I was born in Newport, Fife in 1952 and lived for a year or so in a Dura Den, near Cupar, before moving to Strathmiglo, where I spent the rest of the fifties and every weekend and school holiday in the sixties. We had moved to west Fife with my dad's job and although I enjoyed Queen Anne High School and the pals I had there, something dragged me back to Strath as often as possible.

When I eventually left school after a couple of failed attempts ( I didn't want the Bank and the Ordnance Survey didn't want me) I decided upon a Graphic Design course at Napier College in Edinburgh. It was a small class of about seven and we all had a wonderful time.
To make ends meet I worked weekends at a chicken farm, which kept me in Ben Sherman shirts and Players No6. Then DC Thomson came calling.

I started as a layout artist on Jackie magazine in 1974 with Nina Myskow as editor ( wonder what happened to her). I left for a brief spell in 1977 to sell tractors, or rather NOT sell tractors, hence my return six months later. During my second innings at DCT I desperately wanted to be a cartoonist, and sent jokes and ideas to every publication on the planet. There wasn't a reliable postal service to Mars or I would have sent stuff there too. My big break came in 1988 with the Sunday Mail who took me on as a sports cartoonist, which was to last for 16 years.

When cartoonist Ewan Bain died, I was asked to fill the spot he dominated for years with his wonderful creation Angus Og. I came up with Chic n Sammy, a topical 12 frame strip centred around two ordinary Scottish Lads. This lasted until 1997, but one day they may make a comeback somewhere else !
Back to 1994, I needed more than a sunday strip to realise my dream of being a freelance cartoonist. A daily was needed, and I was fortunate to be offered a spot in the Scottish Sun by the then editor Bob Bird. The Sporran Legion was born. It ran for a very successful eight years until the whole cartoon page changed, and the Sporran Legion had nowhere to go.
Fortunately I was doing a topical cartoon every day for the paper at this time and I'm still happy to be doing that today

My painting career started around the late seventies, when I exhibited with fellow artist and cousin Bob Thomson in various venues throughout Angus including Carnoustie Library, Dundee Rep and the Cottage Gallery in Newtyle. At this time I only worked in watercolour and could probably paint Panbride Church and Carnoustie beach from memory, having done it so often.
When I left DC Thomson in 1995 I gave up to concentrate on cartoons, but having visited numerous galleries around Scotland during the next few years I had the urge to start again with bolder and brighter colours, but I just couldn't seem to achieve this in watercolour so I bought a few tubes of acrylic and fumbled my way around for a year or so, trying to produce the type of artwork I was looking for.

When the Harbour Gallery in Broughty Ferry opened in 2001, this was a great place to hang my new style of paintings. From there I toured various galleries with piles of artwork, some took me on, some didn't. I'm eternally grateful to those who did.































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