Michael Heath (cartoonist)
Encyclopedia
Michael John Heath is a prolific British strip cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 and illustrator.

His father, George Heath, was also a cartoonist (of comic strips). His work has appeared in numerous British publications including Punch, Lilliput
Lilliput (magazine)
Lilliput was a small-format British monthly magazine of humour, short stories, photographs and the arts, founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant. The first issue came out in July and it was sold shortly after to Edward Hulton, when editorship was taken over by Tom Hopkinson in 1940....

, the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

, The Evening News, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

, The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1982 by Lord Rothermere, it became Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper following the closing of The News of the World in July 2011...

, and Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

; all his work is signed simply as "HEATH".

He has been cartoon editor of "The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

" magazine since 1991, and the cartoons which are published do not always adhere to the magazine's conservative politics. Heath's own political cartoons have also appeared in The Independent newspaper.

A biography for him can be seen at the British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent's website http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/michaelheath/biography

Great Bores of Today

Great Bores of Today was a long-running series in Private Eye. Each has a single frame, in which some immediately recognizable species of modern cultural bore is seen in his or her natural environs, haranguing bystanders, reporters, the viewer, or imagined listeners. Underneath is a lengthy chunk of the logorrhea that the bore utters distinguished in particular by the bland inconsistency of the bore's opinions. (The text is contributed by other Private Eye regulars.) The series has been resurrected in Richard Ingram's monthly magazine, The Oldie, with illustrations again by Heath.

The Suits

A series that appeared in The Spectator, lampooning the interchangeability and solemnity of men in their suits (or the utter helplessness of the normally besuited when temporarily deprived of their suits).

The Regulars

"The Regulars" ran in Private Eye; the "regulars" are Jeffrey Bernard
Jeffrey Bernard
Jeffrey Bernard was a British journalist, best known for his weekly column "Low Life" in the Spectator magazine, and also notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abuse. He became associated with the louche and bohemian atmosphere that existed in London's Soho district...

 and the other regular customers of the Coach & Horses pub in Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...

. The cartoons were used in the play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell is a play by Keith Waterhouse about real-life journalist Jeffrey Bernard. Bernard was still alive at the time the play was first performed in the West End in 1989.Bernard wrote the "Low Life" column in The Spectator...

.

Style Victims

Published in the London Sunday Times, this series makes fun of the conscious, and unconscious, style or fashion victims. (One frame shows a pair of sour-faced judges in ceremonial clothes and wigs, one grimly asking the other "What is a style victim?")

Numero Uno

A series that ran in Private Eye, "Numero Uno" makes fun of baseball-capped youth, with Walkman
Walkman
Walkman is a Sony brand tradename originally used for portable audio cassette, and now used to market Sony's portable audio and video players as well as a line of Sony Ericsson mobile phones...

 earphones permanently implanted in ears.

The Outlaw

A short lived strip set in the year 2000, where Michael Common is "the last person to smoke in England". Published in The Spectator.

Partners

Partnership and baby-rearing in the England of the 90s. Published in The Independent.

Henry King

A disturbingly precocious baby, permanently wearing a baseball cap. Published in The Spectator.

Collections of Heath's cartoons

  • Private Eye Michael Heath. 1973.
  • Book of Bores. London: Private Eye & André Deutsch, 1976.
  • Michael Heath's Automata. London: A. P. Rushton, 1976.
  • The Punch cartoons of Heath. Harrap, 1976.
  • Is Love All? Michael Heath's Cartoons from the Guardian. London: Blond & Briggs, 1982.
  • Private Eye's Bores 3. London: Private Eye, 1983.
  • The Best of Heath. Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1984.
  • Welcome to America. London: Heinemann, 1985.
  • Baby. London: Heinemann, 1988.
  • The Complete Heath. London: John Murray, 1991. Not the complete Heath by any means, but a collection of cartoons from the series "The Suits", "The Regulars", "Style Victims", "Numero Uno", and "Great Bores of Today", as well as political and other topical cartoons.
  • Heath's 90s. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. Reproduces "The Outlaw", "Partners", "Henry King", new installments of "Great Bores of Today", as well as many political cartoons.

Partial list of works illustrated by Heath

  • Back with Parren. By E. W. Hildick. London: Macmillan, 1968.
  • The Computer People. By Anne Denny Angus. London: Faber & Faber, 1970.
  • Robert Morley's Book of Bricks. By Robert Morley
    Robert Morley
    Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...

    . London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978. (Illustrated by Heath and Geoffrey Dickinson.)
  • The Job of Acting: A guide to working in the theatre. By Clive Swift. London: Harrap, 1979.
  • Robert Morley's Book of Worries. By Robert Morley. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979. (Illustrations by Heath and Geoffrey Dickinson.)
  • Loose Talk: Adventures on the streets of shame. By Tina Brown
    Tina Brown
    Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...

    . London: Michael Joseph, 1979.
  • The Anti-Booklist. Ed. Brian Redhead and Kenneth McLeish. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981.
  • Fanny Peculiar. By Keith Waterhouse
    Keith Waterhouse
    Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE was a novelist, newspaper columnist, and the writer of many television series.-Biography:Keith Waterhouse was born in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

    . London: Michael Joseph, 1983.
  • Second Best Bed. By Fenton Bresler. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1983.
  • Merde! The real French you were never taught at school. By Genevieve. London: Angus & Robertson, 1984.
  • No Laughing Matter: A collection of political jokes. By Steven Lukes
    Steven Lukes
    Steven Michael Lukes is a political and social theorist. Currently he is a professor of politics and sociology at New York University...

     and Itzhak Galnoor. London: Routledge, 1985.
  • How's Your Glass? A quizzical look at drinks and drinking. By Kingsley Amis
    Kingsley Amis
    Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

    . London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985.
  • Waterhouse at Large. By Keith Waterhouse. London: Michael Joseph, 1985.
  • Merde encore! More of the real French you were never taught at school. By Genevieve. London: Angus, 1986.
  • Talking Horses. By Jeffrey Bernard. London: Fourth Estate, 1987.
  • Beyond Fear. By Dorothy Rowe. London: Fontana, 1987.
  • Winewise; or, How to be streetwise about wine. By Alice King. London: Methuen, 1987.
  • All Gourmets Great and Small. By Clive and Angela Russell-Taylor. Southampton: Ashford Press, 1988.
  • High Life. By Taki. London: Viking, 1989.
  • Generation Games. By Laurie Graham. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990.
  • A Parent's Survival Guide. By Laurie Graham. London: Chatto & Windus, 1991.
  • Countryblast. By Clive Aslet. London: John Murray, 1991.
  • British Teeth: An excruciating journey from the dentist's chair to the rotten heart of a nation. By William R. Leith. London: Faber & Faber, 2002.
  • The English at Table. By Digby Anderson. London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006.
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