschfeld among others. Not for them those mere boring printed titles; then the credits were part of the film and they got you into the mood. You could also go into the cinema at any time during the performance, and it was quite usual to sit and watch the beginning again until you reached the part where you’d come in. I couldn’t believe it when years later I took my own kids to see a film and was told I had to wait until the

Fleapits in my life

Clive Collins

next show-ing. Sorry? What? In Punch, Bar-ry Took once wrote a nostal-gia piece about 50s cinemas, when small kids would come up to you at the ticket office and ask ‘get me into the pictures mister?’ Imagine that now, was his refrain. It’d be police sirens, and a criminal record before you could grab your ticket. I was always very tall - despite hav-ing smoked from the age of 7- and had been accustomed to seeing ‘A’ films on my own from day one. I was thus able to regularly smuggle younger kids past the ticket office in my unofficial role as ‘a responsible adult’, from whence they would dash off into the gloom and sit with their braver mates who’d bro-ken in via the emergency exits. I still love the cinema, though visits are rarer, thanks to spending almost ev-ery waking moment earning a living, and while I’m grateful that the world of cinema still survives - though the films are bigger and sassier - I find the multi-screens somewhat forbidding. I miss the individual movie-house, with its highly decorated walls and mock Greco-Roman carvings and, above all, space. New multiplexes are now being built with more and more screens until

they’ll no doubt end up with auditoria the size of a small living room, with a sofa and a plasma screen. The last big, single-screen cinema I visited was in York a few years back, where Lynne and I saw The Incredi-bles. It was on the main road coming out of the city on the route to the race-course and was – yes – an Odeon. The man who served behind the confection-ery counter also sold us our tickets, and overall it had a sad air of neglect. We wandered up the stairs past the huge photos of old-time stars, and reached our balcony seats. Before us on the landing was a pair of art-deco doors to the toilets, from which emanated a stench of cleaning fluid that would have put a 50s fleapit to shame. We learned later that the place was scheduled for demolition or, if they were lucky, con-version to a multi-screen. The fact that there was already a multi-screen Vue cinema in York seemed to us to put the mockers on that plan, and sure enough, at time of writing it is closed and facing an uncertain future.


Indeed, Bill himself often commented on the enjoyment he got out of these in-ternational competitions even if, as his cartoon below shows, the destinations were occasionally hard to find! As he once told Foghorn “Knokke-Heist, Tabriz, Cataluya, Ploiests - where on earth are they? Bad enough trying to find Caerphilly or Friockheim for that matter!”

A keen sculptor and gardener, Bill also collaborated with Alison Mary Fitt, pro-ducing illustrations for the Clan McWee series of books in 2008. The respect in which Bill was held can be summed up by Iain McLaugh-lin, sub-editor of The Beano, who made this posting on the Comics UK Forum: “Bill’s enormous catalogue of work will be well known to every British comics fan. For those of us who worked with Bill, he was one of the folk you always looked forward to seeing. You knew you’d have a good laugh and an inter-esting chat with Bill. His knowledge of comics and artists was extraordinary. And he was just a really nice guy, al-ways gracious and helpful. A genuinely nice man who will be missed greatly by all of us who worked with him.”

BLOGHORN

Cartoon ClassroomBloghorn interviews David Lloyd about his new project.Bloghorn is very pleased to be able to publish an interview with David Lloyd, artist of V for Vendetta and co-founder of Cartoon Classroom, a free resource to connect artists and people who would like to learn how to draw.

How do you think the Cartoon Classroom and its list of expert teachers in drawing can help young people who do think in images?

Well, we’re not just for young people and we don’t specify anywhere on the site that we are. Anyone can make use of cartoon workshops or teaching in that area of art if they want to, and they already have in the past. Are wa-ter-colour weekends just for young people? There’s a tendency to think ‘cartoons? ah, young people’. This is a misperception from a Disney/com-ics train of thought, I guess. The work I helped with at The London Cartoon Centre in the 80’s and 90’s was just

for young people, because it was spe-cifically meant to help the young un-employed.

So, the classroom is a non-profit learning resource for everybody?

Cartoon Classroom is intended to be a resource that anyone can dip into for exactly what they want by hav-ing as many institutions and artists as possible register with it. We must get that spread of involvement in the site, otherwise it will fail in its task.

