Pen and Think CARTOONS: The strength of any cartoonist is to be allowed to do what he likes... to express himself MARTYN TURNER

Well, thank you for asking me. Unaccustomed as I am to being asked to write about what I, and others, do I am now at a loss as to what to say.

Cartooning, political cartooning, went on long before The Irish Times reared its lovely head. Cavemen drew on walls, Goya drew clandestine anti war prints and sold them from under the counter. Then there was Hogarth, Daumier, Punch, Dublin Opinion ... well you know the names yourselves.

My first awareness of Irish Times cartoons came with discovering the splendid "By-Lines", a pocket cartoon which ran on the front of the paper in the 1950s and 1960s. I met its creator, Niall O'Kennedy (NOK), many years ago and asked him why he stopped drawing cartoons. In his forties, he explained, he suddenly started seeing other people's point of view. Issues didn't seem black and white to him but nuanced in shades of grey. In other words he grew up, a fatal ailment for a political cartoonist.

Let me pause here whilst I go and eat my rusks and milk.

Mr O'Kennedy went into advertising, which is a terribly cunning link to another Irish Times cartoon institution. Warner, a cartoonist whom I associate with the Farmer's Journal and with being sued by Charlie Haughey when Haughey was Minister for Agriculture, regularly drew a topical cartoon for an advertisement for Odearest mattresses. The drawings were always accompanied by a piece of doggerel underneath.

The Dáil report of the 1949 Land Bill, in March 1950, includes the following; "The Minister need not be surprised when he opens Saturday's paper to see myself and Deputy Cogan ensconced on an Odearest mattress except that Deputy Cogan, as some other person did, may take a libel action against The Irish Times."

At the same time, a New Zealand cartoonist, Alan Reeve drew caricatures for the paper.

Towards the end of the Sixties and in the early Seventies, Nick Robinson attempted to supply a daily cartoon to the paper. He was quite a prolific cartoonist. I remember him submitting stuff to Fortnight magazine when I was editor, and he had a free cross-hatching style which I admired. I think – this is a long time ago, and I'm old, forgive me if I'm wrong – he told me that after nine months or so he just ran out of ideas and eventually retreated back to the law, solicitoring, and then became the trailing spouse of President Robinson (as he described himself).

And after that is where I come in. June 1971 was my first appearance in the paper: a single column caricature of Harry Tuzo, the boss of the British Army in Northern Ireland. And I have been submitting drawings and waiting to see if they are printed ever since.

My early stuff was on Northern Ireland, where I lived, and the World (where I also lived), as the then foreign editor of The Irish Times liked cartoons. In 1976 they bought me lunch in some club in Kildare Street and asked if I would like to move to the Republic and send in more drawings. They would pay me for a whole year whether I could last that long or not.

And, 38 years later, that pretty much remains our relationship. I send in a cartoon and they print it, if I'm lucky. Once a year they buy me dinner and we don't talk about cartoons. I asked one editor, who thought I needed a feed, towards the end of the meal, if he would like to talk to me about my cartoons.

"Why?"' he said, "If I live to be a thousand I wouldn't know so much about the subject as you".

And, in the world of newspaper political cartoonists this is what separates The Irish Times, and a few other enlightened journals, from the pack. I have, from time to time, worked for at least a dozen papers in what some call "mainland Britain". Very few of them have proven to be interference-free. The more benign will phone, just to find out what sort of thing you might be doing. The worst demand ideas from which they can select something appropriate for their readership. The best hire you to produce a cartoon and let you get on with it, because, well, that is what you do. The worst, well, I have heard grisly tales of cartoonists submitting four, five or six ideas for some disinterested assistant editor to select from.

This is fatal for both the paper and the cartoonist. The cartoonist never finds his voice but becomes a cypher for the editor (who probably changes from time to time). He starts second-guessing what the paper would like, not what he feels. The strength of any cartoonist, like any columnist, is to do what he, or she likes. To express him, or her, self.

By design or luck, or the fact I'm 19 stone, 6 foot seven inches and grumpy, I have been left alone to fail or succeed without editorial input. Long may it last.

The future of graphics in the paper can only be good, economics permitting. Since the development of modern printing techniques the paper has been able to cater for a much greater spectrum of art. The days of the black-and-white drawing, though missed by dinosaurs like me, are over. We now have a plethora of cartoonists, caricaturists and illustrators enhancing the written bits of the paper and using techniques that could only have been reproduced by high-end printing in the past. We are a shoal of cleaner fish improving its look and keeping the whale alive. ( This may be a prejudiced point of view. Nah ...)

And as newspapers change to compete with 24- hour television and internet news, graphic comment will separate them from the other outlets. I know of newspapers already who employ more graphic artists than photographers. I saw them. In Australia. They were the ones penned in at the end of the newsroom having fun and each bringing his, or her small slice of readership with them.

In my next article, in the 200th anniversary edition, I will explain why cartoonists live longer and work longer than anyone else.

Martyn Turner has been submitting cartoons to the newspaper for more than a quarter, and slightly less than a third, of the Irish Times's existence.