Matthew Prichett on Pocket Cartoonist Matt
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Lotte Brundle for Country Life sat down with the very funny Daily Telegraph socio-political cartoonist Matt.
Matt [Pritchett] has been the newspaper’s in-house cartoonist since 1988. He is better known simply as ‘MATT’ — the sign off he chose at the start of his career. Beloved for his daily jokes accompanied by characterful drawings…
Matt has an MBE for services to journalism and has won the British Press Awards’ ‘Cartoonist of the Year’ numerous times. Press Gazette also inducted him into their Hall of Fame as one of the most influential journalists of the past four decades in 2005. His new book The Best of Matt 2025is out now and will be celebrated by an exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London from November 10-15.
(Apparently, even by those fast clipper ships, it will take months to get the book over to The Colonies.)
Matt grew up in Borough and creativity, it seems, runs in his family. His grandfather was the short story writer V. S. Pritchett and his father is the Telegraph columnist Oliver Pritchett. ‘He’s my hero,’ Matt says. His sister, Georgia Pritchett, is a screenwriter, best known for her work on Succession and his eldest daughter, Edith Pritchett, is a cartoonist for The Guardian [link added]. ‘We talk about cartoons all week,’ he says, ‘and her stuff is so different from mine, and so brilliant. I’m just very proud.’
Matt and Lotte discuss cartooning and zeroes in on a few of them:
His favourite thing to draw, especially during this time of the year, is Guy Fawkes. ‘I love drawing Guy Fawkes. I don’t know why I love Guy Fawkes but I always look forward to Guy Fawkes because I’ve just done so many jokes about him,’ Matt says. ‘This year, because of the mansion tax, I did a joke about him blowing up his own house, so there always seems to be an angle you can use. That’s one of my best.’
The hardest thing he’s ever had to draw came when there was a terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly magazine, in response to cartoons they published which depicted Muhammad. A lot of cartoonists were killed. ‘I usually never, ever do slightly serious cartoons, and I wasn’t going to do it,’ Matt says. ‘And then I thought it feels a bit like a cop out not to do something about it. And I still don’t really like doing serious things, but I did feel I had to do something on that.’
Laugh with Matt at his Daily Telegraph page or at his Facebook page.
About working for The Daily Telegraph:
He delights in the silly and, despite people’s preconceptions about what it must be like to work for a right-wing newspaper, tends to try and shy away from drawing anything political. ‘People always think that, working on The Telegraph, I’ll be told that things aren’t right wing enough. But in 37 years, I’ve never, ever been told that — they just want it to be a good joke. He doesn’t consider himself to be right wing, ‘but I think my wife considers me to be. It sort of depends what subject you’re talking about.’
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