451: Gay Cricket 2 - Peter Tinniswood and Willie Rushton

And what comic mileage is to be traversed at the prompting of the thought of gay cricket matches? Well, mostly it’s an opportunity to alternate between depictions of sissiness and sexual forwardness, written up in the tones of mock-suburban outrage and mild surreal inventiveness which is a tradition in British humorous columnists dating back to Beachcomber. Pansy hysterics, activities in North African climes, sailors, Greek origins, something a bit more advanced the idea of just slapping at each other with handbags, and naming of various famous homosexuals (all of the artistic persuasion). Names like Tufnell and Illingworth are thrown in as they are real cricketeers, and further jokes can be knocked out by association and contrast. All in all, a rather innocuous but silly piece, rather than denigratory.

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From “Whitney Scrotum”, by Peter Tinniswood, 1995

Illustration by Willie Rushton

Alternative Cricket

My emotions are mixed, dear readers.

They rage. They fume.

They soar to the delights of rapture experienced by Mr Philip Tufnell when at long last on a Saturday afternoon he finally finishes reading the front page of Monday's “Sun” newspaper.

And why?

Well, I am thrilled and delighted to record in readable print the outstanding success of the first world tournament for ‘Alternative Cricketers'.

Yes, the Air Wick Cup lived up to all our expectations, despite constant mild outbreaks of swooning and shrill giggling in the nefarious regions of long leg and a most unsavoury incident when the Onanists' Select XI from the United Arab Emirates were eliminated in their match against Eleven 'So-Called' Gentlemen of Marrakesh for defacing a David Hockney self-portrait of our much-lamented and revered Cec Pepper, erstwhile patron saint of crooked little fingers.

Barely have I seen waterproof lipstick and Boy Scouts' woggles used to such devastating effect.

Aggers, who for some obscure reason was known to one and all at the tournament as 'Elsie', was absolutely livid.

He got his grandmother's luminous spats into the most fearful twist and vowed 'in no uncertain terms' that never again would he pick his nose with Mr Bill Frindall's indelible pencil.

All that could I endure.

I could have tolerated and even at times condoned Mr Norman Gifford's nude sunbathing on his personal, portable slip cradle.

I was even prepared to 'turn a blind eye' to the grumpy behaviour of Mr E.W. 'Gloria' Swanton, who had been inveigled into giving his patronage to the tournament under the impression that it was the annual general meeting of the West Sussex Hamster and Edible Dormouse Fancy.

But what stuck in my gullet and gave me such yearning pain was the fact that the trophy was not won by 'our boys'.

The Gropers, a team of out-of-work dressers from the National Theatre and freelance stumpers from Northamptonshire, was soundly thrashed and deeply humiliated in the final by the Shirt Lifters, a collection of American vilenesses with false sun tans, painted toenails and only a minimal knowledge of the LBW laws relating to leg spinners bowling 'round the wicket'.

The Gropers seemed positively to revel in their debasement.

Never shall I forget their whoops of delight after the match when they plunged headfirst with their erstwhile opponents into a vat of strawberry milk shake and made the most vulgar of gestures towards the saintly Mr Raymond Illingworth, who was present in his capacity as deputy physio to the Testicle and County Cricket Board.

Whilst I have no intrinsic objection to his being constantly boarded by crew members of Royal Navy Fishery protection vessels for selecting 'off limits' I do take exception to his being constantly bombarded by quarter-scale effigies of Mr Donald Trelford.

Of the subsequent competition I have little memory.

I remember Oscar Wilde scoring a ton before lunch and Jean Cocteau bowling a devilish eight-over spell of googlies, flippers and Chinamen dressed in nothing but ankle-length Glamorgan sweaters and Wilf Wooller. autograph sweat bands.

And of the final - nothing.

As the lugubrious Innersole said to me as we trudged away from the ground after the defeat of The Gropers: 'It's all Greek, mate, ain't it?'

'You play football for Walthamstow Avenue once and there ain't no human perversion can ever turn your head again.'

I am not inclined to agree - remember, dear readers, I once went on a bicycling holiday in the Yorkshire Dales in the company of Mr Noel Coward and Mr Bill Alley.

450: Gay Cricket 1 - Willie Rushton

From a longer book of humour about cricket, Rushton’s idea of what an historical team of gay cricketers would look like. Nothing very advanced, nor building from anything innate to cricket suggestive of gay behaviour. Really just an excuse for intriguingly converting a load of gay slang phrases into people’s surnames - rather like the similar contrivances in the Radio 4 quiz show “I’m Sorry I haven’t a CXlue2, for which Rushton was a panellist for some 20 years. I do think the “Bumbandit” one is nicely ingenious.

