Cartoonist Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry Gets Oldie of the Year Award

D. D. Degg December 24, 2024 1 minute 0 comments

The Mail on Sunday’s peerless cartoonist Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry has been chosen as an Oldie of the Year.

Praised for ‘making news pages brighter by putting in a laugh’, 88-year-old Mac was selected for The Oldie magazine’s award, alongside former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, also 88; film director Mike Leigh, 81; and actress Nanette Newman, 90.

The Mail on Sunday applauds their cartoonist receiving the Oldie Lead in his Pencil Award.

Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry began his career in the mid 1950s:

[A]t the age of 20, I was nearing the end of a two-year stint in the Army and wondering what I should do with myself when I became a civilian once more.

With about a month to go before I was penniless, I received a letter from an old friend telling me her son was starting a cartoon animation company in Henley-on-Thames, and was looking for young artists to train as animators.

I applied, got the job and, thanks to the skill, patience and friendship of my new boss, Nick Spargo, took my first steps into the world of cartooning.

Four years later Mac decided to go the freelancer route as a cartoonist:

I drew three pages a week for children’s comics. I illustrated articles in various magazines … I tried my hand at cards for birthdays, weddings, Valentine’s, births and getting well soon. Anything to earn a crust.

But my priority was to get known as a gag cartoonist, and I think it was through my work in Punch magazine that I was noticed by the editor of the Daily Sketch

That was 1969. When the Daily Sketch shut down two years later Mac was transferred to the sister Daily Mail. Where he stayed until his 2018 retirement. That didn’t take – he soon returned to the Mail on Sunday and cartooning.

Oldie Magazine also praised the cartoonist. Quentin Letts writes:

Cartoonist Stan ‘Mac’ McMurtry says that, during his decades on Fleet Street, his duty has been to make news pages brighter ‘by putting in a laugh’.

Ever-modest Mac, 88, undersells his genius. His drawings in the Daily Sketch, Daily Mail and, to this day, the Mail on Sunday have always done more than that. Since the 1960s they have humanised the news, reminding us that after every thermonuclear disaster there will be some office cleaner surveying the mess, leaning on a broom with wry detachment and a half-smoked fag.

The fashion for newspaper cartoons has drifted towards party-political indignation and starkness of nib. Mac’s art is softer. His work is in the tradition of the Bystander’s Bruce Bairnsfather, the Daily Express’s Carl Giles and the Evening Standard’s Jak. The shading is gentle and the visual effect more rounded than sharp-edged…

Oldie Magazine’s Instagram account has video of Mac accepting his Oldie Lead-in-his-Pencil Award.