It’s been a while in coming but Jowls of Derision has finally claimed its first female victim and you’ll be delighted to see that I have spilled her puckered, dog’s scrotum of a face with the same callous savagery as her willy-toting predecessors. It’s what Maggie would have wanted.
In drawing Thatcher, I couldn’t avoid doffing the proverbial baroness’ bonnet to Gerald Scarfe, whose iconic depictions of her through the 70s, 80s and 90s were so ferociously apposite that they pretty much earned him a monopoly on her image rights. Or at least an equal partnership in a cartel with Spitting Image. When John Q. Public imagined the “Iron Lady”, it was Scarfe’s incarnations that they conjured to mind.
Scarfe said of Thatcher:-
“I couldn’t stand Mrs T but she was wonderful to draw, We always feel strongest about the villains. She had no discernible sense of humour and was completely unsympathetic to those who were not as strong as she. The only time we ever saw her cry was when she was forced out of office – sorry for herself.
I always gave her a stabbing, aquiline nose, drooping eyes and a small mouth full of bloody incisors. I could depict her as anything cutting, stabbing, slicing, biting, aggressive – like a dagger, a knife, an axe or scissors. Great material.”
Why is she eating Alan Bennett? Is it becuase many of Bennett’s characters are unfortunate and downtrodden?
Ooh Dudley, elfin sexuality….