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from "Marylebone vs the World", by William Rushton, 1987

Emerging from the second pavilion erected on Lord's ground in 1874 is one of the most extraordinary cricket teams ever assembled. It is thought to be a humorous retort by one O. P. Rogers- Boyes, an intimate of Oscar Wilde and something of an 'aesthete', who had not been selected for the Marylebone team for three seasons. The reason, he suspected, was that he was not a Freemason. It is more likely that his rich variety of Toilet Waters and Unguents upset his fellows in the changing room. However, this team was his revenge. Here it is in batting-order:

1. C. V. P. Brown-Hatter
2. N. J. Shirtlifter
3. Buggery A.
4. S. D. P. Turd-Burglar
5. O. P. Rogers-Boyes (capt.)
6. Bender L.
7. Crouch P.
8. H. O. Roaring-Poofter
9. Fairy G.
10. Bent V.
and bringing up the rear an Indian doctor from the Docklands -
11. R. V. Bumbandit

Tradition has it that the MCC lost rather badly, but all records of the game have disappeared.

439: 12 + 1

“12 + 1”
Directed by Nicolas Gessner and Luciano Lucignani
Written by Marc Behm, Nicolas Gessner, and Dennis Norden

Jackie: Tim Brooke-Taylor
Bennet: Willie Rushton

“12 + 1” aka “The Thirteen Chairs” (1969) is a dreadful film. The story is the chase for jewels that have been hidden in one of twelve chairs that have been sold off to disparate buyers. The original story is from the satirical Russian novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov which is an excellent book and you should read it if you get the opportunity. The book has been adapted for the cinema numerous times but almost all drop the specific satirical aspect, and just use it as a string on which to hang various comic encounters. This film is better known for being Sharon Tate’s last film before her murder and starring a ragbag of American (Orson Welles), English (Terry-Thomas) and European (Vittorio Gassman) stars in brief appearances than for any positive or distinguishing characteristics as a comedy. The online version below looks as though it’s been filmed through someone’s filthy net curtains so that doesn’t aid the viewing experience, but even if you discount that, no comedy can survive having half of its actors dubbed, the photography and editing looking as though been done using sellotape, and if the script wasn’t garbage to begin with then having been translated backwards and forwards repeatedly has only aided the process of decomposition. There’s a section in which Orson Welles looks as though he may be enjoying himself playing dress-up in a theatre, but that’s largely immaterial here.
6.24 – 10.56
The only remaining interest then is in the gay couple played by Willie Rushton and Tim Brooke-Taylor. So: gay antique dealer. That’s already a gay stereotype with some history. A gay couple is a bit of a novelty at this time though. In line with other 1969 films about gay lifestyles such as “The Boys in the Band” and “Staircase” this is a bitchy relationship, just on the point of disintegrating nastily. Rushton is emotional (a man pleading for the affections of another is the joke here), and wearing tighter white trousers than he otherwise would in real life. Tim Brooke-Taylor, who has already had some experience over the last 5-6 years of playing gay comedy characters in “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, “At Last the 1948 Show”, and “Marty Feldman”, finally gets to bring his camp stylings to the big screen. His head held with nose high in the air, and with a swishing mincing step, Brooke-Taylor is the selfish queen dealing out bitchy quips. Unfortunately, I lack the fashion expertise to describe what Jackie’s wearing in the first scene, but it’s certainly nothing a straight man would attempt. You’ll notice Rosie, his new “partner”, is a fashion designer with his oh-so groovy swinging boutique.

Jackie then becomes the film’s antagonist, a rival to find the jewels, and keeps popping up throughout the rest of the film chasing and being chased for the chairs in the film’s pursuit of slapstick. Throughout the film, Jackie has an eye for attractive or masculine men, making appreciative little “mmm”s, and constantly jealous of the interest men show other women.

0.00 – 1.10, 5.30- 6.20
These are Jackie’s scenes during the longer segment in a grand guignol theatre run by Orson Welles’s character. The better scene (to wit,. he’s actually doing something) is when Jackie escapes and intrudes upon the play then in performance with some outstanding prissy swanning about and effete cocktail bar mannerisms – this then degenerates into just a load of crappy slapstick

7.10 – 9.24
Here we a get slightly more extended instance of eying up another man with some camp insinuations. His gleeful cantering across the lawn with the two chairs isn’t too bad either. There then follows extended farcical chasing with an inevitable tumble into a swimming pool.

