© Colin Whittock, Private Eye.
Rupert Besley writes:
A ‘Midlands legend’, in the words of the Birmingham Mail, Colin Whittock was the professional cartoonist par excellence.
He began on the city’s Evening Mail in 1969. One Friday, the paper’s longstanding cartoonist left almost without notice, having decided to cash in his pension pot for a caravan and up-sticks off to Australia. By the Monday morning Colin had bombed the editor with a selection of cartoons ‘to use if you like or spike if you don’t’ and continued thus each weekday for 45-plus years. That mounted up to around 13,000 cartoons, sharp and topical – and many times that figure if you include all the ideas in rough presented each morning for the editor to choose from.
© Colin Whittock, Birmingham Mail.
He would have continued, had the paper not decided on a different look for its online future. In its tribute to Colin the Birmingham Mail writes that ‘he worked for the newspaper in the 1960s until he retired in 2008’. Not so, according to Colin – he was retired by them. Writing in 2016 (from the drawing desk at which he was still very actively working), Colin recalled, ‘I was told my ‘services were no longer required’ as the editor was putting all resources into the web editions. When a reader queried my absence he was told in an email that I had ‘ After many years hung up my pencil’ and was not to be replaced as cartoons tended to be expensive. I certainly hadn’t indicated that I was retiring.’
As detailed in the biographical notes compiled by Mark Bryant for the Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent, Colin managed this workload by rising at 5.30, going into Birmingham at 7am to create in his studio the roughs he would present to the editor, completing the one selected for his deadline of 8.30 am.
© Colin Whittock, Punch 1976.
On top of this, Colin was doing the paper’s Chipper strip for children (with more than 7,000 strips completed) and Kev for Birmingham’s Sunday Mercury – and this was only part of his output. His gags, regularly in Punch, also appeared in Private Eye and The Oldie, along with the Sun, Mirror, Sketch, Tit-Bits, Weekend as well as in advertising campaigns for high-powered clients. He did greetings cards (Rainbow Cards) and his five ‘Perils’ books were very successful, selling in many, many thousands. The Perils of Pushing 40 went to eleven reprints. And there were other books, such as More Bedside Golf by Peter Alliss, that he illustrated to very good effect.
© Colin Whittock, Punch 1976.
Colin’s biggest following perhaps came through his work for younger readers in Whizzer and Chips, Buster and the Beano. Through the 70s and 80s Colin drew huge numbers of strips (Champ, Lazy Bones, Catnaps, Mizz Marble, Clever Dick, Coronation Street School…), taking over on some from his hero Leo Baxendale. A fine and full round-up of all this work has been posted by John Freeman on Down The Tubes.
His tribute references the detailed answers Colin gave in a Toonhound interview of 2002.
© Colin Whittock, Punch 1977.
Little space left here to add in his contributions to radio (The News Huddlines) or the caricatures that ended up as cat and dog toys. Colin was nothing if not prolific. Phenomenal, more like.
© Colin Whittock Christmas card illustration.
Colin had pretty much always wanted to be a cartoonist (this despite failing in O level Art, something he later described as ‘almost impossible to do’). Undeterred, he made it, self-taught, in cartooning. He drew in a loose, confident, robust style, making clever use of solid blacks when that befitted the subject and his colour work was always attractive. In his gag drawing there were occasional echoes of the influence of good friends and colleagues like Bill Tidy and Larry, whose work he greatly admired. He and Larry had shared an office in Birmingham.
Since news broke of Colin’s passing, PCO members have been busy on the forum posting their thoughts. All agree on all points. Colin was a fine cartoonist, a lovely man and a most agreeable colleague, ever generous in his ready support, praise and encouragement for fellow cartoonists.
For all this we owe him thanks indeed.
Photo © Birmingham Mail.
Colin Whittock 1940-2025