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Bill Tidy – RIP

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D. D. Degg March 12, 2023 1 minute 6 comments

Famed British comic strip and gag cartoonist Bill Tidy has passed away.

The cartoonist was behind strips including The Fosdyke Saga and The Cloggies 

Born in Liverpool, he also helped to set up the British Cartoonists’ Association

Tributes have poured in, with many describing him as ‘talented, witty and warm’

The death of Bill Tidy, who some call “The World’s Greatest Cartoonist” and “UK’s Best-Loved Cartoonist,” is being reported by newspapers throughout Great Britain including The Daily Mail and The Guardian.

We’ll spotlight John Freeman’s remembrance for downthetubes:

His early cartoons featured in a variety of newspapers and magazines in the 1950s and 60s, including the Daily Sketch, Sunday Dispatch, Reveille, Weekend, Sunday Chronicle, and Travel World.

In 1966, he was a founder member of the British Cartoonists’ Association, sister organisation to the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, and was voted Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain’s Humorous Cartoonist of the Year.

His many cartoon strips included “The Cloggies”, which ran from 1967 to 1981 in the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye, and in The Listener from 1985 to 1986; and “The Fosdyke Saga” published daily in the Daily Mirror between 1971 to 1984. The strip was a parody of The Forsyte Saga, the novel by John Galsworthy, set in the industrial north instead of a genteel upper-class environment. The Fosdyke family, in sharp contrast, ran a tripe factory in the North west, the strip described as “a classic tale of struggle, power, personalities… and tripe”.

From Yesterday’s Paper a 2015 appreciation of Tidy by John Adcock:

Years later, on March 2, 1971, the front-page of the Daily Mirror proclaimed THE FOSDYKES ARE HERE! The Fosdykes were a Northern Edwardian family who climbed from the depths of the mining industry at Insanitary Cottages, Griddlesbury, to become “rulers of a mighty empire, risking life and limb to spread the gospel of tripe.”

Britain’s greatest comic strip began in 1900 and the plot was to cover two world wars and end in “the world of today.” The idea was to parody a long-running, popular 1960s BBC TV adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic Forsyte novels, begun in 1906 and collectively published as The Forsyte Saga since 1922.

Few cartoonists are deserving of the descriptive ‘genius’ but Bill Tidy was one of them. For 14 long years, 6 days a week, the long and winding Fosdyke Saga plots moved along at the pace of three panels a day alternating three plotlines at a time. The lives of the huge cast of characters were played out across the globe in the United States, South America, the Sahara, Moscow and Kabul with frequent stops back in Salford, Manchester.

Paul Hudson’s The A to Z of British Newspaper Strips list the following:

From The Political Cartoon Gallery:

In 1952, Bill Tidy joined the Royal Engineers, serving in Germany, Korea and Japan, where in 1955 he sold his first cartoon to Mainichi, an English-language newspaper. On leaving the army he began freelancing as a cartoonist. In 1957, he became a professional cartoonist and began contributing to Punch. Tidy became well known for his strip cartoons, particularly “The Cloggies”, which ran in Private Eye from 1967 to 1981 and in the Listener from 1985 to 1986, and “The Fosdyke Saga”, which began in the Daily Mirror on 2 March 1971. Tidy has also produced work for the Oldie, New Scientist, Today, Mail on Sunday, Sunday Dispatch, Yorkshire Post, Picturegoer, Daily Sketch, Everybody’s, John Bull, General Practitioner and Tit-Bits.

Another gag cartoon gallery at Chris Beetles.

From Bill Tidy himself:

I started landing spots in national newspapers and being a story teller began to produce 2, 3 and 4 picture gags. Regular features are what most cartoonists are looking for and drawing on TV, which I found easy and enjoyable saw me bringing in a new dimension to my work. The only slightly disconcerting feature was that I was having an odd effect on the Street of Shame!

Nearly every publication in which I appeared shivered and rolled ever! They included the Daily Sketch, Sunday Dispatch, Reveille, Weekend, Sunday Chronicle, Travel World etc.  I was going through Fleet Street like Typhoid Mary!