paper. Robin Zuill profiles the Island's only political cartoonist.

Peter Woolcock is probably the only person in Bermuda to poke fun at the Island's politicians on a weekly basis and get away with it. Woolcock, whose cartoon commentaries are a regular Friday feature of The Royal Gazette, has a remarkable ability to see the humour in almost any situation; an ability reviewer Andrew Trimingham called an "unerring instinct for silliness''.

Simply put, Woolcock is a funny man. Never cruel and never, ever malicious. He is always gentle and always compassionate, and his cartoons almost always draw a few chuckles.

But political cartooning came relatively late in Woolcock's career. It was something the 67-year-old cartoonist had always wanted to do, but he never had the time, nor perhaps the courage, while he was living in England. But in 1983, two years after coming to Bermuda and about the same time as the general election, he found the urge irresistible.

Though he had been warned by "well-meaning advisors'' to stifle that urge if he intended to stay on the Island, he nonetheless went ahead, first landing a spot in the Bermuda Sun and then a regular spot in The Royal Gazette, as well as a freelance job at Aardvark Advertising. And now, with Woolcock working on his sixth volume of Woppened, his annual collection of cartoons, it is clear he has cornered the market on political cartooning in Bermuda and proved to be the perfect match for the Island.

"I think I was exceedingly lucky,'' Woolcock says. "I couldn't have asked for any better motley crew of characters. In Britain, they're really a fairly faceless lot. There are not many here that are faceless or voiceless. They all tend to get up on their hind legs and pontificate a bit. The issues they're discussing - `Why can't we have more lighting on ... Tribe Road Number 3' or they start talking about where to put a new bus stop - it's not world-shaking stuff, but it is to the Island.

"I think deep down all those years in England, it was something I wanted to do. When I came to Bermuda, there was no one doing that type of cartoon, so I had a chance to get in on the ground floor. I'd always enjoyed looking at political cartoons and I thought that while the ideas were very clever, I knew I could draw better than some of them. But I thought I hadn't studied politics enough. Bermuda is really a microcosym of Britain isn't it ... as regards politics and unions. Because it was so simplified I began to get the hang of it.

"Something just began to niggle at me. I got the feeling people were taking themselves too seriously and I thought there was a need for a little bit of light political commentary.'' As Trimingham put it: "It is certainly a measure of his enormous popularity that one has never heard of anyone who has been the subject of his cartoons being in the least upset by them. Indeed, most of his victims are the first on the telephone seeking to buy the original.

"Almost without exception our politicians are represented with a sort of baffled, slightly stuffed look of quiet complacency.'' Though Woolcock admires the works of cartoonists Jack Davis, whose strips appeared in MAD Magazine, and Australian Pat Oliphant, one of the top biting political cartoonists in America, he admits his is a more gentle and even boyish sense of humour.

"There's a saying about people who mature late. I think I'm one of them. When people ask me my age, I say I'm 67 going on 15.'' In fact, feeling he had to give his work more of an edge, he introduced Leroy and Lucy, the pair of lizards which now appear at the bottom of his weekly cartoons. "It's something I noticed other artists doing - it's a useful gimmick which allows you to cover two topics in a single cartoon. They can say things that I can't, like a ventriloquist and his dummy.'' Much of his gentleness may come from the fact that he spent 31 years drawing comic strips for children, including 21 years on the Adventures of Mr. Toad - his favourite, 11 years on Tiger Tim, and nine years each on Wally and Sammy and Karel and Sarel. During that time he also illustrated children's books, including several for Walt Disney - 101 Dalmations, Robin Hood, Jungle Book, Dumbo and Winnie the Pooh.

His passion for drawing cartoons began when he was a child - his first cartoon was published at age nine. He was born in Argentina, though his parents were British and had moved to the outskirts of Buenos Aires in the early 1900s forming part of the 200,000 strong English community. He went to a private school in the capital, and spent many of his holidays at home with sketch pad and pen.

