Issue 38The best of British cartooning talentFOGHORN

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NEWS

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

FOGHORNFOGHORN Issue 38

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: billstott@lineone.net

Foghorn Sub-EditorRoger Penwill

tel: +44 (0) 1584 711854email: roger@penwill.com

Foghorn Layout/DesignTim Harries

tel: + 44 (0) 1633 780293email: foghorn@procartoonists.org

PCO Press Officeemail: media@procartoonists.org

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: Adrian TealBack Cover: Rupert Besley

Foghorn (Online) ISSN 1759-6440

“One of the perks of working here is that you don’t have to go outside for a smoke”

How Foghorn has evolved! From its honourable roots as a thoughtful re-corder of the erm, thoughtful side of cartooning, its grown into an utterly ir-responsible, thoroughly silly magazine specializing in funny gags and disre-spectful articles. Its not THAT inappro-priate though – at this auspicious time. Far from always being the serious seek-er of scientific truth, Mr Darwin was in fact, a barrel of laughs – a constant source of witty one-liners about finches’

beaks, and always on hand in the Beagle’s mess with his uku-lele and a couple of verses of “There was an Iguana from Bolton…” Read on, he gets top billing in here.

Bill Stott, Foghorn Editor

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festi-val 2009 is on 24th - 26th April. As Shrews-bury celebrates the 200th anniversary of the natural scientist, Charles Darwin, its most famous son, the theme of this year’s Festi-val is Science (as ably demonstrated on the right by Festival mascot, Barry the Shrew.) Since 2003 the town has hosted this inter-national event which attracts around 40 full-time, professional cartoonists and caricatur-ists from the UK and abroad. The Festival offers unique opportunities to see artists at work; 20 of them on huge boards in The Square during the weekend, others drawing caricatures and some running cartoon workshops for all ages. For moredetails, go to the centre pages.

The Appliance of ScienceShrewsbury gears up for another cartoon invasion.

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It’s hard to miss Darwin’s presence this year, 2009, what with it being the bicentennary of his birth and 150 years since the publication of On The Origin Of Species. You could, however, be forgiven for missing the presence of a gentleman by the name of Alfred Russel Wal-lace. Wallace conceived of the theory of evolution by natural selection totally independently of Darwin. Yet he hard-ly ever gets any of the credit for the theory. It’s true that Darwin came up with the idea first, but he then sat on it for many years fearing the consequences of putting it out into the world. It was only when Wallace wrote to Darwin explaining his own ideas on the subject that Darwin realised that he’d better get into print soon.Don’t get the idea that Darwin rushed into print with On The Origin Of Species in order to claim the fame. Darwin was a very decent man by all ac-counts, and the first public presentation of the theory of evolu-tion by natural selec-tion was actually a joint effort by Darwin and Wallace together. They produced a joint paper titled ‘On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection’, which they pre-sented to the Linnean Society in Lon-don in 1858. Strangely, despite the bombshells in the paper, its pre-sentation to the society went almost unnoticed, even within the society. Shame on them!

Darwin published On The Origin Of Species a year later and this time its implications were noted. The rest is history. Now it’s time for me to go a little iconoclastic. The fact that Wallace, himself a re-spected scientist, came up with the theory of evolution by natural selec-tion independently of Darwin means that even if Darwin hadn’t come up with the theory it would nevertheless still have been with us today - thanks to Wallace. I’d actually go further than that, and say that even if Wallace

hadn’t come up with the idea either the theory would still be with us, as someone else would have devised it very soon. The early to mid nineteenth century seems to have been the time when things were just right for the theory to be conceived of. It was in the air. It’s the same with many theories, inven-tions, discoveries and other products of human endeavour. There may be only a matter of weeks between one person coming up with an idea (and thus becoming immortalised as the idea’s originator) and someone else

coming up with it (and thus being forgotten forever).

Due to this tendency of ideas to be ‘in the air’ I’m not actually very keen on

attributing whole theories, discoveries or inventions to

individual people, geniuses though they may be.

On top of this, I’ve now lost count of the number of times that I’ve

discovered that a particular idea that’s always been attrib-

uted to a particular person was thought up years (or even centuries) earlier by someone else, but that that person either couldn’t prove it or publicise it (or wasn’t

such an effective self-publicist). (Note: Dar-

win definitely didn’t fall into the self-publicist category, being a man of great humility.) I suppose we like to

attribute ideas to specific individuals because it helps us to humanise history, but that doesn’t stop it being a slightly skewed way to look

at things, and it’s defi-nitely unfair to all of those ‘almost’ people who were a week late with their ideas.

