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BILL TIDY |
| Phenomenally talented & widely respected as a cartoonist, writer, TV/radio presenter & after dinner speaker, Bill Tidy delivers a unique presentation which incorporates his wit, expertise & indomitable style in every sense of the word. |
| Bill was born in Tranmere, Cheshire, the son of William Edward Tidy & Catherine Price. His father was a merchant seaman who walked out when Bill was only a child. Brought up in his mum's off-licence in Liverpool & educated at St. Margaret's School, Anfield, Bill left school aged 15. |
| From 1950 to 1951 he worked for RP Houston, a shipping office in the city but in 1952 volunteered to join the Royal Engineers serving in Germany, Korea & Japan where in 1955 he sold his first cartoon to Mainichi, an English-speaking newspaper. |
| On leaving the army in 1955 he returned to Liverpool where he worked from 1956 as a layout artist at the Pagan Smith advertising agency & drew advertisements for Radio Times. He remembers drawing tedious half-inch single column ads for greenhouses but found inspiration from a colleague who was selling drawings to a magazine. Bill decided he could do it too. |
| He began freelancing & was soon earning as much from one Daily Mirror cartoon as the agency paid him each week. In 1957, after plans to emigrate to Canada fell through, he became a professional cartoonist. In 1959 Bill decided to treat himself to a flight from Liverpool to London to attend his first 'Punch Lunch' & sat next to a young Italian girl who became his wife in 1960. Bill & Rosa have 3 children & now have 2 grand-children. |
| Bill has no formal art training but his output was enormous, 15 finished cartoons per day & in 1966 as a founder member of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, was voted CCGB Humorous Cartoonist of the Year. |
| Bill became well known for his strip cartoons, particularly The Cloggies, which ran in Private Eye from 1967 to 1981 & The Listener from 1985 to 1986. Then there was The Fosdyke Saga which began in the Daily Mirror in 1971. This strip was originally to have appeared in 1970 in the paper's short-lived colour supplement, The Mirror Magazine. |
| Bill was asked to produce a strip about 'a great Northern family' but before any of the episodes could be published the magazine folded. Fortunately he was invited to move the daily strip to the Daily Mirror itself & The Fosdyke Saga as it was now called, was born. Bill was drawing an entire week's supply of The Fosdyke Saga each Friday & told one interviewer that the end to the week was 'symbolic - as the Fosdykes were my great stand-by, the rock on which my church is built'. |
| However, in 1984 Robert Maxwell purchased the Mirror Group Newspapers & in the following year unceremoniously axed The Fosdyke Saga from the Daily Mirror. Bill refused to bring the strip to a tragic & untimely end & the last episode was not committal to their future. |
| In 1983 the strip re-surfaced as a 42-part series on BBC Radio 2, which he co-wrote with John Junkin. Bill also adapted the strip for the stage with renowned playwright Alan Plater. |
| His other work found homes in publications such as New Scientist (Grimbledon Down) from 1970 to 1994, Camra (the Keg Buster), Datalink (Red Spanner), Today/Mail on Sunday/Sunday Dispatch (Nero), Yorkshire Post/Picturegoer/Daily Sketch (Sir Griswold), Everybody's/John Bull/General Practitioner (Dr Whittle), Tit-Bits & others. His hilarious single cartoons have appeared in a wide variety of publications such as Classic FM magazine, Private Eye, The Oldie, British Archaeology, Antiquity, Archaeological Institute & America. As an interviewer once noted in 1977, 'his output is staggering: yet he has never worked at weekends!' |
| Bill contributed his largest number of cartoons to Punch, including covers. However in 1989 Lord Stevens, the head of Punch's parent company United Newspapers brought in the 29 year old David Thomas as Editor. Thomas had edited the Mail on Sunday's You magazine & his brash style with declarations that 'Punch could be mega, I mean, mega mega' - led Bill to revolt. |
| Thomas finally left the magazine & before Punch ceased publication in April 1992 Bill mounted an unsuccessful campaign to buy it. It's worth noting that the reason for this was purely because his financial backers pulled out at the 11th hour having decided that at 60, he was too old to be an editor of a humorous magazine! |
| A totally amazing ability to turn his hand to any subject permits Bill to employ perfect visual communication during his after dinner, training or product presentations. This, put along side his phenomenally 'quick on the draw' humour, enthralls audiences again & again and many leading companies such as Stena Lines, Page & Moy, Lloyds/TSB, JCB, ICI & Sanyo call for his services. Advertising & PR groups seek his help in their campaigns; sales conference speaking, product launches, open days etc.. Clients include Easyjet, Yakult, Batchelors, BT, East Midlands Airport & Marks and Spencer. |
| Writer of more than 20 books & illustrator of over 70 including; The World's Worst Golf Club, his autobiography Is There Any News of the Iceberg?, Bill Tidy's Book of Quotations, Disgraceful Archaeology with Dr Paul Bahn & most recently, The Greatest Cricketer of Them All, volume one of a series of sporting legends. Bill also writes & illustrates childrens' books. |
| Bill has appeared on many TV & radio shows including; Countdown, Watercolour Challenge, Collectors Lot, Through the Keyhole (twice!), Alphabet Game, Open House & Sorry I Haven't a Clue. He also wrote & presented Tidy Up Walsall, Tidy Up Naples, Three Days Last Summer & Draw Me, a 13-part childrens' TV series. Bill has also guest presented on Food File, Countryfile & Sky Sports Saturday Morning show. He has also been a recipient of This Is Your Life. |
| Bill has designed board games, ventriloquist dummies, stage sets & the It's A Knockout Trophy, received Granada TV's Cartoonist of the Year award, Society of Illustrators award & is in great demand as an after dinner speaker. |
| Other commercial work includes commissions for exclusive personalised cartoon publicity in the form of original limited editions, Christmas cards & calendars specifically aimed at companies, tailoring each drawing to their corporate identity. Clients include Virgin Holidays, Halifax Property Services, Boot, Bass Brewers, Holiday Inn, Autoglass, Guinness, First National Bank, The British Dental Association & McAlpines. |
| Bill was awarded an MBE in 2000 & was the 2007/08 President of the Lord's Taverners, a charity he has supported for over 30 years. His hobbies include supporting Everton FC, archaeology, real ale, reading about history, good wine & growing vegetables in his garden! |
For more information on Bill Tidy, Contact Arena. Tel: 0113-239-2222 |