THE WORLD'D JUST FALL TO BITS IF WE DIDN'T HAVE RED TAPE.

Just recently ,my daughters school asked if i'd give a lecture on cartooning. "Yeah sure!",i responded .Ever the helpful father ,and friend n' mentor to children everywhere. "Great",they responded, knowing a good thing when he responds positively to them. It was only when they inquired as to wether i'd applied for my 'police clearance form (or something like that.).That things got complicated. To volunteer to do anything for the school ,even picking up litter ,you need to be cleared by the police. You go to the 'Boys in KEVLAR',fill up some forms ;They fill up some forms ;The school fills up some forms ;Your last prison warden or probation officer fill up some forms. All to prove your not a psychotic killer .All us normal people have to prove we're not psychotic killers,as all the psychotic killers manage to get around all this neccessary 'RED TAPE'...The Blair/Brown babes have wrapped everything in swathes of lovely RED TAPE. The whole' system ',health ,legal ,transport ,buying fruit bon bons is just a matter of clutching a machete and hacking through these swathes of ,Le tape du rouge (as the french may've said.)

But all is well the goverment are going to save us from some of this red tape .The fact that they put most of it there in the first place ,well thats nothing to do with it .

KRAKATOA,EAST OF JAVA ..SOUTH OF MY BUTTOCKS!

I don't know if anyone has noticed the lack of inciteful ,finger on the pulse observations and comments lately ,but despite rumours to the effect....It's not because i'm a lazy bastard!...Well, i am ,but not this time. No, this time i've been stuck in hospital sharing a bed with a huge abcess on my leg. It erupted over about a week or so ,rather like a bodies' version of a volcanic eruption. I was rushed into the operating theatre and hacked up ,split n' spliced, then plonked back in a bed for the week. But now i'm home in the busoom of my family(and the dogs). Being visited every day to have 'packing removed from my leg and bandages changed . And bloody sore it is too. I have wondered wether the maggots should be used. It worked on a wounded SEAN BEAN in an episode of  'SHARPE'!!!!!!!!

ON THE WHOLE I'D RATHER HACK MY LEG OFF WITH A RUSTY SAW THEN SIT THROUGH THE AMERICAN 'PRESIDENTIAL RACE' ELECTION COVERAGE.

.....................................Watching election coverage.........Hacking leg off with rusty saw(the much prefferred option)







This morning as i was about my househusbandly duties...Dogs need kicking out ;snoring wifes need gallons of coffee ;daughters need shouting at, etc,etc ..Ahh, a househusbands work is never done. Whilst i slave away,the diminishing inciteful, finger on the pulse cartoonists soul thats beats away inside me ..(just up n' to the left of my bloated liver.)..Has Sky news on, to keep me tuned into the world ..(and the latest on the Spice girls breakup n' Brittany Spears adventures.)... I sat and started to watch some of the American presidential race stuff....Is it me?.....I cannot make any sense of this total insanity! I've tried to cultivate an understanding and an interest in the coverage we're being swamped with ,and failed miserably. I have decided that given the choice between the 'race' coverage and hacking my leg off with a rusty saw, i would happily have a root around the garage ,lay down some newspapers and proceed to hack away. Why? Well i shall endeaver to explain.

(1) It's less painful.

(2) It makes more sense.

(3) It' over in a lot less time.

(4) Sky news ,etc, wont have teams of experts and interactive maps n' diagramsn' graphs, to talk and explain ad nauseum the whole process of sawing your leg off.



I mean this insanity over in the 'mightiest ,free'est , sooper dooperest'est country in the whole wide world. How can they get excited over a 'RACE', that's got about another 3 years to run. Millions of people ,with their families buying hotdogs n' burgers ,filling stadiums to wave American flags at some slimey self serving shyster ,creaming a fortune from his 'backers'?????.Donations that make our slimey self serving shysters 'un noticed/overlooked/unreported donations/brown envelopes/backhanders ,look positively pathetic. Well, now SUPER TUESDAY is over, we've had WOWEE WEDNESDAY....AWWWSOME THURSDAY........TRULY AWWWWWSOME FRIDAY.......LIKE, WOW MAN SATURDAY.......LIKE THATS SOOOOOOO, COOL SUNDAY......WOW ,LIKE WOW ,THATS AAAAAAAAAWWWWWWSOME MONDAY.....Now they've got to name every day for the rest of the 'RACE'....Oh god help us ,pleeeze!

