Plum Duff

I've spent the past couple of weeks wrestling with festive wrapping paper and turkey dinners- well, in my mind at least.

It's that time of year when Private Eye magazine asks for ideas for their Christmas cards.

In the past I've had one or two taken.

I'm not so sure about the ideas I came up with this year-  man, a couple of them are bleak...

So- let's not dwell on that- instead here's a fluffy cartoon from last week's Spectator magazine.

(maybe that's an Xmas pud being baked/destroyed ??)

Kevin McCloud

I go up to that London a fair bit- have done for many years.
It's been getting quite tall recently.

A cartoon in The Oldie magazine.

I dream of Jeannie

A while ago I tried my hand at the 3D arts.
It was meant to be a Minotaur reading a book.
I ran out of the air-drying clay, so it became a (poorly sculpted) Minotaur without hands or the bull's head (which I guess is the important bit for representing a Minotaur).

Fast forward about 3 years, and I try my hand at watch repairs. It was a cheap but cool looking 1970's era LED digital watch.
The market stall owner on the Golborne road said he couldn't guarantee it working, so I got hold of it for a fiver and took it home.
With great skill, and some solvent, I was able to ease out the ancient corroded battery and replace it with a nice and shiny fully charged one.
With great ham-fistedness I then unintentionally destroyed the printed circuit board with a screwdriver.
So close...
Pah!

So, two half a**ed objects-  put them together with a bit of blutack and what do you get?
(and with the addition of some books from a charity shop)

Tour de France

I had a hack about in my garden the other day.
Something odd was jutting out of a rather overgrown patch.
I grabbed hold and pulled.
And pulled.
And pulled.

Just needs a new inner tube I reckon.

Snake Oil

I can't recall exactly when I came up with the idea for this cartoon, but it was many years ago.

Ever the industrious get-up-and-go chap that I am I only just drew it last month.

It is in this week's Spectator magazine.

I reckon there must have been some news story at the time about alternative treatments and medicines becoming available on the National Health Service.

I originally was going to have just the standard doctor type coming up with the line, but decided to try a new-age hippy type character.

I dunno now. Is it over-egging the gag a bit?

Ah, well- it sold, so I should let it go.

"A Horrible Life Un-ruined and then Re-ruinated a Lot"

I have a few cartoons floating around in a couple of publications right now.

This one I started to draw without having any idea what the caption might be.

What's it about?

I dunno- something about how fat kids are these days, I guess.

Or how self-centred, and without compassion or empathy some can be.

I'm sure they're not all like that though.

But with their smooth skin, optimism and general lack of down-troddeness by not yet realising the utter futility of life, they are worthy targets of mockery.

Bottom of the barrel

Couple of cartoons in this week's Spectator magazine.

This one I have been dreading seeing in print.

I made a mistake in the drawing.

In my defence, I realised what I had done when finishing off the drawing and amended the error. I then decided I wanted to change the colouring slightly. I accidentally re-coloured the wrong version and popped that one in the post.

Anyway, here it is.

Can you see what is wrong?
Here's the 'correct' version. Spot the difference...