Profile of Steve Bell on Famous Like Me

Steve Bell (born February 26, 1951) is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other places. He is known for his left-wing views and skilled caricatures.

Born in London and raised in Slough, Bell moved to North Yorkshire with his family in 1968, where he trained as an artist at the Teesside College of Art as well as the University of Leeds. He was briefly an art teacher in Birmingham before becoming a freelance cartoonist in 1977. His comic strip Maggie's Farm appeared in the London listings magazines Time Out from 1979 and later in City Limits. In 1981 he started contributing a daily strip called If... to The Guardian. Since the mid-1990s he has also been that newspaper's principal editorial cartoonist. Bell scored a unique hit by first depicting John Major as a dire superhero wearing his Y-fronts on the outside of his clothes as Major later admitted he tucked his shirt into his underwear. He has won many awards for his work, including both the political and strip cartoon categories at the Cartoon Arts Trust awards in 1997.

Many collections of his cartoons have been published, and he has also illustrated original books in collaboration with several authors. He has made short animated films with Bob Godfrey, and a radio programme about the life of 18th century caricaturist James Gillray. He has also drawn the Gremlins comic strip for the British comic Jackpot.

In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

Some critics regard his work as better than that of other satirical cartoonists (especially in the ongoing Bell vs Garry Trudeau (and therefore If... vs Doonesbury) debate which exists mainly because the two strips were, for many years, carried by the Guardian next to each other), for its juxtaposition of toilet humour with high art: Bell is fond of parodying famous paintings. Examples include his parody of Goya's The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters (in an editorial cartoon about the UK Independence Party); William Hogarth's The Gates of Calais about the ban on UK meat exports following outbreaks of Foot-and-Mouth and bovine BSE; and - before the 2005 General Election when it briefly seemed as if the Liberal Democrats might serious threaten Labour - J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, in which a chirpy Charles Kennedy as tug-boat towed a grotesque and dilapidated Tony Blair to be broken up.

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