5.12 – 5.19 – Jackie’s pleasure at being saved by a handsome man
5.54 – 6.20 : a cry if “Hello Cheeky” when being revived

If you have just spent the last 8-10 minutes watching rather fuzzy excerpts of Tim Brooke-Taylor camping it up in this stinker, why? Historical it may be, hysterical it’s not.

437: On Your Guards

Unlike America, England has a slightly different expectations regarding homosexuality and the army. Everyone knows the connections between sailors and sodomy due to the long periods spent with no other company except other equally lonely men. However, the availability of a soldier for a nice night out has a long tradition. Usually not just any soldier, but a guardsman or member of the household cavalry. This is partly for historical and practical reasons as these are branches of the military traditionally attached to the Palace and therefore stationed in London and easily available for a little casual rent.

Private Eye, 11 June 1965
Willie Rushton

Private Eye, 5 January 1968

Previously posted is this 1976 parody of A.A. Milne’s “Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace” by Alan Coren

I can’t help but think that this is prime Osbert Lancaster and Mark Boxer cartoon territory but I haven’t come across any appropriate pieces. However to make up for their absences, here’s a more than relevant entry from the always morally ripe Simon Raven. This excerpt is from his 1960 essay about the different kinds of rentboy to be had in London.

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“Boys Will Be Boys: The Male Prostitute in London”
Encounter, November 1960

In my first category come young men of the armed services who are either stationed or on leave in London. Prominent among these are, of course, the members of whatever units of Household Troops are currently serving in the capital, centuries of city life having endowed these regiments with a traditional knowledge of and a notorious capacity for all sexual activities of a venal nature. If a young guardsman wishes to augment his modest pay, and if he has no objection to hiring out his person to this end, then he need only "ask about," as a guardsman whom I shall call Tom once put it to me, and some older man (occasionally a N.C.O.) will tell him which pubs or bars to frequent, or which street corners to wait on, and will sometimes offer to accompany him in order to see fair play.

"I knew all about it happening," said Tom, "but I didn’t mean to go myself, see? Then one week-end I was going home to see my girl, and most of my pay was owed, and on the Friday I reckoned I was at least two quid light on what I needed. So I went to a bloke I knew used to go with queers .... " He was told to try several pubs in Kensington and the West End, and if still unsuccessful at closing time to take up a stance in the region of Grosvenor Gardens. Tom was not to accept less than thirty shillings in any case, he was told, and he must ask for at least three pounds if his client requested and he himself allowed the "taking of a real liberty," by which euphemism one connotes the practice of buggery as opposed to the very much more usual manual or oral caresses. The upshot was Tom returned from his first outing without "a real liberty" having been taken (he was not at all anxious, he informed me, for this to happen) and the better off by some two pounds ten in cash and several sophisticated items of information. His subsequent week-end with his girl was a success, having got off to a round start when he presented her with an unlooked-for pair of stockings which the odd ten shillings of his wages of sin had enabled him to buy.

Thereafter, having discovered so easy a way out of his financial afflictions, Tom found himself "on the streets" with increasing frequency. But, I enquired, did not these expeditions do violence to his proper sexual nature? Apparently not. Tom’s explanation was that he regarded "what happened" as a form of masturbation: he would close his eyes and think about "girls and things" while his partner provided the necessary mechanical stimulus--a service which Tom performed unthinkingly, with an almost automatic movement of the hand, in return. Thus Tom was able to persuade himself that he was not at all "queer" by nature, and that what occurred was of no sexual significance. However, it is evident that a person who is not at least slightly homosexual in taste could never begin to tolerate such a situation; and I strongly suspect that Tom, along with most soldiers who behave like him, has a definite if narrow homosexual streak. He is, in fact, bisexual---a judgment which, in its general implications, is confirmed by some remarks once made to me by a young Lance- Serjeant (also of the Brigade).