Monkey BusinessChris Madden gives credit where it’s due.

FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN

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BLOGHORN

Bloghorn is delighted to report that one of our patrons made her debut per-formance in a tricky art form recently. Times columnist and BBC Radio Four presenter Libby Purves took on the art of stand-up comedy on behalf of Comic Relief. We know she was nervous about do-ing this, but we also know her to be a woman with a highly developed sense for the ridiculous. Why else would she choose to associate herself with car-toonists? Mentored by Perrier award-winning comedian Milton Jones, Libby took to the stage for ‘Stand up with the Stars’ and entertained the crowd with tales of voiceover tedium (“three hours in a cel-lar in Soho, repeating the same phrase over and over”) and the evolutionary process to television presenter.

To see Stand up with the Stars, go to the Radio 4 website at :www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/

Patron stands up

Barry Fantoni is well known as a cartoonist for The Times and Private Eye. He also pens for Private Eye the notorious obituary-style poems un-der the name ‘E. J. Thribb, 17 ½ ’ and is the man be-hind the Heir of Sorrows series by ‘Sylvie Krin’ in the same magazine. How-ever, his private life as an artist will be revealed for the first time in the exhibi-tion ‘Public Eye, Private Eye’ at Thomas Williams Fine Art, in Old Bond Street, from 22 April 2009. Fantoni (b. London, 1940) began his career at Camberwell College of Arts & Crafts (1954-

58), from which he was expelled ‘for setting fire to a chair in the common room, being sick in the lavatory, [and] going after the birds’. He nevertheless returned to Camberwell and continued to work as an artist for a further twenty-five years, mak-ing a major contribution to the development of Pop Art and teaching, amongst others, Sex Pistols man-ager, Malcolm McLaren and the group’s graphic designer, Jamie Reid at Croydon College of Art, where fellow teachers in-cluded Bridget Riley and Howard Hodgkin. It is hard to find any area in the transforming

decade of the 1960s that Fantoni didn’t make his own. His career at Private Eye began in 1963 and he remains a member of the editorial staff to this day. He was the front-page cartoonist for The Times from 1983-1990, a regular illustrator for The Radio Times and The Listener, art critic to The Times and a music reviewer for Punch.

Barry Fantoni: Public Eye, Private Eye is on at Thomas Williams Fine Art, 22 Old Bond Street, London W1S 4PY

22 April – 22 May 2009.

Public Eye, Private EyeA new exhibition features the work of Barry Fantoni.

Artist of the Month for March 2009 is The Surreal McCoy, whose cartoons have appeared in The Independent, The London Evening Standard, The London Jewish News, The Fortean Times and The Oldie magazines among others. The Surreal McCoy also held the post of Cartoonist-In-Resi-dence on Sandi Toksvig’s daily show for LBC radio, drawing live on air and publishing a daily cartoon on the show’s web-site. Surreal has also provided cartoons and illustrations for San-di’s latest book, Girls Are Best, which is published by Random House. McCoy publishes daily cartoons and also makes book illustrations and animation.

Bloghorn asked Surreal the usual searching question: What made you become a cartoonist? As there’s no history of madness in the family I can only as-sume it must have been drunken musicians laughing at my in-coherent doodling on the tour bus. Since then its been a gradual but dignified slide down to where I am now.

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The self-analysed cartoonistCaricaturist Adrian Teal writes about the paralysis of analysis.

BLOGHORN

Random acts of humour

“It’s my theory of probability”

A PhD student phoned me yesterday, want-ing to pick my brains. She’s doing research into politicians and how political cartoons are perceived, and emailed me a list of searching questions which she’ll be putting to me in a telephone interview in a day or so. I’m happy to help, though she tells me she has already spoken to Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, so I’m not sure I’ll have anything more insightful and enlightening to offer than these two giants of the Comment page.And so to confession time … The problem is that I tend not to think too deeply about what I do – at least, not that often. Analysing the cartoonist is like tak-ing a butterfly apart to see how it works. I don’t draw because I think I can change the world, or to destabilize governments, though it is highly rewarding to have a pop at a ve-nal politico now and again. I draw because I have to. At 34, I can’t see myself doing anything else. It is as much a part of my life as shaving, or yawning. The actual process can be agonising, although the labour pains are usually forgotten when the artwork turns out well. Sure, I like to be praised when I do a good job, but if I’m honest, I don’t even enjoy cartooning 100 per cent of the time. I suspect most cartoonists are the same.Correct me if I’m wrong.