David, personally, what does draw-ing mean to you?

A pleasure and a pain. I love being able to draw and create but it often hurts because I’m striving for the best and can’t always get there.

Why do you think you feel that way about it?

Because I’m cursed with ambition.

Many creative people seem to spend a lot of energy trying to define why they do what they do. Do you? Did you?

Never had the choice. This was all I could turn into a living when I left school. But I have answered a simi-lar question in interviews by saying I loved to draw and loved to write stories, and loved movies and tv, so it was natural I worked in strip art be-cause I could do the things I’m natu-rally good at and enjoy making things that are like movies and tv at the same time.

www.cartoonclassroom.co.uk

Bill RitchieFoghorn was sad to learn that PCO member Bill Ritchie passed away on 25th Jan 2010. Bill was best known for his work at Dundee based comic publishers D.C. Thomson, spending the best part of 40 years creating such favourites as Baby Crockett and Smiffy for the Beezer and Dandy comics, leaving behind a huge legacy in the cartooning world. Even after his retirement, Bill carried on cartooning. Scottish newspaper ‘The Courier’ noted “He never laid down his pen, though, and continued to work for D. C. Thomson after his retirement. He also illustrated for various internation-al magazines and exhibited in several European comic book exhibitions.”


FEATURE LADY VIOLET

Random acts of humour

Relationship woes? Dodgy love-life?Irritating rash?Irritating love-life with a dodgy rash? Fear not! Foghorn’s very own ‘Agony Aunt’ Lady Violet Spume, is here to answer your nasty little personal problems.

“Your entire oeuvre stinks.”

Dear Lady Violet,Cartoon Festival season is almost upon us - as of last year for big board duty I shall be wearing heavy-duty rubber knee pads, fingerless gloves and, new this season, a cricketers pro-tective box to guard against the “Shrewsbury handshake”.Is this Normal?

P.D. Nottingham.

Lady V: Dear P.D.I cannot say what is considered normal in Shrewsbury as I have never been to the dreadful little town. However, the at-tire you describe sounds singularly revolting and should be avoided at all costs. I am also unfamiliar with the term ‘big board duty’ which you fail to explain. How the public expect me to provide help and support based on such vague infor-mation I shall never know!

Dear Lady Violet,I am a great admirer of the very beautiful David Cameron. Recently I saw on the television, a most exciting film all about David’s early life, especially his time at Eton and later at University. I was especially taken with the way David and his hilarious chums dashed about the place wrecking others’ studies, forcing fellow students to do humiliating things and generally being, well, David. I wonder if the next Prime Minister still does this sort of thing, and if he does, can one book such a performance? Frankly, its lonely now that Denzil’s gone, and whilst he left me comfortably off, its been a long time since I was made to do bizarre things by a toff.

Yours, in anticipation,The Hon Muriel Criminy – Halstead.

Lady V: Hands off, you hussy! David is mine, all mine, I tell you! Don’t you understand? I’m a toff, he’s a toff - ergo! It is inconceivable that he would have any truck with the likes of you. You probably have to work for a living. How common.Yours etc.

“I didn’t know the wildlife park did home visits.”

“Well, we’ve all got to make sacrifices these days.”


FEATURE THE POTTING SHED

The Potting Shedwith Cathy Simpson.

The mighty Alan Goatrouser has just been hauled back indoors. It took an hour to defrost him, so wel-come INTO the Foghorn Potting Shed! Now, we all like a spot of pot-ting in here - so today’s postbag is dedicated to containers (especially with plants in). Gordon Honk-monster, Binkie Homebrew and Euphorbia Marmelade, radiant in their thermals, are all eagerly rub-bing their hands!

First out of the bag comes from Nis-san McNightie of Peebles, who says he’s new to gardening but he’ll try anything once! He writes:

“Dear Foghorn,My potted plant fell over; I mean - the plant collapsed, leaving the pot standing. Then I noticed loads of ‘C’ shaped grubs in the compost. I find only having ‘C’ shapes really cuts down on the number of words I can make from them. What are these grubs, and how can I get more letters?”

