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Fortnightly featuring the foolhardiness, foolishness, fantasies and foibles (that’s enough alliteration - Ed.) of a group of upmarket incomers to an unspecified district of North East London, which might just be Stoke Newington, the strip is the work of Knife and Packer.
But, surely, you might ask, doesn’t the man behind the counter of the cartoon characters’ video rental store bear an uncanny resemblance to the guy at Church Street’s Film Store? And the Carta Musica Italian flatbread fed to the ducks in one strip by little Lottie can only have come from The Spence, can’t it?
Perhaps. Knife – real name Duncan McCoshan , a local resident of some seven years – won’t be drawn on the subject. After all, it’s he who wields the pen, in partnership with Packer – actually, his real name is Jem Packer – who collaborates on the scripts and lives in De Beauvoir. Both well situated to observe the real-life counterparts of regular characters Jez and Quin, Max and Poppy, little Lottie and Gideon (‘someone’s nephew’ – Duncan had a memory lapse, here, about the cast). Unlike those of, say, The Simpsons, these cartoon actors age: baby jokes become replaced by those about toddlers, but the adults remain unreconstituted in their affectionate affectation: rather than fill a van taken to some French hypermarket to stock up with wine, Jez and Quin opt for barrels of Brie.
Duncan met Jem when both were living in adjoining blocks in Islington’s Thornhill district, overhearing one another singing from the catalogues of Demis Roussos and Serge Gainsbourg. Jem had been part of the Edinburgh Fringe duo Dallas and Packer, as well as contributing to BBC Radio 4’s ’Weekending’ satire. Or else it was through a mutual friend (memories are faulty, here, including your reporter’s).
As an adolescent, Duncan would send ‘stuff’ to Punch, but gave up cartooning for a while, due to lack of response. Later, he sent some ‘toons to Private Eye’s Ian Hislop, who did respond one Xmas with a cursory ‘I quite like it’, then commissioned the strip, allowing Duncan to quit his day job at an antiquarian bookshop in 1991 to live off his wits and with his pen. ‘I fell back on something I failed at before’, he observes, adding, ‘for me drawing is escapism.’ Using his favourite pens: Faber Castell PITT, Staedtler pigment liner and occasional Japanese Pilots – there was some militaristic joke, there, when he showed me his kit, but a post-interview mailing told me not to mention it. It’s big, though (I mean his pens). And, of course, his favourite colour scheme is black and white.
As evidenced in the other products he and Jem author – six titles in the ’Captain Fact’ series of informative books about science for kids and new fiction series featuring Fleabag Monkeyface, a totally gross character who appeals to the toilet humour most parents pretend their kids don’t share (first instalment, ’When Fleabags Attack,’ available now through Walker Books and from your local friendly bookstore). ’Turbo fart;, indeed!
Duncan has other favourites, too, being very fond of Americans B Kliban, Gary (‘Far Side’) Larsen, Sam Gross (that’s a real name, not another joke, by the way) and Charles Booth – the latter pair from New Yorker magazine. Showing occasionally at Little Russell Street’s Cartoon Museum, and with some 3 years involvement in the annual Big Draw events, it’s sad to note that – local colour aside – a recent show of ‘It’s Grim…’ strips resulted in no sales. It was held at The Spence.
Regardless, N16 is pleased to welcome Duncan as a regular contributor from this issue and we recommend the website: www.knifeandpacker.com, with his warning: ’It’s animated, but not updated’. |