An elderly boffin once saidWe’re all chimpanzees, so God’s dead.It angered the Church,Which was knocked off its perch,And now we spend Sundays in bed.

Royston Robertson.

There was an old fellow called DarwinWhose arguments prove quite alarmin’,‘Cos he states we’re descendedFrom apes, but amended,Well, is that evolved or self-harmin’?

Nathan Ariss.

The choicest ‘Science’ themedlimericks taken from

the procartoonists.org forum...

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FEATURE TIM HARRIES

It’s all Rolf’s fault He blinded me with science, sings Tim Harries.

Hands up if you owned a Stylophone. According to my extensive research (I looked it up on Wikipedia) three mil-lion of these things have been sold, so chances are at least somebody reading this was fortunate enough to have been given one as a Christmas or Birthday present, no doubt to the immediate re-gret of everyone else in the room. For the rest of you who are wondering what I’m blathering on about, a little explanation is perhaps needed. Having decided to write something on Music and Science, I contemplated some of the weightier matters - ‘musical pitch cognition in non-tonal contexts’, or perhaps ‘interfaces for computational approaches to music composition and sequencing’ but decided that life’s too short, so I’d write about that strange musical device Rolf Harris used to pimp on the telly. I’m nothing if not shallow. Back to my point... The Stylophone is truly a work of genius - a magical meld-ing of Electronics and Music! Invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis (I was also in-vented in 1967, my mother assures me Mr Jarvis was not involved) the Stylo-phone is a ‘miniature stylus operated synthesizer’ that sounds remarkably like a slightly angry bee. If your sole requirement in the sphere of music is to sound like a slightly angry bee, then this is indeed the instrument for you. If, however, you require anything that

sounds remotely pleasing to the ear, you probably need to look elsewhere. Of course, three million sales indi-cates that angry bees were very much in vogue at the time. I suppose you can’t blame parents for buying their kids a Stylophone - Rolf was very convincing in those ads. How I looked forward to ‘playing those rapid glissandos in seconds with-out ever having touched a musical in-strument before’. Begone years of study and practice! How I’d laugh in the face of scales. Hah. And the sounds! Such magical and varied sounds! The basic organ tone (angry bee) could, with the flick of a switch, become vibrato (angry wob-bly bee). If you were particularly flush, a ‘Treble’ model was also available, producing the same sounds an octave above (angry bee kicked in goolies). Rolf painted a magical musical pic-ture - Christmas Eve, a roaring log fire with everyone crowded round the fam-ily Stylophone as Tiny Tim belts out Silent Night (complete with glissandos and full vibrato). To top it all off, David Bowie used it on Space Oddity. I HAD to get one!I didn’t get one. I had to make do with borrowing my older brother’s. He’d saved up enough money to get the standard model and was

knocking out faultless versions of the hits of the day (Queen, Sparks) while I was content to simply play ‘three blind mice’ until the mice probably wished they were deaf as well. My memories of what happened to our Stylophone are vague. I’ve got a feeling it was replaced by a state of the art Ca-sio VL1 mini keyboard (complete with built in calculator - no I’m not making this up) but I can’t remember the Sty-lophone actually getting chucked out. There were three million of these things made - where did they go? Lofts? Land-fill? Recycled to live a long and fruitful life as Sinclair C5’s? Who knows... However, one amazing fact is that if you laid out three million Stylophone’s end to end, you’d have wasted a lot of time. So what of the Stylophone’s future? Well, rather than languishing in the ‘where are they now?’ file, its cult sta-tus grew to the point where production restarted in 2007 with a new generation discovering the dubious pleasures of this strange instrument. You can play along with your MP3s, download it to

your iPhone and do a host of equally new and exciting

things. It still sounds like a slightly an-

gry bee though.