"Some of us get quite fond of the blokes we see regularly," he said. "You go to their flats and have some drinks and talk a bit--they’re nice fellows, some of them, and interesting to listen to. And as for the sex bit, well, some of the younger ones aren’t bad looking and I’ve had some real thrills off them in my time .... "

But it would be unjust to burden Her Majesty’s Guard with an unrelieved onus of obloquy. Provincial regiments which from time to time replace Household Troops in the performance of "public duties" in London are quick enough, after a few weeks of sniffing the air, to rival the iniquity of their predecessors. Not all country boys, one must suppose, have the integrity which is popularly premised of them: show them the chance to make a little easy money, and their response is regrettably easy to predict .... I should also remark, as a final comment on H.M. Forces in this connection, that soldiers and sailors, particularly the latter for some reason, who are to be in London on leave often discover from friends the address of a "Club" or "Bar" where they are likely to be picked up by well-to-do homosexuals, and are sometimes told by friends to ring up "So-and-So, who said to send my mates to him. He’s very rich with a smashing flat, and he’ll give you a fair old time if you don’t mind being fiddled with now and again." By this time, however, activities are within spitting distance of being amateur, and we had best proceed to the second category.

334: Gay Biggles 4 - Waugh and Rushton

from “Auberon Waugh’s Diary”
by Auberon Waugh
illustration by Willy Rushton
in “Private Eye” February 1985

“Three cheers because Biggles is back,” trills lovely, broad-bottomed Glenda Lee Potter. “Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth DSO DFC is being reincarnated on our screens to enchant small boys,” she shrieks.
Poor Glenda is possibly not au fait with the latest research in the English Literature Department of Strathclyde University. It seems to prove that Biggles was not only an alcoholic but also a raving pooftah.
A few years ago one might not have objected to the idea of this drunken Nancy boy being put on television to tempt small boys. If they wanted to be buggered, that was their own affair. It was still a free country.
But since the arrival of the disease called AIDS, which destroys the body’s natural immunities, it seems rather irresponsible to encourage small boys to take up a hobby of this sort. They might infect the rest of us by bleeding over our toes or peeing on our mosquito bites.


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Both Waugh’s diary entry and Rushton’s cartoon are each offensive by various criteria, but by God they made me laugh when I first saw them.
There’s a certain talent to Waugh's managing to make almost every line harbour some objectionable content. And Rushton, following Waugh’s argument, manages a nice line in RAF paedophile banter. If Biggles and co really did have designs on little boys this is just how they’d express themselves.
Waugh’s repetition of “little boys” reminds me of similar gay=paedophile insinuations in Monty Python’s Carl French sketch. The idea of homosexuality being a choice is nicely played off with the idea that boys will emulate Biggles’s homosexuality. Waugh’s suave fantasy then swerving into disdainful confusion about the transmission of AIDS also raises an inappropriate laugh.
If I find this all more amusing than similar attempts by the likes of Ricky Gervaise, I suspect it’s probably a matter of contained and modulated tone. Ah me, a traitor to the cause and an aspirant snob to boot.

279: Anthony Blunt 1

One of the great journalistic hunts of the 1960s and 70s was to find the legendary “Fourth man”. The spies Burgess and Maclean had defected to Russia in the 1950s, then Kim Philby followed them in 1963. Everyone suspected there was a “fourth man” who had been assisting them in passing information and providing other support. This spy ring was confirmed by intelligence from Russian spies. But who was the “fourth man”? As it turned out, his identity had been known by a select Establishment few by the early 1950s, but it had been covered up. There were assorted eruptions of interest over the years. But almost all of them were tinged by the suspicion that homosexuality would be one of the clues. As it turned out, this wasn’t an erroneous assumption. Following the Vassall affair, there was now a strong connection in the public imagination between treacherous spies and homosexuality. It’s all the same kind of duplicitous behaviour by chaps trying to pass as something they’re not, donchaknow.


in “Private Eye”
29 May 1964
A nicely thought out play on bugging and buggery playing on ambivalence and Establishment stupidity. I suspect that Peter Cook may have some input in a few of the jokes. Don’t forget to read the titles of the books in Willie Rushton’s illustration.

249: Edward Heath, A Preference for Seamen?

In his private leisure time, one of Heath’s manly pursuits was a wholly laudable interest in maritime activities as a fervent sailor. Since the public on occasion harbours certain sordid suspicions about the private interests of sailors, it seems sometimes Heath’s reputation suffered by unfortunate association.

by John Kent in "Private Eye" 27 May 70
John Kent’s strip “Grocer Heath and His Pals” ran in “Private Eye” during Heath’s period in office, and was a political satire of Heath in the style of an old-fashioned English children’s comic. This one is about the suspicions that Heath’s assorted activities and tastes combined to create in the public imagination. For shame, everyone of you.

from “HP Sauce” by Auberon Waugh, with illustration by Willie Rushton, in “Private Eye”, 2 July 71
Waught attributes some strange psycho-sexual compulsion to Heath’s maritime pursuits. And can Mr Rushton mean by the sign reading “Portnoy”? And that one of the nautical tars wears a hat bearing the legend “Hello” cannot but evoke the cheeky gay solicitation “Hello sailor”?