"I've never stopped asking myself where it all came from. My father and mother couldn't draw a line. My brother became a chartered accountant. I suppose I owe a lot of it to where I was brought up. All of my school friends lived quite far away from me, so during holidays they couldn't really come and visit. So there was little Peter with his paper and pencil and that's what I would do ... draw. The radio played tangos all day and there was no TV. So there was really nothing else to do.'' Though the young Woolcock loved to draw, and spent much of his extracurricular time doing just that, he never considered he could have a career drawing. "I used to dread people asking me what I was going to do with my life,'' he says.

"I remember in our school report we had to write down what we intended to do.

I didn't want to put artist, because that just wasn't done - it wasn't looked upon very favourably if you wanted to be an artist for a living.

"In those days if I'd said I wanted to be an artist, my father would have said something like, `Stop talking nonsense and go back to bed.' It was done to go into commerce. So as a 17-year-old, I would find myself saying the same thing. Little Peter would blush. You couldn't say you didn't know yet. And if you didn't know, you would say commerce. Commerce was so vague. It could mean any type of business.'' In 1942, Woolcock took a job in the capital with Lever Bros., the giant marketing firm (now Unilever). "I hated, hated with a purple passion, going into work ever day. I spent several unhappy years there. I mean really unhappy. But I didn't know anything else. Then the war came and I went off to fight ... with my sketch book. And in between shoving shells up the spout, I drew.

"I was finding humour in the grimmest of situations. I think it began when I went off to war - you had to have a sense of humour. While things were happening and we were losing people, I would draw.'' Back in Buenos Aires in 1947, Woolcock returned to Lever Brothers where he took a position in the advertising department doing paste-ups.

"Then they tried to make me an account executive. I was really miserable. I remember so clearly how unhappy I was, because I remember sitting in the park watching people and thinking to myself `Everybody else looks so happy.

Everybody but me. I would say to myself, `The garbage collector is happy, the street cleaner is happy.' Everybody around me was fulfilled. I loathed what I was doing, but I didn't see that there was any alternative.'' In his spare time, however, Woolcock continued to draw, and agreed to contribute the weekly social cartoons for one of two English dailies in Buenos Aires. "I remember people would say to me `Why don't you do it as a career'.

But I was drawing as a hobby. To me, the job was taken seriously, and then you had your hobby - it was sublime idiocy, that .'' In 1953, two years after he married Ethel and with a year-old daughter, Woolcock decided he would take a friend up on his offer and accompany him to England to try and land himself a job as a cartoonist.

"I had a friend who worked at the school I went to. He told me he was leaving to go back to England. Passages to England were very expensive, but he said he was getting on a boat taking horses back to England. He said `Why don't you come back with me.' Ethel was there and she said I should go an try to see if I could make it. I was huffing and puffing, I said, `I can't go, I can't.' Lever Bros. gave me six months leave, and said I would have my job back at the end.

"So I decided to give it a try. I signed on for the horse boat in Buenos Aires. They said all we'd have to do was take care of the horses. Of course, I was thinking it must be polo ponies or something - Argentina is famous for its polo ponies. Anyway there were 169 horses. I pictured us plaiting mains and grooming. Then I discovered that we had to clean up their muck ... and that they were going to England for eating. We were on the boat for 21 days.'' Once in England, Woolcock decided the first thing to do would be to meet with Ronald Searle, who was then the top British cartoonist. "I admired his drawings and had sent a batch of my cartoons to him. A lot of artists had copied his style and were influenced by him. Anyway, he wrote back saying he liked the cartoons but he didn't understand them becasue they were very local.

But he said there were many people worse than me making a living as a cartoonist.

"A few days after I arrived in England, I went to Searle's house in Bayswater. He answered the door and there was this strange youth saying, `I'm so and so, remember when I wrote to you...' He very kindly asked me in and we talked, and he started to tell me I should show my drawings to everyone.