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FEATURE SHREWSBURY

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival 2009 is on 24th - 26th April. As Shrewsbury celebrates the 200th anni-versary of the natural scientist, Charles Darwin, its most famous son, the theme of this year’s Festival is Science. Highlights of the 2009 Festival include exhibitions of work by political cartoonist Steve Bell and eminent Czech cartoon-ist Miroslav Bartak. We are also thrilled to be showing an exhibition of cartoons about science from the year of Darwin’s birth, 1809 to the present day. The British Cartoon Archive, the Cartoon Museum and the British Museum have lent work for ‘Science Friction’ and the selection has been made by Festival patron Profes-sor Colin Pillinger. Cartoons by Kate Charlesworth, car-toonist for The New Scientist, will also be exhibited and a big hit of the Festival is always the themed selling exhibition of new work, originals and prints by Festival cartoonists - ‘Boffination’ sees cartoon artists from all over the UK and beyond interpreting the theme of the Science of Nature with their usual respect and rever-ence.

Selected Festival Highlights:

Friday 24th and Saturday 25th April, 11am – 4pm, in the Town Square. Car-toonists work on giant 8ft x 6ft drawing boards to create art on this year’s festival theme of Science.

Who Do You Think You Are? The op-portunity to acquire a brand new body in a non-violent version of the village stocks. In “reverse caricaturing” the artist draws the subject’s body life-size on a giant canvas below their head. Order the body you as-pire to, or put yourself at the mercy of the artist! Bring your cameras.

Saturday 25th April, 11am – 4pm in the Town Square. Free cartoon caricatures made in the Town Square.

Friday 24th and Saturday 25th April, 11am – 4pm - Darwin Shopping Centre, lower level. Humurals are instant-on-the -spot drawings by the festival cartoonists which build a wall of cartoons.

Sunday 26th April at 10am – 11.30am - Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery. Meet the Cartoonists: a relaxed morning and chance to meet the Festival cartoonists informally and enjoy the exhibition in the Gallery.

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FEATURE SHREWSBURY

“It’s not as if that’s all I do: I write poetry, I’m very much involvedin charity work... why single out that one thing?”

“That new species we just discovered - it’s facing extinction.”

“Just wait until Mr. Darwin see this...”

Science Friction, 23rd April – 31st May, Shrewsbury Museum and Gallery - 200 years of poking fun at science and scientists. Cartoons from the British Cartoon Archive, British Museum and Cartoon Museum alongside 21st century work, selected by Profes-sor Colin Pillinger Open Daily 10am – 5pm (4pm Sundays)

‘Life, the Universe and (Almost) Everything’ 23rd April to 31st May at Cath Tate Cards, Hills Lane– cartoons from the regular strip in New Scientist by Kate Charles-worth whose books include ‘Exotic Species – a Field Guide to Brit-ish Gays’and whose cartoons have also appeared in The Guardian and The Independent. Open Mon – Sat 10am – 5pm and Sunday 26th April 10am – 4pm

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FEATURE SHREWSBURY

“Canine Research Laboratories strenuously deny allegations of cruelty to our experi-mental subjects. All our subjects are as

happy as a dog with two tails.”

“They’re responding well to the chlorophyll supplements...”

“Just a theory of course...”

Boffination, 13th April – 11th May at Bear Steps Gallery – Festival cartoonists treat the great themes of 2009 - sci-ence, nature and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin in their usual respectful way. Selling exhibition of originals and prints including lots of new work by artists from all over the UK and beyond. Open daily 10am – 4pm

Steve Bell, 13th April – 11th May, at Bear Steps Gallery.

Miroslav Bartak – 13th April – 6th June, Theatre Severn, Chapel Bar.

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FEATURE GUIDE TO EVOLUTION

“Origination of animals and plants from earlier forms’’ is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. Wow! Stuff turning into other stuff ! Got to see that! Well you can’t OK? It all happens really, really slowly. Not like mummy and Daddy loving each other and babies being born etc. Evolution was invented by a chap called Charles Darwin who had huge eye-brows and liked sticking pins through beetles He lived ages ago when that sort of thing was allowed. Darwin also col-lected worms. Nowadays, he would be offered counselling. As a result, Darwin noticed that unlike beetles, worms did not have legs. Some experts claim that Darwin had noticed the same difference between worms and humans, but sticking pins through hu-mans was illegal even then, and Darwin only had short pins anyway. So on 27th December 1831, having got Christmas out of the way and picked all the glitter out of his eyebrows, Darwin went off with a bunch of sailors on a ship called The Beagle to the Galapa-gos Islands to find out if the curls at the front of certain tortoises shells al-lowed tortoises on some islands to eat

