Pencils out! Search is on for Britain’s best budding cartoonists

PENS and pencils at the ready: the hunt is on again for Britain’s best aspiring cartoonists.

Each year the Young Cartoonists of the Year competition, run by the British Cartoonists’ Association, offers the chance to be judged by the best in the business and attracts thousands of entries.

This year’s panel includes cartoonists from nearly every national daily newspaper, including the Daily Mail’s incomparable Mac, who joined this newspaper in 1970 and whose own 2016 anthology goes on sale this week.

Mac said: ‘This is a great competition to get young cartoonists noticed. You have to expect rejection when you are starting out, but if you keep going eventually you’ll get something accepted and that’s a foot on the ladder.

‘Many of us are getting a bit long in the tooth but not enough would-be cartoonists are knocking on the door. You really have to have perseverance in this business when you are starting off.’

‘Chance to get noticed’

There are two categories, the under-30s and under-18s. Last year’s under-30s winner was Sean Coen, then 29, from London, with a cartoon featuring a joke about who does the washing up. He drew two men sitting at a table after a meal with a messy kitchen in the background and one saying to the other: ‘Yeah but I cooked.’

Oonagh Richardson, 11, from Stirchley, Birmingham, won the Woodcock Prize, awarded for a wacky cartoon, with hers about laughter being ‘the best medicine – except for treating diarrhoea’. She drew it for her grandfather to cheer him up while he was in hospital.

The under-18s winner was Christian Beeston, 12, from Macclesfield with a drawing of a giant rabbit pulling a man out of a top hat.

Entries must be an original cartoon, in colour or black and white, drawn freehand to a maximum size of A4. They must be submitted by November 4 to The Young Cartoonists of the Year Competition, The Cartoon Museum, 35 Little Russell Street, London, WC1A 2HH. For more details visit www.cartoonmuseum.org.

Order Mac’s Cartoon Year 2016 for £10 +p&p from www.delanceypress.co.uk or phone 02085258800.