This week the Westmorland Gazette had two cracking candidates for the front page cartoon.
The first involved the Great North Swim. This marathon event, which involves swimming the width of Windermere (the lake not the village), has been running for millions of years. Probably. This year 9,000 swimmers signed up to participate. Unfortunately, the lake has been suffering from toxic algae so, at the very last minute, the event was cancelled. Wailing and gnashing of Speedos all round.
Elsewhere, Tony Blair has been promoting his autobiography, The Journey. One gem to emerge is that he regrets the 2004 Hunting Act, having realised that fox hunting wasn’t the preserve of “a small clique of weirdo inbreds, delighting in cruelty” (his words, not mine - I couldn’t possibly comment). Cue strident calls for a repeal of the legislation.
I thought it rather sweet that this should cause Blair so much distress when he appears to more comfortable with other, slightly more controversial, decisions.
I submitted four cartoon sketches, which you can see below. One of them was deemed too political, which is a pity as it was my personal favourite. See if you can spot which of the other three met the editor’s approval. You can find out tomorrow if you were right by (a) buying The Westmorland Gazette, (b) visiting my website or (c) holding your computer upside down and scrolling to the answer at the foot of the screen.
Numero Deux pour moi.
ReplyDeleteI tried holding my computer upside down but things kept falling out of it so I stopped doing that and decided to click the link instead.
Also, just want to say excellent commentary, Colin. One of your best, ol' man.
ReplyDeleteTa for comment. If you find holding the computer upside down a bit heavy, you could try deleting the bold fonts. This also works for making laptops lighter.
ReplyDeleteI definitely rate cartoon number three - what a great comment.
ReplyDeleteColin is one of the most interesting regulars in the Westmorland Gazette's editorial office.
He arrives on Wednesday afternoon, while reporters like me are frantically trying to wrap up our week's stories before the paper goes to print.
Colin reads over our top articles - often before they are fixed in their final spaces on news pages - and then scurries away to the corner of the news room to put his ideas down.
In under half an hour he will be back in front of the editor with three or four potential cartoons. The witty ones we use, the controversial ones we like to stick on our walls.
There's definitely a potential book to be made from them one day.
The cheque is in the post.
ReplyDelete