Euphorbia’s winced a bit, but Gor-don’s ready and rarin’!“What you have here are vine weevil larvae (Noraholius leafius). These

dangerous little blighters will eat just about anything that grows in a pot – even your stew or risotto. All vine weevils are female, and as for virgin birth – they bring tears to the eyes of the Catholic Church! Although they’re ‘C’ shaped, put ‘em together carefully and you can make a little let-ter ‘A’, too. For other letters, includ-ing fancy stuff like ‘&’ and ‘@’ – you can’t do better than earthworms (ge-nus Longthinslimius). They beat the so-called ‘Spelling Bee’ into a cocked hat! Or you could just buy a game of Scrabble.”

Should give you hours of fun, Nis-san! Onto our next, an email from Laeticia Sutherland-Wyndebagge from Thrubwell Parva. She’s very upset at the state of her witch hazel:

“The leaves are all turning ever such a nasty brown colour. In the pot I’m also keeping some green wellingtons, a spare tyre for the Range Rover and the bit left of the Barbour jacket which the dog-gie didn’t eat. Should I put some compost in there, too? (I believe that’s what you gardening types term that dirty stuff that plants grow in).”

And while Euphorbia’s standing there with her mouth open, Binkie’s well away. Go for it, Binkie!

“Unfortunately, witch hazels (Hub-blebubble toilantrubble) never do very well in pots, even ones which aren’t being used as storage crates. They’re also very picky about their soil – that’s the dirty stuff plants grow in when they’re in the ground. However, your witch hazel is prob-ably already dead and you might as well keep it where it is. You can always buy a can of car paint and spray it to match the Range Rover.”

Great advice, and great colour co-ordination there, Laeticia! And sadly that’s it for today – but don’t forget to send us your garden-ing tales of woe and we’ll do our best not to laugh! (Can’t wait!)


“Slik-kwik Signwriters? This is World of Books and I want to speak to your proof-reader!”


FEATURE PAUL HARDMAN

Many decades ago… early 70s to be precise, I was running a large second-ary school art department in Bootle, Merseyside. It was a cold, lifeless Monday morning. I had a weekend hangover and 3X Remove for double Art first thing! Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an ‘X Remove’ class? They’re an interesting bunch…..very much smaller than the rest of the year group. A mixture of potential jockeys and submariners but without the in-telligence or motivation; a bi-product of maternal smoke and alcohol abuse during pregnancy with a dash of dubi-ous in-breeding in there somewhere! They come in a set. There’s always the one with the wall eye, one with an abundance of freckles and several that sniff and dribble incessantly from un-der a protuberance of green teeth and all with that obligatory home-made haircut. Somewhat of a challenge for the most skilled of motivators even without the hangover! The challenge was not to educate (for we don’t do miracles!) but to retain within the walls of the school. The object of my lesson was that of screen printing. One of my rooms sported a gigantic print table with a cushioned plastic covering over which I started to place newspaper sheets from the Liverpool Echo and

Sun. The table was so large that I had to mount the beast on all fours, whilst I taped the sheets together. This also had the advantage of keeping me a safe distance from the several dubi-ous odours emitting from my darling feral pack. Suddenly I opened a paper at the cartoon page where I espied one of my own creations proudly ‘staring’ back at me. “Oh, great!” I exclaimed. “Here’s one of my cartoons in the Sun.” The pack stopped daubing the walls and nicking the pencils as they clus-tered around me craning to see such wonderment. The odours began to in-terweave into an eye-watering cloud.

“Wear Sear?” was the demand.“Look, here... one of the cartoons I drew is in the Sun!”Stony silence… and then… “Wah? Yew drew dat?”“Yes!”“No, yis never!”“I did. Look! There’s my signature.”“Ey up, Cum ‘ed Sir... Yoos never did dat doh!”“Why ever not?”“C O Z I T Z P R I N T I D!!

My mind emptied in confusion. For the first time in a long time…I had no answers for my dear, cherubic flock.

Yoos Didn’ Doo Dat!Letters to theEditor

Snail Mail: The Editor, Foghorn Magazine, 7 Birch Grove, Lostock Green,

Northwich. CW9 7SS E-mail:

[email protected]

Help needed

I really look forward to reading my brother’s copy of your jolly magazine. Sometimes though, I don’t understand some of the amusing sketches you publish, even though most are coloured in so carefully. It might help your cause if you printed brief expla-nations underneath each one. Yours sincerely

Enid Bippy [Miss]

ps except rude ones.

