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Andy Davey
Andy Davey was born in London. He trained as a research chemist, but became a professional caricaturist and cartoonist in 1993, after winning a national cartoon competition on the theme of "Back to Basics", satirising John Major. As he later recalled of his new career, "the overriding attractions were a) not wearing a tie and b) not having to get up early."
Davey has contributed editorial cartoons to the Guardian, The Times and the Sunday Telegraph, and is currently editorial cartoonist for The Sun, providing four full-colour cartoons a week. He has also had work published in Punch, Private Eye, Scotsman, Spectator, and New Statesman, and worked on 2DTV, the satirical animated television programme broadcast by ITV from 2001 to 2004.
Andy Davey regards cartoons as a vital part of the political process. "When someone is caricatured it means they have arrived - it gives them status", he told an interviewer in 2001: "Look at what Steve Bell did with John Major and his underpants, or Margaret Thatcher and her mad, staring eyes. Everybody remembers these images." However, creating a new political caricature takes time. "Someone who has just entered public office is a bit bland at first", Davey noted in 2007: "Under the sharp lights of the media their foibles appear as events unfold. Then if a cartoonist hits the right vein, finds a good metaphor, it develops a life of its own."
Davey cites his influences as "Wham! and the Beano originally": "Then The Lone Groover [by Tony Benyon] in the NME, Robert Crumb, Larry and finally Steve Bell. You can also throw Gerald Scarfe into the mix somewhere." As Davey noted in 2009, in political caricature "Steve Bell or Gerald Scarfe tend to set the benchmark and others follow": "None of us can draw Bush without seeing Steve Bell's monkey."
Davey is chairman of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation.
- Jennifer Harper “Back to the Drawing Board”, The Scotsman, 24 September 2001, p.6.
- Andy Davey in "Who or what made you want to cartoon?", 10 September 2005, at www.ccgb.org.uk
- Sara O'Reilly “Around Town - True blues”, Time Out, 31 January 2007, p.36.
- Ali McConnell “Yankee doodles: Obama in cartoons”, 23 April 2009, news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8004024.stm
- Andy Davey's website at http://www.andydavey.com/