A sketch on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (21 December 1969) about a Chippendale writing desk that performs impersonations of famous Englishmen with wood-allusive names does his “Edward Heath” with a throwaway “Hello Sailor”.

“Hello Sailor” by Eric Idle
One of the threads in this comic novel follows a ruddy-faced, lumbering, nautically-interested Prime Minister and his attempts to cover his secret gay affairs. The book was published in 1975, but was apparently written in 1970, which would have made the inspiration for Idle’s fictitious Prime Minister rather more blatant.
The cover is a rather camp parody of the image off “Player’s Navy Cut” cigarettes.

188: Jeremy Thorpe 6

from “Private Eye”, 20 February 1976
illustration by William Rushton.

A regular feature of the very early 60s “Private Eye” was “Chatto”, which like an English Jules Feiffer cartoon, would feature several panels of the Rushton-drawn respectable moustachioed figure rather simplemindedly working his way through all the contradictory commonplaces about some current issue. “Private Eye” exhumed Chatto for this hot social topic.
Here, the monologue runs the gamut from a pretense of superior disinterest, to considering Thorpe’s other character issues, to really reveling in salacious gossip. This is all played off against the encounter with the ear-ringed chap wearing the bracelet and the enormous fur coat. And quite what is occurring in the final panel, behind the umbrella held at waist level?

83: Private Eye - Fashion

in "Private Eye", 20 August 1965
illustration by Willie Rushton

45 - Religion: Willie Rushton

in “Private Eye”, 1 May 1964

Another from Willie Rushton’s run of gay cartoons during 1964. Although this one is a sudden leap into hints of paedophilia in the church. So only 30 years ahead of the curve.
A nice, jolly uncontroversial start for this week’s look at gays and organised religion.

41 - Willie Rushton, 1964

Cartoonists often get overtaken by the urge to explore a particular theme. If they do it enough, they can either get a book out of it, as Ronald Searle has done on numerous occasions, or if they do it over a lifetime then it becomes their own special topic like Thelwell and horses or Burnett and monks. Not on such a grand scale, Willie Rushton kept returning to the idea of illustrating various gay-related phrases in the pages of “Private Eye” in 1964. Most of these were collected in “William Rushton's Dirty Book” published by Private Eye in 1964. It was dedicated “To Richard Ingrams in the vain hope that he will stop being a Poove”.

On a purely personal note, Willie Rushton is one of my two favourite cartoonists. These aren’t some of his best ones. “Private Eye’s” “Rushton in the Eye” magazine published after his death is a fantastic introduction to some of his best work. Many years ago I put up a website about Rushton at

www.michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk/rushton.html

18 - Vassall Case 4: Private Eye

in "Private Eye", 3 May 1963

Most of the cartoon and satirical comment in the wake of the Vassall Inquiry report was more concerned with the government's machinations than homosexuality. The report had exonerated those officals who had not identified Vassall as a security risk. The report had however been been condemnatory of the press's investigations and conduct. Two journalists had been imprisoned when they refused to disclose their sources of information for stories they had written about the Vassall spy case. (Not at all like the Hutton report some 40 years later, then?)

17 - Vassall Case 3: Private Eye

Illustration by Willie Rushton
in "Private Eye", 22 March 1963

15 - Vassall Case: That Was The Week That Was

Illustration by Willie Rushton
"But My Dear" by Peter Shaffer in "That Was The Week That Was", edited by David Frost and Ned Sherin, W.H. Allen, 1963

The scene is an office. A senior official is sitting at his desk,. a junior official is quaking nervously as he hands a letter he has just composed to his pompous and bullying senior.