Jobs a good ‘un

Dear sir, As good as your magazine is, I can’t help but think how much better an Apple iFog would be. Imagine this - a handy 21inch magazine tablet you simply slip into the 21inch iPocket of your iSuit. Sounds good? Let’s live the dream!

Yours iSincerelySteve Jobs

CEO, Apple Inc.

PS, I’ve registered ‘iFog’, so don’t even think about it.

Space Invader

Dear Editor, I can’t help feeling I’ve written this letter to simply fill a gap.

Yours made-uppingly, Derek Pangolin-Glossop “We’ve had to really update the curriculum.”

by Paul Hardman


FEATURE BILL STOTT

Very occasionally, the memory of an art and design lecturer I once knew who ditched life as we know it Jim, and cleared off to live on a Scottish croft pops up. Even then, and it must be 30-odd years ago, I felt a mixture of admira-tion, envy and mystification about his decision to change his life; to reject modernity with its reliance on tech-nology – and in 1970, technology meant Teflon,Trimphones, Loon jeans and rare sightings of video tape re-corders the size of sheltered housing units – and fend for himself. That was half a lifetime ago. I don’t know what happened to him. He might still be there, self-sufficient, dependent only on a minimum of tools and what na-ture chooses to give him. On the other hand, quite apart from possibly hav-ing fled back to the nearest centrally heated city flat when the firewood ran out, he might be still be in place, but operating a SatNav sheep location system [Baafind] from a carbon fi-bre miners dream of home mini wind farm high up on Ben Doon… If Tony – for that was his name – felt the need to leap off the techno band-wagon in 1970, I wonder how far he’d

jump in 2010? I mean, back then, technology had an understandable, fallible face. If you had a car, you probably also had long conversations about how good or bad a starter it was. Did it have a radio? Or a heater, much less air conditioning. Chances are, if it was a Vauxhall Viva, or a Maxi, or a Triumph Herald, it DID sport a heater, or as this downmarket facil-ity is called today “climate control”. “Climate Control”!? Now there’s an excellent example of techno-pompos-ity. Climate Control! It’s a car, for heaven’s sake, not a rain forest. TVs still got a good thump to fine tune them back then, and what you saw was what you got. There wasn’t a wealth of unseen visual chewing gum hiding under an interactive red button. And radio news was pretty much take it or leave it, too. “This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news, and this is Alva Liddell reading it. There has been an earthquake abroad. 52 million people are feared dead. Mean-while, at the Oval, Australia are 987 for no wicket. The weather, sunny spells, and quite dark at night.” And I was drawing with a pencil, then a rubber, then black ink, applied with

a steel dip – in nib, on paper. On those rare occasions colour was required, then it was watercolour, applied with a brush. And Oh My God! It still is! What’s wrong with me? You are old, Father William might be one answer, but I suspect its not as simple as that. There are folk who can give me a year or two who welcome alleged techno-logical advance. With open arms they embrace plasma screen tellies which interact (work with) with dvd record-ers, cell phones, PCs, iPods and for all I know, laser powered toasters. Whilst watching one channel, they record an-other, then, unbelievably, watch the recording later! Maybe this is the classic reaction of the technophobe. Those in the know, the wired, all ducks in a row types who get excited about knowing what the ambient temperature in Adelaide is via their razor thin mobile, or can send photos (pix) of their own bot-toms to similarly subtle friends are so far removed from me now, that they no longer call people like me Lud-dites. This might have something to do with history having been optional in school for quite some time for a generation which refers to things be-ing “way back” in the nineties, but its also because there’s a massive as-sumption that if something’s possible and cheap, it is, by definition, neces-sary, and therefore, completely ac-ceptable. Where was I? Oh yes – doing not very well making a case for ink, pen, paper and paint. Part of my problem is that I like it. I enjoy the resistance of the paper to the nib; the subtle chang-es in pressure which result in a very different line; the way watercolour works – how flexible it is – and how difficult that flexibility is to control… blah, blah… Oh, and whilst I’m at it, Nibnerd may note that the ones I pre-fer are the same pattern as those used by us war babies at school in the 50s

UnpluggedBill Stott wonders where technology is taking us.


