So, at this year’s Cartoon Art Trust Awards I won the award for Joke Cartooning, which is the first award of any kind I’ve ever won in my life. It was held at the posh Mall Galleries, and I was sat on the Private Eye table with a bunch of far superior cartoonists and it was all a bit dangerously flattering for an egotistical twat such as myself. Grizelda was there, she is now well over a hundred years old, but still a game bird and kept poking Kenneth Baker with her umbrella and calling him “Sonny”. I told off Mr. Baker for underfunding my comprehensive in the eighties so that my classroom was a portakabin with no roof, but I said it in my head so he didn’t hear and just went around being charming.
I’m vegetarian and diabetic and they cooked me a lovely meal, so I really felt like a fussy North London pillock. Martin Rowson gave a thunderous speech about Charlie Hebdo and how we are all going to be killed, then got us to stand up in solidarity with persecuted cartoonists around the world, which resulted in me bumping my head as I was cowering under the table in fear at the time. After an auction to raise funds for the Cartoon Museum, comedy legend Barry Cryer read a poem about me and I got the award. It was well past my knackered old man’s bedtime so I sort of ran on the stage, squeaked “thanks” and ran away like an oddbod.
Many thanks to all involved, I am now an award-winning cartoonist. Suck on that, everyone who thinks I’m crap!