Alex Williams, the Strip King!

 Last month, FLiP's very own Alex Williams won The Cartoon Art Trust Award for Strip Cartooning for his "Queen's Counsel", which has run in The Times of London for the past 25 years. This is a huge honor, the comics equivalent of a BAFTA Award.  Alex is typically modest about it,  saying, "Actually I felt a bit unworthy about the whole thing."

Balderdash!

My 20th Birthday Party - at age 46

Friday night was my 20th birthday party. Well, technically it was the 20th birthday party of my cartoon strip, Queen's Counsel, which has been running for 20 years in The (London) Times, since it was first published in October 1993. Friday was a good excuse to have a party, sell a few books, and celebrate my longest-ever job, by far.

Alex Marks 20 years of Queen's Counsel with a New Book

FLIP's own Alex Williams has reached a milestone.  His comic strip Queen's Counsel started its run in The Times of London twenty years ago today.  After much arm-twisting, the other half of FLIP consented to an interview on the subject.

FLIP: You have been doing Queen's Counsel for 20 years. Does this milestone make you feel old? Proud? Tired?

Alex: All of the above. But, mainly, astonished. Whenever I open the paper I can't quite believe the cartoon strip is still there. I don’t even have a contract with the newspaper – but it’s been my longest job ever, by far. So, better add gratitude to that list.

The night my cartoon strip almost died

Lincoln's Inn Hall - scene of the crime

Twenty years ago I became a barrister. A barrister is a kind of English lawyer - the kind that wear wigs. Think John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda. If you want to become a barrister in England, you used to have to dine formally on 24 occasions with your fellow law students, in the dining halls of the Inns of Court, (in theory) discussing the finer points of law and jurisprudence. So I spent many evenings dining in Lincoln’s Inn hall.

Who Needs a Website Anyway?

My re-re-re-designed website

Fifteen years ago in Los Angeles I met a guy who had his own website. "How pretentious" I thought. "Who the hell needs one of those?" Well, duh. Obviously, I could not have been more wrong. Nowadays everyone needs a website. At least, everyone who is a freelancer.

The Dealers - or how I got a cartoon strip into a celebrity gossip magazine

For a brief while in the 1990s I had a cartoon strip running in The Tatler, a society gossip magazine which wasn't so much full of pictures of celebrities as Sloane Rangers. So many in fact, that the joke was that the magazine was largely read by the people photographed inside its pages.

Writer’s Block - the birth, life and death of a newspaper cartoon strip

A Literary Odyssey

Back in 2005 I briefly had two cartoon strips running in The Times. As well as Queen’s Counsel (published in the law pages since 1993) I successfully pitched one for the Saturday books section. It was titled Writer’s Block, and was a gentle satire on the literary world which I dreamed up with a writer friend in Los Angeles, the very talented Erica Rothschild.

The birth of Queen's Counsel, plus a very nasty letter

In 1993 I was a law student in London, working occasionally at Disney during my summer vacations to pay my way through school. I also had a part-time job working for a Member of Parliament, a kind man called Peter Thurnham, who let me run loose in the Palace of Westminster pretending to be on important business.

The Official Lawyer's Handbook

Even though I have spent 20 years in the animation business, I had a short lived career in the early 90's as a barrister - that is to say a lawyer of the wigged variety - made famous (ish) by John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda. I still write and draw a weekly cartoon strip about lawyers in The Times - you can see it at www.qccartoon.com - the site is full of law jokes, law cartoons, and law humour. And, from time to time I publish a new collection of the cartoons for my legion of fans (my Mum and her friends).

My latest book, published by the excellent JR Books, is a collaboration with the hugely talented American writer and ex-lawyer Daniel R. White - who is the main reason why The Official Lawyer's Handbook is as good as it is. Anyway this is my favourite book so far, and even if you don't think lawyers are funny, you still might enjoy laughing at them, especially if you have recently emerged from divorce or bankruptcy. You can find the book here at amazon.co.uk, and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing and drawing it - Alex