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Many readers would not admit it but the first thing they do with a magazine like The Oldie is to flick through it to look at the cartoons. If that is true, as I think it is, then the cartoons assume enormous importance. (It is also true, in the case of The Oldie, that the cartoons give rise to more angry letters than any other feature of the magazine.)

Yet cartoonists seldom get any credit for this – not that I imagine they harbour any resentment on that account. They are for the most part modest, retiring and even reclusive characters. In many cases, although I have been familiar with their work for many years, I have never clapped eyes on them or even spoken to them on the phone. I have noted before how many of them seem to live in the North of England. Almost all of them are male and the cartoon world tends to be a very male one in which men are having a hard time, as in the classic cartoon situations: a man wrecked on a desert island or crawling across the desert in search of water, a man standing on a window ledge about to commit suicide. Domestically life is just as dire… His wife doesn’t understand him and if he goes out for a night on the tiles she will be waiting for him behind the door, rolling pin at the ready. No wonder he is frequently to be seen on a psychiatrist’s couch.
Possibly this melancholy bias springs from the cartoonists’ own circumstances. It is a difficult life. The financial rewards are not great and ninety per cent of their jokes are destined to be returned with a polite rejection slip. In the meantime the number of outlets is shrinking year by year.

In spite of all this, the quantity and quality of cartoons submitted to The Oldie is gratifyingly high and there is a wide variety of styles, some elaborate, some simple. You can usually tell which of them have been to art school and which of them are self-taught.

This collection covers seventeen years, so not surprisingly we have to record that some of the best cartoonists featured here have died. I mourn especially Terence Parkes (Larry) and Ged (Ged Melling), who contributed almost exclusively to The Oldie in the final years. But what is so encouraging is that new talents – not always young ones – keep emerging to take their place.

For me it has always been a great pleasure to select cartoons and being by nature a somewhat morose individual I am especially grateful to those inventive men – and women! – who have given me so many good laughs over the years.

Richard Ingrams

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The Cartoon Exhibition is at the Cartoon Museum

The sale of original artwork is at Abbott and Holder