Read on Twitter
I'm extremely grateful for all the support I'm receiving regarding my being excluded from taking part in this year's cartoon awards. I think it's important that people understand the situation so I will try to explain...
Firstly, @EllwoodAtfield have sponsored the event for several years now and have transformed it into quite a grand affair. However, they do not have any involvement in which cartoonists are included or how the awards are decided. All of that is controlled by one man, Tim Benson.
Benson, @Cartoon4sale, runs the Political Cartoon Gallery in Putney and started these awards many years ago. I have known him for more than ten years. A lot of people find him extremely difficult and I have often found myself defending him to others in the past. We always seemed
to get on just fine. However, earlier this year, when I made my views about the current situation clear, he decided to make an enemy of me. He regularly sent me messages advising me that I was an idiot and that my fellow cartoonists thought that I had gone mad. He
publicly described me as an embarrassment to my profession and, on several occasions, made totally unfounded claims on social media that I endorsed The Holocaust. Benson currently has 28 pieces of my work in his gallery, all of which I have requested he return to me.
He has refused to let me have them back, unless I publicly withdraw my comments against Covid measures. Obviously, I was not a bit surprised that he excluded me from taking part in the awards. To be quite honest, I'm not sure I would take part in them, as long as he is involved.
But I think it's important to highlight the fact that an event like this is being run by such a deeply unpleasant individual who is able to decide who can or cannot participate, based purely on his own political/ social/ moral point of view. And, needless to say, if I had been
able to enter, I wouldn't have won a thing. It baffles me that @EllwoodAtfield continue to associate themselves with a person like this but they are not to blame. Please, direct all of your complaints, with all the fire and vitriol you can muster, to @Cartoon4sale.
