The trials and tribulations of making a short film

There I was in the bar of the Holiday Inn in Welbeck Street with my old partner in crime, John Mac (whose grandfather was the subject of one of my earlier posts - 'Bit of a Ladies' Man'), when the subject turned to my children's book (Sleeping with the Blackbirds), which I'd written some little while back.

John has boundless energy and is always looking to get involved in interesting projects, and it was his suggestion that I try and market the thing. I should explain here that the book was originally written for my kids and published by Penpress to raise money for the homeless charity Centrepoint. But following the publication and the drafting of a commercial participation agreement that released me from any tax liabilities, my wife became seriously ill and the book was put on the back burner and received precious little in the way of marketing.

As it happens, I had already written a script to promote the book that had featured a letter written by the tale's protagonist, 11-year-old schoolboy, Roy Nuttersley that appears at the beginning of the book. As an ungainly young boy who's being tormented by bullies, Roy writes to Amnesty International (only he refers to the charity as Amnesia International) pleading for their help.

I shared my script with John who loved the intrigue of it, but wasn't entirely convinced by all my visual thoughts, which were pretty static. "We just need something more visually dynamic," he said while scratching the top of his head.

In the letter narrated by Roy, we learn that his tormentor, Harry Hodges is the son of a criminal who is in prison, and it was this section of the script that excited John. "We have to find a prison to film in mate. Then we can move away from beautifully lit domestic still lifes and into atmospheric interiors with eery sound effects." I could see exactly where he was coming from and nodded in agreement. This was to be John's first valuable contribution.

His next visual idea concerned the very last scene in which Roy talks about offering his services free of charge for any future publicity. My original visual was a simple newspaper headline taken from the book. But John hated it - quite rightly. I didn't much care for it myself. He gave me one of his funny looks and I could tell he was deep in thought. "Look. It has to end with a dramatic crescendo - a flourish. I know... we can have a load of paparazzi shot against a black background firing off flashes in quick succession followed by a dramatic shot of a newspaper falling onto paving stones in slow motion." The thing with John is that he makes it all seem so easy. But he hadn't quite finished. "And to finish the whole thing, why don't we have a flock of animated blackbirds flying across the screen, forming a black background out of which we could reverse out some nice reviews?"

Most conversations of this nature would probably have just ended here. After all, the logistics of producing a short film like this to John's exacting standards would require a huge effort. But as with everything John throws himself into, he doesn't just do ideas; he carries them through. Within a couple of days he had produced an exquisite black and white storyboard that he had photographed himself and had arranged a meeting with his contacts at Hogarth Worldwide - London's premier post-production house. Needless to say, they loved it and were keen to produce it.

From this moment onwards the project began to take on a life of its own.

I found myself playing the roles of location scout, stylist and casting director, all rolled into one.

First off, we had to find the right voice for our eleven-year-old protagonist Roy Nuttersley. So at John's suggestion I ran an ad on the website Star Now, and set up an audition in the bar area of the Regents Park Holiday Inn. This is a perfect space for voice auditions as it's large, quiet and free. Ten parents answered the ad on behalf of their 11-year-old sons, along with one chap of 40 who was keen to audition for the part himself. Needless to say, we politely declined his offer but arranged to audition all the other candidates. We were very fortunate to have so many young actors to choose from, and by mid-day, we had pencilled two possible candidates, but following lunch this changed with the arrival of Jacob Tofts. His mother deliberately sat at another table so as not to distract her son, and Jacob took a quick look at the script and then proceeded to read it with such natural expression and feeling that John and I knew immediately that our quest was over. We'd found Roy Nuttersley. The following week we arranged to record Jacob at one of Hogarth's lovely sound studios. Jacob is not only very talented, but also utterly charming and personable. I have no doubt that this young lad has a very bright future ahead of him.

Finding a prison to film in isn't one of life's easiest tasks. John's initial idea was to use the prison set at Wimbledon Film Studios - the very same set that had been used by TV productions like The Bill. But we soon discovered that the studios had gone into liquidation in 2014 and that the film set had been torn down. So I looked into finding decommissioned prisons that one could hire out. But the trouble here was that these looked too modern for a suburban fantasy, were miles outside London and were also prohibitively expensive to hire. Most locations charge for the day; we only needed to film for a couple of hours. So it was with enormous relief that I stumbled upon Oxford Castle Unlocked, the 1,000 year old site that comprises various historic edifices including a crypt, and yes, a prison - or to be more precise, Prison D-Wing. The gaol was built in the 1800s and remained in use as a high security prison until 1996, and the whole site is now run as a museum. I was on the blower right away and discovered that we could film for an hour before the place opened to the general public. With these facts quickly established it was time to arrange our first recce.

As we thought, the prison with its corridors, creaky gates and Dickensian cells was absolutely perfect for our purposes. The only problem was that John was going to need a minimum of two hours to set up and shoot at least four sequences, so he took the manager aside and suggested we double the fee if the museum could double the filming time by opening up 2 hours earlier. It worked, and two weeks later we were back, this time with camera, lenses, lighting equipment and a fully kitted out prison guard in the form of one Philip Francis. Phil does a lot of film extra work and looked the part in his prison guard's uniform, which I had managed to secure from Foxtrot costumiers and ebay. While John positioned his camera and lighting for the first shot Phil told me about his previous jobs. Among other things he'd been a gardener and had lovingly tended the late Douglas Adams's garden.

