Caricaturist celebrates his life in art with new retrospective

Bob is launching My life, My pictures, a volume which features more than 300 caricatures from across his career. You can join him 6pm-10pm on Monday, December 5 at the Selsey Centre, Manor Road, Selsey, PO20 0SE. The book is priced £25. Bob’s caricatures have been featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines all over the world on a regular basis over the past 50 years. He is also well known as a technical illustrator, graphic designer and book illustrator. He may even be the only living original Charles Dickens illustrator.

“I must confess that I had no intention of doing a book until Martin Reynolds of Solent Design Studio put the idea into my head. I retired in 2016 and had time on my hands so I produced a one off A4 160-page landscape photobook. But that wasn’t good enough for Martin who, once again insisted that, with his help, I should consider upgrading it to an A4 portrait format. I was also most fortunate to have Phil Hewitt edit the book and to supply the foreword. This has been a labour of love but I am delighted with the finished book.

“I first started drawing when I was a very small infant. I just loved drawing. My dad hated the idea of me spending time drawing. He wanted me to go into engineering because that was what he was in. He said art was for hippies and beatniks. He said ‘You will never earn any money doing art.’ He just did not think there was any future in it. He probably never really accepted what I was doing, and in a way that mattered to me, but I think it made me all the more determined that I would prove him wrong, and that was what has happened. I must have been about four or five when I did a picture of the headmaster at the junior school when I was at the infants, and the headmistress took me with the picture to see the headmaster who apparently liked it! But when I was older and sitting at home drawing, my father always said that I should be outside with my friends. But actually I won a competition in 1952 when I was ten. It was a picture of the Coronation Coach. I won a book token for sixpence! That was a lot of money to a ten-year-old at the time. I have still got that book token. I never spent it. I have never got rid of it.”

Bob did start his working life as an apprentice mechanical engineer, but didn’t enjoy it. He then became a lab assistant and then a signwriter and then became a technical illustrator for a motor company, doing caricatures for the in-house magazine. His work started to be picked up by the music press, especially Sounds and he worked for Graphic News.

As for the caricatures: “I don’t really think about how I do them. I just do them. People think if you see a big nose, then you exaggerate it, but I don’t really exaggerate… though I suppose I do a bit. But you just try to get the character of the person as well as the way they look.”

The subjects don’t always approve. Former Doctor Who Jon Pertwee said ‘My nose is not that big!’ He was not happy. That was him. And Sparks, the two brothers, were very angry. I didn’t get the feedback. That went back to Sounds. There were doing a tour and they didn’t like my work. They said it wasn’t over-flattering… but I was not trying to be flattering!”

On the upside, Bob ended up doing a Christmas card for the Roy Orbison fan club which the late great Roy approved of; and when Bob did a picture for Wings and Paul McCartney, McCartney asked if he could use it in a little magazine he was putting out for his tour. The actor Oliver Reed also liked Bob’s image of Tommy, the Who film, and its cast. However he declined to pay the £100 Bob put as his price tag…

“But I just love doing it. It has been my life. It is something I just really enjoy, something that has always been really important to me and that I still enjoy doing now.”