Notes on … Michael Heath
The Spectator has just published a book entitled ‘Best of Notes on… From kippers to jeans and everything in between’.
Illustrated by ‘legendary cartoonist’ Michael Heath, subjects range from Land Rovers and toffee apples to corkscrews and cocaine. Writers include the likes of Rod Liddle, James Delingpole, Julie Burchill, Ben Fogle, Prue Leith and many more, including my son, Ruari.
The editors could have included his thoughtful, even elegiac, ‘Notes On … the delightful melancholy of an antiques shop’. Instead they chose another piece in which he describes trying to roll the perfect cigarette!
Anyway, talking of Michael Heath, I was going to write about him last week (but forgot) because The Spectator organised a dinner to celebrate his 90th birthday which fell on October 13. The dinner was on Thursday, three days later, which, by coincidence, was the day we wanted to organise a Forest event at the same venue – 6 Old Queen Street, Westminster.
When I made enquiries, six weeks ago, I was told it was unavailable on October 16 because of another booking, so when I subsequently received an email inviting me, as a Spectator subscriber, to ‘Michael Heath’s 90th birthday dinner’ at 6 Old Queen Street on October 16, I put two and two together.
With the promise of ‘chilled champagne and other fine wines from Pol Roger’ it sounded like a splendid evening. Unfortunately tickets cost £250 each, and even with the inclusion of a ‘limited print of the invitation illustration that Michael will sign for you on the night’, it seemed quite steep so I couldn’t really justify the expense.
That said, I do remember Michael phoning the old Forest office in Palace Street, Westminster, 20 years ago and we had a brief chat – what about, I can’t remember – but it must have been something to do with smoking because, in the 1990s, one of several strip cartoons he drew was The Outlaw which is described as a ‘short lived strip set in the year 2000, where Michael Common is "the last person to smoke in England”’.
In 2009, writing for The Spectator, Alex Massie commented that, ‘The Outlaw, Michael Heath's brilliant Spectator cartoon strip about the last remaining smoker, becomes ever more prescient.’
If you’re interested in his long and successful career, more biographical notes can be found here, on the University of Kent’s website which also hosts ‘Britain’s Cartoon Archive’.
You should also read a hugely evocative article, published by The Spectator in 2018, that features a conversation between Heath and Christopher Howse, author of Soho in the Eighties: ‘Last week, in the editor’s office, they remembered a vanished world.’
See: Remembering Soho: a conversation of debauchery, drunks and Francis Bacon
‘Best of Notes on…’ is available in bookshops or online. Enjoy.
Photo: The Spectator Shop