FEATURE BILL STOTT

– they’re still available, but all fan-cied up with a shiny gold finish and cost around 70 pence a throw… Anyway, I can hear all the CAD (computer aided design – is that the correct term?) buffs out there shout-ing things like; “But you don’t need paper to draw on and ink to make the lines!”, or, “There were folk like you around when paper superceded vel-lum!” But I like the mess. I like hav-ing to keep nibs clean. I like getting a whole new sheet of paper out. I suppose that as com-puter/digital/electronic development continues its breakneck pace of devel-opment, there may come a day when I’ll draw on a virtual piece of 220gsm cartridge with a virtual dip in nib, and actually feel the resistance of nib and paper. The Virpape© will come as one of the many com-munication miracles my home PC will be able to whip out of its electronic sleeve, and there’d be no scanning – I’d just send it whizzing off… shouts of, “We can do that now, you throwback !” Well, OK, maybe you can. Not the Virpape© quite yet, and the comput-er added colour still has a dead look to it. Its too infallible. But probably in the next ten years or less, I’ll be looking at little option boxes along the Virpape© top edge which offer “Flawless” “A Bit Flawed” and “Hand Done”, the latter featuring unerased pencil, blots and spelling errors. But as I say, I like the actual mess, as a non-optional part of what I do. Dread the day we have Replicators [Like on Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise, where if you suddenly fancy baked beans on toast, you tell a computer and it makes some in a little hole in the wall… instantly – no smell (optional), no mess...]

There’s a programme on telly called “Animation Nation” , and in part, it answers that question about where all the young cartoonists are. They’re pro-

ducing excellent animated films. I’ve seen some absolutely stunning stuff on it. Great drawing, wonderful use of colour, funny, dramatic etc., etc., - and most of the work I’ve seen comes from people well under 30. Even in still form, it knocks the spots off most of the tired syndicated gear churned out in the national dailies. Why’s their stuff not in newspapers and maga-zines? Why’s it on a relatively obscure programme at 12.30am?

And yet, and yet… all may not be lost. A couple of years ago, Rolf Har-ris, that master of personal reinven-tion, and a good bloke besides, used a graphic dodge beloved of all art teachers since time began on national telly, and it didn’t involve Virpape©, or a computer deciding how messy a wash should be without getting wet. He divided up a well known painting into 200 squares, or whatever, then gave one square to 200 different folk all over the country, and they had to produce a 2 foot version of the little square Rolf gave them, with the paint and canvas provided. Can you see what it is yet? Then they sent him their efforts and hundreds of techni-cians put all the bits together in a posh venue. A huge version gradually ap-pears. There’s music, dancers, fire-works. OOOOH, AAAAH! 60 min-utes of prime time TV is filled. Rolf got a massive, engagingly flawed version of “The Haywain” (or was it “Flatford Mill”) under spotlights, with fireworks into Trafalgar Square.

Good for him. An actual, physical thing, created by humans using bits of wood and hair (OK, some of its prob-ably nylon) and paint. Oddly, a computer generated, perfect version of say,The Laughing Cava-lier, projected on to the underside of low-lying cloud would be regarded as almost hum-drum by generations of people who have grown used to doors opening automatically, voices ema-nating from dashboards advising a u-

turn, and night club light shows of sense-numbing electronic wizardry.

Humans like - even need - to make physical, real marks. They like watch-ing marks made. They know that a computer generated image is only as good (or bad) as the programmer, but they don’t respect the im-age. Even the annoy-ing twerps who do bad grafitti on newly painted white walls prefer theirs, or their friends’ personal

scrawlings to spraying through com-puter generated flawless templates. So, the forthcoming opportunity at Shrewsbury later this year for a few cartoonists and caricaturists to work live and large, with real pens, paint, brushes, whatever, on a real, physical surface in front of real people, is im-portant, vital even. Computerised imagery is vital, too. It has its vital place – only last year, the first aircraft designed solely by computer – no wind tunnel testing, no scale model prototypes, flew. It did so predictably and safely. Infalli-bly, even. A distinct advantage for an aeroplane. But the making of flawed images by that essentially flawed creature - the human - is much more engaging. The ever increasing pace of computer de-velopment leaves our precious, de-fining fallibility behind. We accept. We don’t question it. We can’t really because it’s a machine. “To find out what the hell is going on, press 9...”


