Cartoonist Ronald Searle, a short tribute

The tribute is to him but naturally I remember how his life affected mine.

He was as well known for his St Trinians characters as he was for surviving the notorious Thai-Burma Railway as a Japanese Prisoner of War. I was to go to Singapore in the 1970s during my business life and saw the Changi cemetery in honor of those who died as a result of the Japanese invasion. It was a sober memory.

He returned from the war weighing 85 lbs complete with some 300 drawings which captured his experiences during his three or more years of incarceration.

Ronald had just had accepted his first St Trinians cartoon when he joined up for the war. Fortunately he was able to return and continue to draw his characters which were deliciously if not correctly transferred to the movies.

I include the Alastair Sim picture not only because I was supposed to look like him in the film  Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart which aired on TV recently but because Alastair was brilliant in the St Trinians series.

Yes, that's me - doling out the money in the 1999 movie.

As to the leggy girls - they appeared in a more recent revival of the St Trinians series and are the 'delicious' part I refer to.

Ronald Searle won many awards and his cartoons appeared in magazines on 'both sides of the pond'.

I include his caricature of the Beyond the Fringe crew because they in turn influenced so many later comics and form of humor; not least Monty Python.

Finally, although I understand Ronald wasn't happy with the final result, nevertheless the animated Dick Deadeye which my good friend's company Bill Melendez Productions produced and based on Searle's drawings was considered a triumph by everyone else. 

This particular book, of the animated film which featured Ronald Searle's characters and linked all the Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas I saw nestling in a little shop in a little town outside Sydney, Australia in the 1990s. I regretted to this day that I didn't buy it. But what it did show was how international was the appreciation of Ronald Searle's work.

Now that Ronald's gone to the Great Drawing Board in the Sky I hope he's reunited with all his characters and he will be remembered by his many fans.  I have been one, for years.