Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry – Oldie Lead in his Pencil Award. By Quentin Letts

Cartoonist Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry says that, during his decades on Fleet Street, his duty has been to make news pages brighter ‘by putting in a laugh’.

Ever-modest Mac, 88, undersells his genius. His drawings in the Daily Sketch, Daily Mail and, to this day, the Mail on Sunday have always done more than that. Since the 1960s they have humanised the news, reminding us that after every thermonuclear disaster there will be some office cleaner surveying the mess, leaning on a broom with wry detachment and a half-smoked fag.

The fashion for newspaper cartoons has drifted towards party-political indignation and starkness of nib. Mac’s art is softer. His work is in the tradition of the Bystander’s Bruce Bairnsfather, the Daily Express’s Carl Giles and the Evening Standard’s Jak. The shading is gentle and the visual effect more rounded than sharp-edged. Mac’s cartoons include domestic fixtures such as telephones, wastepaper bins, steaming teacups and – when drawing the late Queen – corgis. During the Gulf War, they were given doggy gasmasks.

Mac has always liked drawing the Royal Family, be it Charles’s geraniums legging it out of the greenhouse before he could start talking to them or Prince Philip holding a banner saying ‘Not Bloody Likely!’ when Lilibet was on the blower to William and Kate, asking if they needed a babysitter. Bishops and the police are favourite subjects, too. The humour, while never woke, is more affectionate than angry.

When Nick Clegg wanted to legalise drugs, Mac had a tramp toking up on a huge joint saying, ‘This is good stuff - I can see a Lib Dem landslide’. During the pandemic Mac drew a police car chasing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an officer bawling ‘Oy! Two metres apart!’

For half a century, his work graced the pages of the Mail, reassuring readers that they were not alone in thinking officialdom dotty. He drew their bedrooms, their scuffed shoes, their office canteens, their lives. When he retired, the paper missed the mollifying balance of his stoical humour. But he was soon back on Sundays.

Many cartoonists are prey to glumness. Not Mac. He cheerfully says he has been ‘so lucky’. It’s that modesty again. This brilliant artist is a delightful man and generous colleague. And Oldie readers will be assured to learn that ‘old people are easier to draw because of their wrinkles’.

His favourite of all time? Golda Meir.

Quentin Letts is the Daily Mail's Parliamentary Sketchwriter

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Photos by Neil Spence Photography

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