Letter: Wally Fawkes obituary

Wally Fawkes was already an established cartoonist when I arrived in London in the early 1960s.

Unusually for the time, he had a terrific line in caricaturing the royal family, as in a Punch cover portraying Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh as the Cockney Pearly King and Queen.

I was a huge fan, pasted his work in a scrapbook and probably lifted some of his caricatures. Peter Fluck and I certainly cast a keen eye over them when making puppets of the royals.

Most Saturday nights, in a Fleet Street pub nicknamed Aunties, Wally played the clarinet in traditional jazz style. My favourite was Dippermouth Blues, and I always pitched up if Wally was on.

I was making rather bad drawings for the back of the Observer, mainly because Peter Cook was writing the captions. In those days I was much better at drinking beer than drawing, but when Wally and I met up occasionally for a meal, he was very generous and encouraging.

Unlike many cartoonists of the period, he was very professional and had a great sense of fun. He took nothing too seriously.

In a much changed world, caricaturists and political cartoonists still manage to hang on by their fingernails. Thank goodness Wally was able to practise his art for as long as he wanted to, enjoying the last of the good times.