Tributes to
Artist who used to live in
LEGENDARY cartoonist Bill Tidy MBE, who spent many happy years living in Southport , has died aged 89.
The iconic artist who was born in Tranmere in Wirral in 1933 will be fondly remembered for his widely published comic strips. Deeply proud of his working-class roots in Northern England, his most abiding cartoon strips, such as The Cloggies and The Fosdyke Saga, were set in an exaggerated version of that environment.
He was also famous for his regular TV appearances, on popular shows including Blankety Blank, Watercolour Challenge, Through the Keyhole and Countryfile died with his two children, Sylvia and Rob, at his side.
In 2000 he was awarded an MBE for “Services to Journalism”.
He was also well-known for his immense charitable work, particularly for the Lord’s Taverners, which he supported for more than 30 years.
When in Southport he was always happy to support local causes through his artwork.
His wife, Rose, ran a business in Hoghton Street selling bespoke soft furnishings, curtains, bedding etc in the 1980s called Rosa Tidy’s ‘Bottom Drawer’. Son Rob had become his full-time carer after his health declined following two major strokes.
Speaking to The Mirror, daughter Sylvia described her father as the ‘UK’s best loved cartoonist’, and a ‘talented and very funny man’.
She said: “We are all deeply saddened but his legacy and cartoons will continue to live on.”
Speaking in the Stand Up For Southport Facebook group, artist Tony Wynne said: “I met Bill Tidy quite a few times; I used to work at his accountants and lived opposite him in Birkdale.
“He was a really lovely man and when I began cartooning in the 1980s he encouraged me, even after he’d moved to Kegworth. Sincere condolences to all the family.”
Ada Price said: “I remember Bill well when he used to fill up at the Mobil petrol station where I worked he was a lovely friendly man and he drew me a picture of Mickey Mouse on a piece of paper while I was serving him. RIP Bill you will be missed.”
Neville Grundy said: “Bill Tidy was a neighbour in the early 1980s when our family lived in Birkdale. He used to enjoy a pint in the long-gone Berkeley on Queens Road where I occasionally saw him. CAMRA members will remember him as the cartoonist behind the ‘Kegbuster’ strip that appeared for many years in the campaign’s newspaper, ‘What’s Brewing’.”
Tributes also poured in from famous faces including Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes who simply said that Mr Tidy was a ‘very special man’ who ‘will never die’.
Composer Tim Rice said: ‘Bill will be missed not only for his great talent but for his warmth, wit and wisdom.’ Bill Tidy started his cartoonist career when he sold a sketch to a Japanese newspaper in 1955, the same year he left the Royal Engineers branch of the Army. As his work became more well-known and began finding spots in the likes of the Daily Sketch and The Daily Mirror, he moved to London, where he formed the British Cartoonists’ Association with the help of some colleagues on Fleet Street. Over the course of his career, he wrote 20 books, and illustrated 70.
He drew the popular cartoon strip The Cloggies in Private Eye from 1967 to 1981, before going on to draw the Fosdyke Saga strip, which ran in the Mirror newspaper from 1971 to 1985.
So popular the Fosdyke Saga was that it became the subject of a BBC 42-part radio series from 1983. He spent his final years living in Swannington , Leicestershire.
On his website, he said: “I have always been able to draw. From the mess of my earliest memories, I can still recall images of my first attempts at drawing cowboys I’d seen in comics and at the cinema.
“I drew them on the paper lids on jam jars and people would gather round and say ‘What a clever little boy!” It really irritated me.
“Eventually it dawned on me that for most of us, once we are out of our comfort zone, according to the law of averages, we are talking rubbish half of the time anyway! In other words, accept praise and criticism with the same reserve! I’ve had plenty of each.
“Anyway, drawing cowboys was no great thing. In the 1940’s of my youthful, pre-TV Liverpool, everyone could do something! A party piece on the upright piano, spoons, accordion or take the dog through the simple beg, pretend to be dead and roll over routine.
“Anything to save the family honour in those days! My mum kept a pub while my father was away with the Wavy Navy and later with the Royal Navy.
“In the May Blitz in 1940 we would retire to the cellar with our cousins, the Hughes family, who shared the house