The Day the Laughter Died

I never got to meet Ray Lowry and, although I had his address in my book for years, I never wrote to him either. Sheer bloody laziness. I first saw his cartoons way back in the 1960s in Punch Magazine when he was drawing exactly like André Francois. I was too, and it struck a chord. Later, of course, he developed a nib stretching style that owed nothing to anyone.

He shared the sensibility of Ivor Cutler, Milligan and the Bonzos, a fusion of Dylan and Biffo the Bear. To Rock ‘n’ Roll in the ‘80s, a then almost undiscovered country for cartoonists, he brought (particularly in the NME) a near Orwellian critical faculty. Later, he turned the searchlight on the follies, artistic and cultural, of post-Thatcher Britain for Private eye, the Spectator, The Observer, The Oldie, The Guardian and many more.
In 1989 the Do-Not-Press brought out Ink, a large format paperback in which his drawings (some of the best ink and wash work of the last century) are reproduced at a scale that does full justice to the skill with which they were executed.
You have to love bands to have invented ones like Vermin’s Vermits, The Vite Shifts and The Facile Twerps. And here’s the lead singer of The Nuremburg Trials introducing one of the band: “Our drummer’s got one leg amputated at the knee and molests schoolgirls and quiet old ladies, urinates in his trousers, and won’t say his prayers!”
Ray was a one-off.
He regretted not looking like Eddie Cochran. He cared passionately about Carlsberg Special Brew. He was master of a form that will soon be as rare as thatching. He made millions of people laugh and think. He didn’t wake up this morning. We will not see his like again.
May his sweet soul find whatever it most desires.