stuff which grew higher up trees than on other islands. OK so far? Whilst he was there, Darwin discov-ered loads of other things like ocean going lizards [known these days as “bankers”], and that whilst his very own eyebrows looked like Red Admi-ral caterpillars, they were in fact just eyebrows, so he stopped sticking pins in them and realized that way back in his family history, somebody must have mated with a lobster. On his return, he kept that bit secret, because people back then were very sniffy about interfering

with crustaceans. Darwin is remembered these days mostly as the chap who said we are de-scended from apes. This caused a great deal of confusion and indignation, par-ticularly from people who looked like apes, or had blue bottoms*. There is no record of what the apes thought.*The number of blue-bottomed humans alive in the mid 19th century has never been accurately established. Victorians were sniffy about that too.

Artist of the Month for February 2009 was Neil Dishington – he signs his work as Dish. He’s been widely published in Private Eye, The Spectator, Punch, The Daily Express, The Guardian, The Oldie and in many trade and professional pub-lications including Financial Advisor, Medican Publishing, Save and Prosper and Scottish Banker. He specialises in one-line jokes and in “interpreting” written articles.

Bloghorn asked him how he started out as a cartoonist: Well, I was always one of those children who drew “car-toons” on the back of my maths book rather than listening to the teacher explaining the Pythagoras Theorem, so I guess that was the start. After five years at Art College painting pictures that were going to change the world, I took up teaching in order to pay the rent. I met a certain David McKee, he of Mr.Benn and Elmer the Elephant fame. We shared a flat and I discovered he had started cartooning. He was a big influence on me. Then I got married and within months my wife was expecting, so in order to boost funds I sent some cartoons to The Daily Mirror and sold one for £5 … never looked back after that!

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LETTERS TO THE ED

The Gallery

Letters to theEditor

Snail Mail: The Editor, Foghorn Magazine, 7 Birch Grove, Los-tock Green, Northwich. CW9 7SS E-mail: billstott@lineone.net

No laughing matterDear Editor, Here at the Arts Council Ar-chive we have big boxes full of some quite good traditional drawings, many portraying hu-mans. Many of these humans have bubble-like things coming out of their mouths, with words inside the bubbles. Others have words underneath. Some have no words at all. Our experts are at a loss as to exactly what these drawings are. Gregor Plimp, the celebrated curved linear expressive critic suggests that they are “instan-taneous momenti mori of a learned experience.” The care-taker says they are cartoons and can often be found laughing out loud at these puzzling artefacts. He says they are funny. What is Funny? Any help you may be able to offer on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,Sasha Ditmar-Flange

Curator, Stuff We Don’t GetThe Arts Council

Missing beverageDear Editor, I appear to have mislaid my

cup of tea. This piece of crock-ery has some sentimental value but all I have to show for it is a pair of brown rings on some publication. As this publication is yours, can you shed some light?

Yours,Margo (nee Margot)

A right CharlieDear Foghorn, My great - great - great Aunt Alice Figgis nee Spleenblast went to school with Charles Darwin and recalls in her diary that he, “is a mischevious boy, so full of fun, despite his huge eyebrows which even in these hirsute times are unusual in a nine year old. He seldom does tolerate the plaits his loving mother does work them into, and is oft seen to trip and cause himself to fall.. Today he was beaten soundly by the headmas-ter, the Rev Buttress for shout-ing, “You’re all monkeys!” at the girls during poker work. Little did they guess how right he was.

Yours truly,Edward Figgis [retd]

Random acts of humour

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CURMUDGEON

Gardeners World

They’re at it as I type, my organised, dil-igent, patient and calm neighbours, safe in the knowledge that all their grubbing about will pay glorious dividends. It’s minus five outside and yet there they are, adjusting the frost nets on their big-gus orangwossnamiums. You only have to peep into their garage [possible by standing on the sideboard] to know that their garden’s going to look better than yours come spring; that no greedy little tribe of invertebrates is going to scoff THEIR Flame of the Forest leaves, and THEIR lawn’s going to be ALL grass, not 70% moss and bald bits. The garage is pristine. A hook for everything, and everything on a hook. Shelves with la-bels and correspondingly correct things above the labels. If a label says “Edg-