"Well, I had to tell him my portfolio had been stolen. On my first night in England, I went to watch a football match between England and Scotland. I had left my portfolio at the reception and when I returned, it had been stolen. He told me I'd have to redraw everything! "I spent the next four months in a one room apartment in the lower suburb of London. Today, if you go for an interview, they ask you where your university degree is from. In those days, they'd say let's see your work - they wanted to see your portfolio. When I wasn't drawing I would walk the streets. I had these visions of failing and having to go back to Buenos Aires. I would imagine bumping into people on the street and they would say `Oh Peter, you're back, I gather it didn't go very well over in England' or `Did you see Peter, he's back from England. He failed you know.' That's what kept me going. I couldn't bear the shame of having to go back and face everyone. It drove me to continue.'' It didn't take him long to land on his feet once Woolcock began showing his work. He was offered a job with Amalgamated Press. Within weeks his wife and year-old daughter arrived in England. Then, a year after the birth of their second child, a son, the Woolcocks moved out of London and bought a five-bedroom house in Surrey.

"I think if I had had success in the first two weeks I was in England, I wouldn't be the same person today. I never said no. And I never, to my great credit, missed a deadline. I slogged and sweated for six-and-a-half days a week from 9 a.m. til 10 p.m,'' Woolcock remembers. "In the whole of AP not one person knew how many magazines there were, but at any one time I think I was working for five or six different magazines at a time. I was lucky I could imitate other people's work.'' In 1954, he was asked to illustrate The Wind in the Willows. "No book had ever been put into comic form then. I wasn't a comic strip artists then.

Anyway, after that they decided to continue further the adventures of Mr.

Toad, which I did for the next 21 years.'' It was also during his early years at AP that the company obtained a contract for Disney Publications. "I was asked if I liked drawing Disney characters.

They said `We want you to do a Jungle Book'. It had already appeared in film but they wanted to do a book. So that was my job - to turn it into a story book. I had to redraw 10 tons of model sheets. Anyway, they said they liked my animals, but the background ... certain tree roots and stones were wrong. They were not Disney tree roots and stones. Can you imagine? But that's the way it was. You must forget your style completely and draw Disney animals, Disney trees, Disney stones to a degree that I never thought existed. "I didn't really find it fulfilling drawing someone else's characters.

They're not your own.

I also did 101 Dalmations - not regular dalmations, Disney dalmations. You have to draw all those little puppies Disney style. It's very restrictive. I was glad to stop it.

"I was really known as an animal artist. Whenever there was an animal that needed drawing, they'd say `Give it to Peter, he'll do you an animal.' I was never really good at doing humans. But then I went after them and got them.

Now I mostly do humans.'' During the mid-1960s, Woolcock also worked for British television and the Central Officefor Information in London drawing humourous potted biographies of historical figures, including Henry V, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Caxton.

After moving to Majorca for seven years between 1973 and 1980, Woolcock returned to England with his wife for a year before moving the following year to Bermuda, where his daughter was living. When he came here he was still working for AP doing two strips, Professor Potty and Pickles the Pup.

Aside from his weekly cartoons for The Royal Gazette, his freelance work for Aardvark, and any commission work, Woolcock's hobbies are playing the organ, which he does every Sunday for the Church of Nazarene even though he says he can't read music, as well as a bit of sculpting on the side. He also goes on a 7 a.m. walk each morning for exercise, because, as he says: "You have to get out and do something when you only commute 15 yards to work every day.'' He concludes: "I'm glad I'm not starting today. I think it's very scary some of the comics that appear - there's no gentleness now. Happily I cut my teeth when I did. It was wonderful. It was the golden era of cartoons - a time when all ages were catered for. It was a different world in those days.'' A cast of Woolcock characters: Crazy Sammy Stoat, Tiger Tim, Goody Fox, Professor Potty and Mr. Toad. Bottom, The Early Days of The Telephone from an unpublished children's book.

Above, The Early Days of . . . the Telephone, from an as yet unpublished children's book of inventions. Below, from Woolcock's long-running Mr. toad strip in British children's comic Playhour, adapted from Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.

When Plc-Pics peck a tree, they take six months to get right throught it; But by this time, they've quite forgot What maded them start to do it. Most birds build nest to lay their eggs in, Or to use as beds; The Ascotruffs just make theirs and then stick them on their heads.

RG MAGAZINE JULY 1993