THE CRITIC

The CriticNice script – shame about the typeface!Foghorn’s resident critic Pete Dredge watches telly so you don’t have to.Is it me or are the majority of come-dians/ stand-ups/ comic actors etc all considerably lacking in the ‘Good Looks Dept’? Is a ‘lived-in’ face a pre-requisite for comedic delivery, or, looking at it from a different view-point, does being a finely-chiselled ‘beefcake’ or drop dead gorgeous ‘eye candy’ make you more unlikely to have the comedic gene coursing through your veins ? Hard as I try I can’t think of a single ‘good-looking’ comedian (did Roger Moore do stand-up in between stints of ‘Ivan Hoe’ and ‘The Saint’? I don’t think so.) I’m struggling to think of any con-ventionally ‘handsome’ contemporary comics in both the male and female de-partment. Lee Evans, Jo Brand, Rich Hall, Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse, Victoria Wood, Al Murray, Michael McIntyre, Joan Rivers, Dara O’Briain, Rory McGrath, Frankie Boyle, Lucy Porter, and the list stretches back to the likes of George Formby, Arthur Askey, Frankie Howerd, Jimmy Clith-eroe, Hilda Baker, Kenneth Williams et al. You would all, if you’re absolutely

honest, give these individuals a wide berth on first inspection had their pho-tos appeared on some internet dating or social networking site but if comic talent is measured as a counter-bal-ance to unconventional beauty then Miranda Hart is destined for mega stardom in the comedy field. Not only that, and much more im-portantly, she is damned funny to

boot. After years learning her trade on the stand-up circuit and with sev-eral supporting roles in tv comedy (Hyperdrive, Not Going Out, Smack the Pony to name a few) she recent-ly reached the televisual pinnacle of hosting BBC2’s Have I got News For You. This was quickly followed by her own BBC2 sitcom, modestly called Miranda. Her style is physical and self-deprecating (with witty, Shake-spearesque asides to the viewer). Hard not to be given her physical presence – tall, large, lumpy hangdog - a pos-sible love child of a bizarre one-off coupling between Frankie Howerd and Marilyn Manson. A certain product of the ‘ make ‘em laugh to stop ‘em bullying me at comp’ school of comedy, or the alternative ‘I have to be funny to be as popular as the pretty girl’ route, Miranda Hart has an infectiously likeable ‘let’s go down the pub for a laugh’ charm about her and her writing skills suggest she will be around for a long time to come. I don’t think we’ll be seeing “Cheryl Cole Live at the Apollo” just yet.

The Gallery Random acts of humour

“I’m looking for a tie that says‘Cower before the architect of your

destruction, pathetic earthling fools.”Pirates - The early years.


CURMUDGEON

Going Swimmingly I watched some professional swim-mers on telly recently. Heavy – shoul-dered lads and lasses all, but with the toothy Americans [inevitably] thrash-ing the Rest of the Cosmos. I’ve heard lots of odd things about swimmers over the years – blokes shaving all their hair off or having their nipples flattened, but on this occasion my at-tention was grabbed by the current go – faster swim suit, a garment which enables already bald and bumpless swimmers to go even faster. Official opinion is divided. Some swimmers seek the moral high ground and won’t

wear them. Others, sick of the reek of Veet, find themselves actually winning events. Soon the suits will be banned, but records set by swimmers wearing them will stand. Which is stupid. Just look how long it took the rest of us to catch up with the Eastern Block phar-macists’ records of the 70s and 80s. [older readers will be interested to know that in middle age, Olga Korbut has at last attained her natural adult height of 7foot 2] By the time unsuited swimmers equal suited records, global warming will have kicked in and we’ll all have gills anyway. Why not make the suits compulsory? I wonder if the discovery of the wheel had a similar effect on the ancients’ chariot racing? Quite possibly. I’ll bet Ben Hur’s great granddad turned up one day with round things on his sledge and wiped the floor with every-body. So all hands got wheels. They should all wear slippy suits is wot I say. And while we’re at it, I’m fed up with Olympic drugs scandals too, which would vanish at a stroke if the running and jumping types were al-lowed to take whatever they liked. The intensely boring 9 million metres would be over in no time whilst jav-elin, hammer and shot – put events would become very very interesting indeed.

“Just the legs, is it...?”

“If he was a chimp he’d havewritten a book by now!”



