It’s my conviction that the best caricature, like any art, grows out of obsession…
My fascination with Monty Python began when I was 11 years old. Back then, when the world was young, we Gen X-ers frequently availed ourselves of video rental stores, and on one visit to our local outlet, my father suggested I give the first series of Fawlty Towers on VHS a try. It was love at first sight. John Cleese’s performance as Basil Fawlty, and the show’s exquisite writing, spoke to me on a cellular level. Hungry for more, I soon progressed to the comedic anarchy of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and found it gloriously habit-forming.
Over the intervening years, and by way of personal but inadequate tributes to these titans of comedy, I have dabbled in caricatures of Cleese and his colleagues, from time to time. This has included bashing out a rough sculpture of Basil Fawlty in clay at Spitting Image when I was twelve years old, under the tutelage of the show’s head caricaturist. I sent a photo of the sculpture and one of the preparatory drawings to Cleese via his agent, and I was delighted to receive the handwritten reply that you can see below from the man himself. Class act that he is, he even took the time to select a postcard bearing an illustration by the great cartoonist, Ronald Searle.
Much more recently, a caricature study of Cleese/Fawlty that I posted on Twitter caught his eye, and he retweeted it to his followers (again, below). I have also begun work on a painting of Fawlty and his dogsbody, Manuel, (also below), although other duties have delayed its completion over the past several months.
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