SENIOR OFFICER: (Taking the letter) Give it here. (Reading) 'To Mr Jenkins.' Good. None of that' dear' nonsense. (Reading) 'Pursuant to your letter. . .' Pursuant?
JUNIOR OFFICER: It's the usual phrase, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: I don't like it. The word has an erotic penumbra. Take it out.
JUNIOR OFFICER: Yes, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: (Reading) 'I am hoping for the favour of an early reply.' Favour?
JUNIOR OFFICER: The Oxford Dictionary defines the verb favour as 'to look kindly upon'.
SENIOR OFFICER: (Pouncing) Exactly. I am amazed you can be so naive. Looking kindly upon anyone who earns less than you do is a deeply treacherous procedure.
JUNIOR OFFICER: I'm very sorry, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: You need some basic training in modern manners, can see that. If a man comes 300 miles to see you with papers, keep him waiting in the hall-or better still the drive, if you have one. If you offer him so much as a sandwich you will be suspected of improper relations; and a three-course lunch spells treason.
JUNIOR OFFICER: Yes, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER : You really are an innocent, aren't you?
JUNIOR OFFICER: I'm afraid I am, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: Well we must change all that. (Continuing to read) 'Hoping for the favour of an early reply. . . . Thanking you in anticipation.' Are you doing this on purpose?
JUNIOR OFFICER: What, sir?
SENIOR OFFICER: Thanking you in anticipation
JUNIOR OFFICER: Is that wrong, sir?
SENIOR OFFICER: Wrong? It's just about the most sexually provocative sentence I've ever read. It whinnies with suggestiveness.
JUNIOR OFFICER: I hadn't intended it like that, Sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: We're not concerned with your intentions, man-merely with the effect you create. And I can tell you that it's nauseating. You have the correspondence style of a lovesick au pair girl. In more honest days one would have said kitchen-maid..
JUNIOR OFFICER: But, sir -
SENIOR OFFICER: Don't interrupt, or I may lose control. Now understand this: in the Civil Service you will never thank anybody for anything, especially in anticipation. You will simply end your letter without innuendo of any kind. Now let's see what you've done. (Reading) 'Yours faithfully' I don't believe it.
JUNIOR OFFICER: That's normal, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: Normal? In the context of a man writing to a man it's nothing less than disgusting. It implies you can be UN-faithful!
JUNIOR OFFICER: I never thought of that, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: You think of very little, don't you? Even the word 'Yours' at the end of a letter is dangerous. It suggests a willingness for surrender.
JUNIOR OFFICER: Then what can I say, sir?
SENIOR OFFICER: What do the Pensions Department use?
They're about as unemotional as you can get, without actually being dead.
JUNIOR OFFICER: 'Your obedient servant', I think.
SENIOR OFFICER: Are you mad?
JUNIOR OFFICER: Sir?
SENIOR OFFICER: Your obedient servant. . . . That's just plain perverted.. People who want to be other people's obedient servants are the sort who answer those advertisements: Miss Lash, ex-Governess of striking appearance. To sign yourself an obedient servant is an ipso facto confession of sexual deviation. And that, as we all know, is an ipso facto confession of treason.
JUNIOR OFFICER: Oh, I say, sir!
SENIOR OFFICER: What do you say? (Looking at him narrowly) I believe you are one of those cranks who believe that there are loyal homosexuals! (Accusingly) I think you secretly believe that the way to stop homosexuals being blackmailed into subversive acts is to change the law so they can't be.
JUNIOR OFFICER: Well, it had crossed my mind, sir. Amend the law and the possibility of Vassalls is lessened.
SENIOR OFFICER: Sloppy, left-wing sentimentality! The only way to stop a homosexual being blackmailed is to stop him being a homosexual. And the only way you can do that is to lock him up in a building with five hundred other men. That way he can see how unattractive they really are. Now take this pornographic muck out of here and bring it back in an hour, clean enough to be read by a six-year-old girl, or John Gordon. And leave out everything at the end except your name:, a bare signature, brusque and masculine. What is your name, by the way?
JUNIOR OFFICER: Fairy, sir.
SENIOR OFFICER: I don't think somehow you are going to go very far in Her Majesty's Service. Good morning.

2 - Willie Rushton

by Willie Rushton in 'Private Eye", 24 June 1966

This is possibly the most reprinted cartoon in 'Private Eye'. Or at least in all of the 'Private Eye' reprints, anthologies, retrospectives and godonlyknows. Editor Richard Ingrams was rightly impressed by the cadences of the caption.

Its only competitor for ubiquity and frequency is Gerald Scarfe's caricature of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan as Christine Keeler which makes it into many of the textbooks and anthologies of 20th century caricature and also 60s icons.

I quite like this one. Its two saggy flabby walruses in bed make for a change from twinkle-eyed bitchy effeminate theatricals, and seems a fairly good reminder of what we will all come to in the end. And isn’t that what we all look for in a cartoon – that irrefutable confirmation of time’s despoliation of the flesh’s fleeting charms.

It's not mocking, and it's an interesting twist on what was then a catchphrase of the times.