Watch Michael Heath, Oldie King of the Toons, accept his award, here:
At 90, Michael Heath remains our finest observational cartoonist.
Since he first placed a cartoon in Melody Maker in 1955 – more than 70 years ago – he has drawn people with the clothes, hair and mannerisms of the moment. He was extremely pleased when Lucian Freud once complimented him on the economy with which he had drawn a nipple with a little spiral stroke of the pen. Line is the essence of his work. He used to buy nibs at a shop in Drury Lane and was angry when it closed to become yet another coffee bar.
Michael liked to spend time in pubs, partly because they contained such strange characters, ripe for observation. People would write to him when he was doing his strip cartoon The Regulars, swearing that it must be based on their pub.
Michael doesn’t mind a drink or two, but never seems drunk and has never become an alcoholic. But, in Brighton years ago and in Soho until recently, he found a gallery of monsters who performed a daily comi-tragedy with an edge of danger. They provided raw satire just by being there to be drawn.
The eccentricities of gay culture provoked him to draw a strip cartoon called The Gays, though he realised it had to end when Aids stopped it being funny.
In Great Bores of Today for Private Eye, he nailed the appearance of gallery-owners, weekend brunchers, cocktail bar bimbos, medallion men, literary types, youths in hoodies, old men with walking frames, young mums, hairdressers and cab drivers. Last year, he happily revived Bores in The Oldie.
Technically, his larger cartoons have exploited a mastery of multiple perspective. He enjoys experimenting with manipulated photocopies, but has always returned to the classic method of hatching and cross-hatching to build up shade and depth.
His cartoons enjoy a brio that seems to give them a kind of movement. He is to cartooning what Thelonious Monk was to jazz – and he never lets a day pass without listening to some Monk.
Like the musicians of the bebop era, he isn’t stale because he always adds extemporisation to a theme and includes an unexpected blue note. Even his much mourned dachshund was called Charlie Barker.
Perseverance in success brings a special challenge. Being funny every day after decades isn’t child’s play. But, while performing his daily tightrope act of humour, Michael Heath never looks down.
Christopher Howse wrote Soho in
the Eighties