Mind you in all of this turgid horribleness ,there is some hope .If HILARY CLINTON gets in . We'll have BILL CLINTON sneaking around the WHITEHOUSE with even less to do than when he was president. Let the fun begin. Does MONICA LEWINSKY still work there?

See what i mean , to a caricaturists eagle eye and distorted vision ,STEVE McQUEEN and DANIEL CRAIG have similar facial structures. Sneaky devils ,trying to outwit the caricaturistmeister,TIM LEATHERBARROW.

SOME PEOPLES FACES WONT GIVE A CARICATURIST A ,'QUANTUM OF SOLACE', MORE LIKELY 'ONE TON OF MALICE'...

Some days a caricaturist will sit and 'do' someone ,and sometimes he can actually please and suprise himself. While other times,well, he wont!...There are other times where he doesn't come within a country mile of capturing the 'likeness', as we call it in the trade. One such example for me was a certain ,MR DANIEL CRAIG. Who the cultured amongst you will recognise as the new 'JAMES BOND'. I thought that it would be a good idea to 'do him'. Keep my portfolio,(a drawful of torn tattered sheets of doodle n' scribble covered papers.)..up to date. Well could i capture the likeness of the aforementioned mr Craig?...Could i shite!.....I'd sit and scribble, sketch, and draw ,and try and approach the task from any way i could think of .All to no avail. I covered envelopes ,beermats ,margins of books,tablecloths with quick little sketches. And, sometimes i caught a likeness. But, when i tried to reproduce that likeness properly,could i ?....Could i shite!

The funny thing about this ,is , that this isn't the first time it's happened. I tried to 'do' the late great STEVE McQUEEN.And ,could i ?...could i shite! It was pointed out to me that the two faces causing me such grief , frustration n'pain were of very similar facial structure. This dazzling insight was supplied to me by that well known caricaturist and 'smartarse' SIMON CASSINI. When he and the missus,the lovely SHEBA came to visit. My missus, the lovely(of course) LYNNE, couldn't understand why i was always drawing pictures of STEVE McQUEEN...."I mean he's dead isn't he!...",Women! they just don't understand! I suppose it does become a bit of an obsession for a caricaturist just trying to reach for that likeness /essence, whatever. The other day i sat down and had another go at 'DANNY BOY'..When Lynne came in she thought it was a good STEVE McQUEEN,but when i explained it was DANIEL CRAIG,she wasn't too impressed. But i had a go at a pencil drawing the following night and it wasn't bad. I've done a 'quickie for this which you can see. But i've also included a picture i did of PIERCE BROSNAN and STEVE McQUEEN, When they did the remake of the McQUEEN classic ,the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Jeez! this caricaturing lark is murder. Poor CRAIG n' McQUEEN , Thankfully they will never know the hours and days i've looked at their disgustingly handsome faces and cursed and hated them.

LIVERPOOL MAY BE THE CITY OF CULTURE,BUT TIM LEATHERBARROW IS THE CARTOONIST OF CULTURE .

Last week 'yours truly' and his beloved missus went to theROYAL LVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL.(Incredibly totally bypassing the PHILHARMONIC pub..Thats culture for you.) To watch the a ROYAL LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA 'gig'. They played a couple of tunes ,one called the ENIGMA VARIATIONS, which i'd actually heard of.(even if i did think it was a YES track.). I'd never seen a full orchestra before and i must ad mit i was quite impressed. The violinists were hammering away all the way through, as were the brass and various wind instruments. I had a little titter at the big bass drum at the back ,he sauntered on gave the drum a good whack then sauntered back off to finish his book ,watch Vera Duckworth die on CORONATION STREET,or just put the kettle on. I reckon i could be a classical musician, just hand me the drum . Some Oriental violin player(i'm irish ,so it's a fiddle.)..But she did some solo that went on for about three n' half hours. She was absolutly amazing. The tune ,it has to be said wasn't one you'd have trouble getting out of your head and find yourself humming nonstop for the next fortnight,until it drives you or your (previously) loved/ close ones absolutly nuts.... But now i'm cultured ,instead of leaping around the living room accompanying mr PETER TOWNSHEND on the AIR GUITAR, i have adopted the role of standing in the centre of the living room waving a plastic 12 inch ruler and a wooden soup spoon as a classical conductor to the classics...(QUADROPHENIA ,LIVE AT LEEDS,etc,etc...) Good stuff this culture!