No 10 by Maddocks

In 1970 Peter Maddocks created the "No.10" strip for the Sunday Express, which ran for twenty-one years. By 1986 Maddocks was sharing an office in Fleet Street with fellow cartoonist Peter O'Donnell, and working for several papers. "Thursday is Fleet Street day, when I have my 'Number 10s' to do", he told an interviewer: "In the morning I do three or four roughs and take them to the Sunday Express by lunchtime, then go to the Daily Telegraph and sit down for an hour or so drawing for the City pages. By phone, I confirm with the Sunday Express which idea they like and then I go to my studio in Fleet Street to finish it off." His characters tended to be slightly goggle-eyed with splayed-out fingers. "You have to be able to communicate your sense of fun through your line," he explained of his drawings: "It's no good if the words are funny, but the drawing doesn't convey that fun - the cartoon won't work." In 2000, Maddocks retired and moved to southern Spain, noting that “the lights had gone out on my beloved Fleet Street” and that he wanted to “escape the grey skies and crowded streets of London.” He has given up cartooning in favour of painting with acrylics on canvas, experimenting “in every style imaginable with a hope to find one of my own.”