CARTOONS GERARD WHYMAN

“This week we’re going totry some regression therapy.” “It’s the only way I can get people in on a Sunday.”

“My husband is under a lot of pressure at work.”

“What sort of work are you looking for?”

“Darryl, haven’t you bought your homework off the internet yet?!”

“Oh, darling, it’s the best present ever!”

Cartoons by


THE FOGHORN GUIDE TO

[Apostrophe junkies please note the absence of one in UFOs]

Those of you who like the little quirky bits at the end of The News – “last night, Glossop resident Mrs Muriel Wrench coughed up a nearly – new DVD player. Said a surprised Mrs Wrench, blah, blah etc etc….”, You know the sort of thing… Any-way UFOs hit that slot recently be-cause the official government agen-cy responsible for logging all UFO sightings [OFUFO] has been wound up. Foghorn feels it only right that as an organ which reflects the views of some fairly strange, not-of-this-world people, it should print a brief guide to phenomena which are now deemed too boring to be bothered with.

1] What ARE UFOs? [Still no apos-trophe. Must be driving you mad]

Well, UFOs are what they say on the tin. Unidentified Flying Objects. At least, that’s the boring government name given to the many thousands of unexplained sightings of alien craft over our planet.

2] Should we believe people who say they’ve seen one ?

Of course we should. Take just one example – a graphic description given by Mr Des Leapwell, 37, self employed of Billinge... “Oh, it were huge, an’ all like green with like lights in it an’it were flyin’ really really low an’ it stopped right close to me and like a door opened an’ this like crea-ture got out.” Space does not allow Mr Leapwell’s full account, but the reality of his experience is underlined by his brave insistence on conducting an interview from his hospital bed shortly after being knocked down by a Mobile Library outside the Flange and Gasket public house.

3] Are there really “creatures” in UFOs ?

Most definitely. But you can forget all that E.T. nonsense. The “creatures” conveyed in these galactic ferries are in fact humanoids! Furthermore, Foghorn research has shown that not only have UFOs been visiting us for ages, but that their presence in our skies will soon increase a hundred fold.

4] Do these “creatures” live amongst us ?

Nail on the head! They most certainly do. We need only ask ourselves why official research into UFOs has so ca-sually been terminated to see the aw-ful truth. Before you cast your vote in the upcoming general election, look hard at our political leaders. Look

very hard. Lord Mandelson. Lord Adonis. Lord Vader. The Milibands. Its all there in their names alone. They are not of this world. Soon they will summon fleets of UFOs full of new MPs, from Alpha Centauri and certain parts of Glossop safe in the knowledge that our skies will be open. Therein lies only half the hor-rors awaiting us. Dave Cameron [real Martian name, XZARQ SMOOTH-IE] and pudgy little Osborne are both of the red planet, but blue through and through have swarms of UFOs full of extra terrestrial Moat People hiding behind the moon, just itching to get their pale hands on the gover-nance of our great country.

[NB. Here are a few apostrophes to scatter around the place, for those who missed them. ‘’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ]


Our humble abodes

As a nation we are a conservative lot. Nothing shows this better than our houses; our own little boxes that tell the world how well-off we are and what we feel about garden-ing. Not long after getting married, we lived in New Ash Green in North Kent. This was three miles from Brands Hatch, which gave the place particular appeal to us both. By opening the windows when the Grand Prix was on telly we could hear it in stereo. The village was a new development by the ar-chitect Eric Lyons, who had just made his name with a cool, trendy, housing scheme in Blackheath in Sarf London. At New Ash Green he took his innovative housing concepts further in the form of a new village, with a series of neighbourhood com-munities focused around a small centre of village shops and a village green. Despite having Noel Ed-munds as one of its early residents, the place ap-pealed to young middle-class professionals. The houses were more interesting than the norm and there lay the problem. We still had real Building Societies back then, but they too were a conserva-tive lot and thus anything out of the ordinary gave them the wobblies. They