ing Shears”, then below it are edging shears – where they should be – on their designated hook and not underneath the pile of soggy cardboard you dumped in YOUR garage after the disastrous IKEA flat-pack bedroom suite episode. Yes, I know... creepy, but true nonetheless.It gets worse. Their gardening is Sci-entific! Not for them the vagueness of buying a bag of mouldy brown stuff to bung the puny green things you bought at the B&Q sale in, or a simple peasant’s faith that a big jug of hot water will persuade the ants to clear off. Oh dear me, no.“I see the winterinium panzo-nias are exhibiting signs of bladderblight – we’d better spray them with a solution of nanosezium. Now let me see, where’s the nano-sezium spray? Ah! There it is, on the nanosezium hook.”You get the drift.And it’s only jealousy – not of their garden in spring, which is, let’s face it, all a bit formal and twin-settish – but of their dogged, organized patience, and, I suppose, of their long-suffering silence about my front garden which is the well-spring of every dande-lion for miles around. Not once have they even

casually asked, “So when are you go-ing to do something about this bloody war-zone?”Nevertheless, I do love those rare oc-casions when they’re out – down the Garden Cantre buying another 50 gal-lon drum of Aphideath – and the hefty tabby from No.11 takes a languid dump in their anemones.

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CARTOONS WILBUR DAWBARN

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There Be Dragons…

When Darwin arrived at the Galapagos, he and the crew of the Beagle sought in vain for signs of civilization; fisherfolks’ cottages, a friendly tavern – that sort of thing. Some of the more worldly sailors scanned the shoreline for sight of buxom wenches with whom they might do a bit of scrimshaw. However, according to the recently dis-covered journal of one Josiah Fittock, the Beagle’s string fettler, by Prof. Lars Maarsbaar, head of the Department of Improbable Claims at Goole University, signs of intelligent human-like life were indeed found. Josiah takes up the story... “It were a Tuesday morning fine and fair with the good ship luffing a thwartbeam avast the twoggle [that’s enough marine jargon. Ed] and I accompanied Mr Ivo-ries McThump [ship’s pianist] ashore for to get some henswart plants for to ease the Master’s discomfit.” [Henswart –Trum-pus victorianus] is a seaside plant used to cure flatulence. Fitzroy, Beagle’s master suffered mightily and had twice blown his own vessel off course]. Fittock continues; “Old Ivories and me

was just returning to our jolly boat when we spied one o’ them queer tortiss[sic] beasts a clumping down the path. “Ooh look”, says I, “There be one ‘o them queer tortiss beasts a- clumpin’ down the path” “Aye,” says Ivories, “An’ what be amiss wi’ its shell?” We both peered a plenty then, for along the side of the beast’s horny back were tiny winders all adecked with flowry cur-tains. We stood transfixed as the tortiss drew nigh. Then, to our bewilderment and disbelief, a little winder was thrown open and our ears were assailed by a high squeaky voice telling us to quit that place and begone as ‘twas a Residents’ Only area and hadn’t we seen the signs. There, right before our living eyes was a most tiny feller leanin’ out the winder, wavin’ his arms and a’ cursin’ us roundly. Well, I need not tell you that we were

sore afraid. Then the little fairy fellow leans further out and shouts down to the beast’s great head, and the tortiss does a mighty jerk forrad agin down the path, with its tiny occupant mutterin somesuch about getting the clutch fixed. I never seen the like afore. Old Ivories an’ me were so unnerved we ad to finish the two gallon gubroy of rum we brung with us there and then. We told our tale back on the Beagle to a Captain much tormented by personal explosions, rent trowsers and bilious mood. Ivories and I spent three days and nights in the brig then, and were sworn to secrecy. Closeted as he was on the orlop deck with his ‘speriments, and always wearing earmuffs ‘ cause o the capn’s problem, I doubt Mr Darwin were ever apprised of our discoverie[sic]”

Bill Stott

Random acts of humour

“Children, this is your new science teacher.”

BUILDINGS IN THE FOG

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THE LAST WORD

The CriticFat Bloke plus Thin Bloke = Sliced Bread + 1Foghorn’s resident critic Pete Dredge watches telly so you don’t have to.Repeat after me…Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are fun-ny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are fun-ny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are fun-ny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden

are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne &

Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny,

Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are fun-ny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny…

OK, let’s just have another check.

Erm, sorry, still no change…keep repeating after me… Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Cor-den are funny, Horne & Corden are funny, Horne & Corden are funny…

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