Around Town

On Wednesday evening, Norman Lamont will perform the honours at the opening of a temporary exhibition at the Political Cartoon Gallery. He wasn’t the first choice, but David Cameron pleaded a prior engagement. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? It would take exceptional bravado to choose to face in person a pack of artists who earn their living by working their sharpened pencils under the skins of our elected representatives, and in a gallery hung with the results of their efforts.
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John Major by Steve Bell
‘That cartoon was for some Labour party publication, around ’92 or ’93, after the election. I would have done it for love in those days, probably – I was actually in the Labour Party then. It was lucky, the underpants thing, a sort of crappy Superman. Major was going through his career of uselessness and he was so boring you had to make something up. I did it in early December 1990, after he became leader. And it got a really good response so I did it ever afterwards. I read a quote somewhere that he didn’t like it, the underpants. Some bloke asked about it and he said, “I don’t like it, it’s designed to destabilise me”. It was a foolish thing to let on. They don’t usually, they know we’re trying to get up their noses.’

William Hague by Martin Rowson
‘That was a Tribune cover, I think. It was just another example of Hagian self-destruct. The thing I remember most was his first speech. He had a 58 point plan.

It was deranged. I’d had my eye on Hague before he managed to steal the top job – so he came fully formed. He was the first politician who came to power and influence as an extension of a hobby. It was the trainspotter mentality – look at me, Mum, I’m riding on the engine plate, and that thing about him as a kid reading Churchill’s speeches. I met Hague once, after he was leader, and what really struck me was that he was out of focus. He was soft and blurry, as though he was created only very recently – there was that thing of him being drawn as a foetus. He was so wonderfully bizarre, completely divorced from reality. I drew him as a Teletubby in La la land several times. I rather liked Hague. When I met him I said

“Could you come back because you’re much more fun to draw than this new bloke”. That was Iain Duncan Smith, who I completely refused to draw at the start because I didn’t think we should give him the oxygen of publicity, although by the end I did draw him.
The thing is, it’s in my satirical DNA.