Matt
Collections
I invariably start my day with a smile on my face. The first thing I do is click on the Daily Telegraph app on my iPad to see Matt Princett’s daily cartoon. He never fails to delight me with his hilarious take on everyday news.
Matt is a phenomenon in this country. He has worked for The Daily Telegraph since 1988. This newspaper has become increasingly annoying over the years. The satirical magazine Private Eye used to refer to it as the Torygraph, because the newspaper is as conservative as can be. Nowadays, however, Private Eye calls it the ‘former newspaper’, which is even deadlier.
Matt ensures that I have always kept my subscription. Of course, I don’t know his secret, but every day he manages to combine two news items, that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, in a surprising way. It always makes me laugh, often make me snort with laughter, and sometimes roar with laughter. My wife, who is often still asleep, does not appreciate the latter.
The special thing about Matt’s cartoons is that they are never ironic or sarcastic. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against sarcasm, but that is something for later in the day. It is like a meal. Matt is the ideal appetiser. His drawings make you look forward to the rest of the day. They are fresh and refreshing, exactly what I need at the start of the day.
Princett produces five drawings every day. These are submitted to the Telegraph editor-in-chief who selects one, sometimes two. There is no cartoon on Mondays. For years, this resulted in a bad start to my week. However now, on Sundays, Princett sends a newsletter to subscribers giving a brief explanation of the cartoons published earlier that week. As a bonus, Princett sends a drawing that was not selected. This one is often brilliant too. I save that one for Monday morning.
You can buy the drawings. Not the real ones, of course, but a print. I did that on February 1, 2021, the day the United Kingdom officially ceased to be part of the European Union. I don’t think it is Matt’s most brilliant drawing, but I am still glad I could mark the occasion with one of his drawings.
My favorite drawing by Matt is of two men in a pub with a huge glass of wine in front of them, dutifully following the medical prescription never to drink more than one glass of wine a day. I only have to think of that drawing and I cheer up, no matter what time of day.
Every year, a collection of his cartoons is published and it a pleasure to look back on the past year. As an avid collector, I naturally buy those booklets, although, so far, I have limited myself to the booklets published during the years I have lived in England.
The downside of the booklets, however, is that they have to appear in November, in time for the Christmas shopping frenzy. This means that the selection is already made in September. As a result, many of the cartoons are missing.
That is not all, of course. Every day there are five cartoons, of which only one or two are published. I cannot imagine that Princett threw away the unpublished drawings. Someday I hope for a ‘collected works’ with all of Matt’s cartoons, including the never-published ones. It would be a joy to leaf through that book.