were very reluctant to grant mort-gages on properties that weren’t the usual housey shape or type of construction. To their horror, some houses even had steel beams in them. Pass the smelling salts. They thought they would be dif-ficult to resell and therefore not a good investment. Of course once word got round that mortgages were hard to get, the houses were indeed difficult to sell. Money lenders had no more brains then than they do now. Because of the mortgage prob-lems Lyons’ company, Span, was forced to sell the development and Bovis Homes took over. They kept the village plan but changed the houses to conventional design. Mortgage money flowed for Bovis boxes and the Penwills moved in. That was back in the 1970s. In the same era the dreaded and hideous-ly influential Essex Design Guide appeared. The fine upstanding members of Essex County Council were people who Knew What They Liked. They didn’t like the sort of housing schemes that developers were putting before them. There-fore the Essex planners in their infinite wisdom decided it would

be a good idea to produce a design guide to show the style and form of houses and housing development layouts that would sail through the planning process. This they did and the inevitable happened... develop-ers didn’t take it as a guide but as a manual. All new Essex houses henceforth looked like the house designs in the Guide. And those designs were safe, twee and dull. Other Council planners saw this and in their equally infinite wisdom also thought it was a good idea that made their lives much easier. They used the Essex Design Guide for themselves. Result - all housing schemes in the land looked the same apart from the colour of the bricks or the occasional require-ment for artificial stone. Uncon-ventional, innovative housing de-sign was squashed. It was financial madness even to suggest it. Some geezer in Essex has a lot to answer for. Then there is Poundbury, Prince Charles’ housing development in Dorset, Classical Twee on a grand scale. But that, I think, is for a fu-ture article.

Roger Penwill

BUILDINGS IN THE FOG


THE LAST WORD

Mansard Trevelyan didn’t make mis-takes, but now, chained to the buffer beam of the speeding goods engine – a Fowler 0-6-0 from the exhaust note, probably out – shedded from the Derby Works around ’05 or ’06 he thought, glancing down at the iron number plate just visible by his pin-ioned left ankle, he wasn’t so sure. Longitudinal riveting on the plate, and the clank of a worn bearing suggested a Gresley rebuild, but Trevelyan had no time to ponder further as the locomotive thundered on into the night. He thanked his lucky stars for heavy woollen socks, not to mention the stout thornproof Harris Tweed suit recently purchased from Ghastly’s of Bond Street which presently absorbed the pressure from the steel bonds which re-fused to yield, even to the increasingly urgent straining of Trevelyan’s athletic frame. Light glinted on the padlock secur-ing him to the handrails which ran around the outer edges of the engine’s smokebox as the juggernaut sped past

Fittock’s String Works and for the first time since he’d been overpowered by Dr Demenzia’s hired thugs, Trevelyan knew where he was – on the up line out of Dimley Parva and heading for… Suddenly he was aware of the engine’s speed slackening, gradually slowing to no more than walking pace. “Great Hounds of Hell!” thought Trevelyan, straining with renewed urgency at the chains, “This must be Yeoman’s Bot-tom – and that’s the last stop before Bighampton Slurry Pits!” All became clear. Demenzia’s ruffi-ans had obviously thought that if Trev-elyan hadn’t succumbed to the terrify-ing journey chained to the boiler of a speeding loco,an ordeal which would have killed most men, he must certainly die in the slimy blackness of a slurry pit. The fiends were probably waiting there already, having careered through the night in a powerful black saloon. He imagined them now, their ugly criminal faces alight with expectation; Johnny No-Nose, Big ‘Arry and Red Angus, the worst of London’s criminal under-

class; men without pity… Suddenly, a blurred movement high and to his right! What’s this? A swaying figure lurched around the boiler’s end. A begrimed face smiled broadly, and the wiry fig-ure of Bert Nubbins, fireman, stooped in front of Trevelyan. “Whoa! It’s you Mr Trevelyan! Chained to the front of our engine again, eh? He, he, Tommy said there was somefink not quite right with the old gel. Bert, ‘e says to me – when we slow for Yeoman’s Bottom, nip round the front and see if its that Mr Trevelyan’s got himself into another scrape. And here you are, prop-er trussed up – same chain as last time, eh ?”

To be continued!...

The Trevelyan Files Foghorn offers the tantalising first chapter. It’s up to you to keep it going...

... but only with your help! Here’s your chance to contribute to Fog-horn! If you fancy your hand at writing a future chapter of The Trevelyan Files, let us know!

email us at [email protected]

FOGHORN (ONLINE) ISSN 1759-6440

“So much for Google - there’s nothingabout hiring contract killers!”

Foghorn - No. 43

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