I’ve been cartooning since I was a teenager in the 1960s, inspired by a talented school friend, Chris Reid. At University I studied engineering science and economics, although not diligently: I spent a lot of time writing and performing stage revue and contributing to a humorous publication called Scorpion, a poor imitation of Private Eye (a magazine). One of my co-contributors, Rupert Besley, would go on to make a career of cartooning but for me it remained a hobby.

My career began with a few years working in the electricity supply industry as a research engineer, having great fun crawling around power stations, which I loved, and getting to grips – in 1973 – with small computers (a DEC PDP11-05 with 16k of memory, driving a hundred-channel data logger, and programmed through punched paper tape, since you ask). After that, desk jobs with the Design Council and Institute of Energy in London for a few years, a five-month retraining course at Portsmouth Polytechnic, and 40 years working on energy saving in local government and as an independent energy consultant.

My London years saw a small success as a freelance contributor to the Radio 4 satirical programme Week Ending, but that ended with the departure of the producer, the late Geoffrey Perkins. And my aspirations to be a cartoonist? Apart from one commission from the photographer Herbie Knott for a set of cartoon postcards in 1976, it was not until 2018 that my remorseless bombardment of the press yielded any financial reward. That year Private Eye published this drawing (which later also appeared in The Week):

Months later, Private Eye bought another cartoon. And then another, and another… They have been a brilliant outlet and I am very lucky that my work resonates with the editor. Since then my work has also appeared in The Spectator, The Oldie, The Critic, Woman’s World among others.