Once it was Giles, now you could argue Matt is is our best known national newspaper cartoonist – his witty, speedily drawn illustrations regularly displayed on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.
Like Carl Giles, who lived in Ipswich, Matt Pritchett has local connections with a home on the Suffolk/Norfolk border.
Ever present is the daily search for the perfect cartoon and caption, plus the worry that it might not work in the next day’s paper. After illustrating the Telegraph’s Peterborough column and feature pages he got his chance to become a front page regular on the back of a mistake. The paper had got its masthead date wrong and a prominent editor’s apology was needed. It was decided a cartoon would work well so Matt’s punchline of two talking heads was: “I hope I have a better Thursday than I had yesterday.”
The trick to making his cartoon characters work is getting their faces right. “Does it look like they might be saying the words I’m putting into their mouths? I might screw up a few bits of paper getting that bit right but once I’m happy with them everything else sort of takes care of itself.”
He never realised but a next door neighbour of Matt’s parents is the regular butt of many of his jokes. “I remember he wanted every car in the street outside his home to be pointing the same way. I picture him when I’m drawing a certain elderly man baffled by life.”
For comic cartoonist Barrie Appleby, drawing and art was a much needed escape from a tough upbringing in a South Yorkshire mining community. “My earliest memory is my mother drawing a stickman and showing me how to bring it to life by doing more and then flicking the pages,” he told Bury & West Suffolk magazine.
Home is now a cottage in Newton Green, just a pitching wedge shot from the village’s pretty golf course.
After getting a job as an art assistant for a Walt Disney comic, Barrie picked up work as a freelancer doing strips for titles such as Wham! and Buster. Next came work for D C Thomson drawing strips for the Dandy and Beano when the regular artist was on holiday.
‘For the last 50 years I have been lucky enough to bring to life some of the most iconic cartoon characters such as Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger and Cuddles and Dimples,” he says.
More information at www.barrieappleby.com
Nick Butterworth – creator of the popular Percy the Park Keeper books – was originally a freelance graphic designer; a handy talent to support his other skill as a storyteller.
“I always loved drawing from my earliest years,” says Nick who lives on the Essex/Suffolk border. “I looked at and noticed things and responded with my artwork. You can also learn a lot by trying to copy a Ronald Searle or Mort Drucker illustration.”
Some of his work has been turned into animated TV series – Q Pootle 5 is one – and he enjoys collaborating with other people. “ The trick is to avoid egos . . . everyone needs to buy into the importance of the end result.”
Over the years he has visited primary schools in Suffolk and Essex to share his love of books, stories and readings. “Children like the idea that I grew up in a sweet shop,” he adds.
