Land of make believe

A random mention of Bucks Fizz of all people reminded me of an old picture I'd made from around 1982.   So I pulled it out from its mouldy plastic sleeve in the portfolio behind the sofa…

Please, please make allowances for me being still in my teens at the time I drew this…and don't look too closely at the tiny hands and feet...

I think I was inspired by the Top Of The Pops video for the Land Of Make Believe single where they get to dress up in several different outfits, some of which just seemed ridiculously inappropriate, so I was being tongue-in-cheek by including the very clichéd-looking punk Destroy t-shirt - although I could be wrong, but I’m not resilient enough to sit through the whole video to check if Bobby ever did don such a garment parody-style.  I was most definitely not a fan!

I got really into depicting pop people of the time in rather bizarre ways which may explain this

Whether you were to threaten me with lead piping in the library or not, I just don’t have a clue now why I’ve shown Mari Wilson as a Cluedo character (maybe because she didn't need hands or feet...?), though I think I probably had the intention of creating a whole set of music-related cards for the game one day. And now I think about it, it could include, oh….Dr John...Colonel Abrahams... Professor Green (yes! That one works on two levels!)...

Paul King from King received similar treatment a few years later, when Love And Pride was riding high in the charts.

But all the pictures stayed in their plastic sleeves in the portfolio, which has now lived behind several sofas over more years than I care to count, and unsurprisingly never saw the light of day until here - that may explain the mould.