With the central section of the film in the can, we now had to find props and a studio for all the other scenes. My first port of call would be The Stockyard in the less than salubrious NW10; an extraordinary Aladdin's Cave of a place. Whatever you need for your film production, you'll find it here, whether it's great big Grecian columns, Norman arches, statues, water mills, petrol pumps, bus stations - you name it. With the constant stream of vast articulated lorries coming and going and carrying off enormous quantities of props for some far-flung multi-million pound productions, I felt something of a fraud. After all, all I needed was a couple of antique book shelves, some old books and a few fake rubber flagstones. The lovely Reg who's been part of the place man and boy helped us find everything we needed and arranged for a couple of strapping lads to put it all in the back of my old jalopy of a car. Then I had to spend the best part of a week tracking down all our other props - everything from flooring and tablecloths to camping stoves, teddy bears and kettles - all of which had to look right in camera in black and white. This entailed trawling the internet where possible, but more often than not, traipsing round fabric suppliers, DIY warehouses and specialist shops.

The studio we chose to use was Photofusion in Brixton. It's a good space, and being Brixton, doesn't charge West End prices. It took John three full days to shoot most of our set-ups here, including the paparazzi, one of whom was yours truly minus spectacles.

The opening shot of the clock was shot in John's living room, and the final setup of the stack of newspapers falling onto the paving slabs was filmed in my garden at night. For authenticity, I mocked up the front page of the fictitious Echo that appears in the book and even went as far as setting the type for the editorial. John was keen to create a rain machine for this scene to add atmosphere, but as luck would have it, the heavens opened for real.  This, however, was very bad news indeed, and caused John to swear and curse profusely, as it meant he'd be unable to use his very expensive tungsten lighting, which would be open to the elements. The alternative was battery operated LED lighting, which was fine until John realised that he'd need some 'fill-in light' to highlight the side of the newspaper stack. After much further swearing and cursing I offered my mobile phone, which has a powerful LED torch. Surprisingly, it worked beautifully. While my son helped operate the Heath Robinson rain machine, I had the unenviable task of dropping the stack of newspapers onto the fake paving stones while being rained on by the rain machine as well as the real thing. I think we did about 30 takes, and my son had a lot of fun soaking his old man in the process.

With everything filmed, it was back to Hogarth to talk about music and sound effects. From my own experience of making commercials, music can often be something of a sticking point, but in this event, we got lucky from the outset. Andy the brilliant young sound engineer at Hogarth played us two tracks that he thought had the right feel. The first one was very good, but the second was absolutely perfect, and John very cleverly suggested building a ticking clock into the rhythm section to tie in with our opening scene.

A couple of days later, we were invited by Vee, Hogarth's senior editor to come and have a look at the first rough cut. Seeing this on the big screen for the first time was quite something, and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It worked really well, and little Jacob's voice sang out as clear as a bell, while both music and sound effects added just the right level of atmosphere and intrigue.

The animated blackbirds sequence was the last piece of the jigsaw, and as John rightly said when he had the idea in the first place, it would be "a beautiful and memorable way to finish the film."

It's mind-boggling how much work goes into producing a two minute film. But you know instinctively when it gives you goosebumps after the first viewing that you've done something right, and that all that hard work had been worth it.

View the film here:



Take a look at the website and hear Nigel Havers read an introduction and some extracts here.

Playing with words

"Malla what, mate?" would no doubt be the response from your average spotty teenager should you attempt to engage him in a conversation about malapropisms. Admittedly it's not one of the most attractive words in the English dictionary; and not one that does justice to such a comic slip of the tongue.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, let me elucidate: a malapropism according to the Oxford English Dictionary is the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one of similar sound.

It just so happens that over the years I've heard my fair share of malapropisms, and I have to say that they nearly always make me smile.

My grandmother was something of a dab-hand in this department. She would inadvertently produce some absolute corkers on a whim, but the only ones I can recall now were those she'd use on a fairly regular basis. I can hear her now saying that she had had a particularly good night and had "slept like a toff." I'm not entirely sure how your average toff snoozes, but it used to conjure up all kinds of weird and wonderful images in my young head.

On having her small garden paved with crazy paving (as was the fashion back in the early 70s), she would proudly open her kitchen door and invite her guests to admire her "crazy pavement."

I also had an uncle who was a prolific exponent of the art. One of his most memorable verbal slips has gone down in family lore. For all the years I had known him, this particular uncle had always sported a toupée, and on one occasion was asked by an inquisitive work colleague how he managed to keep his hair piece in place. "Oh, it's very easy really," came my uncle's confident response, "I have a special fixative which I simply apply to my foreskin." I imagine that must have brought a few tears to his eyes.

Then, of course, there are those deliberately contrived malapropisms. Lillian Jacobs, my parents'  manic and highly eccentric neighbour should have been a professional stand-up comedian. She would deliberately and quite brilliantly construct her sentences with wonderfully ludicrous malopropisms and deliver them in an absurdly comic falsetto voice. I can almost hear her now: "Annette, I can't tell you how moved I was. I was overcome with emulsion." Like some of our most gifted comedians, she was also completely bonkers - harbouring a genuine and totally irrational fear of thunderstorms. At the merest hint of an impending storm, she would knock on our door and hide in our broom cupboard until the storm had passed; at which point we'd have to knock on the cupboard door to give her the all-clear.

In the 80s I was very fortunate to work for an advertising agency whose Creative Director was the verbally dexterous Ken Mullen. As the only advertising copywriter to be quoted in the Penguin Book of Modern Quotations, Ken is a master at creating ingenious malapropisms. On one occasion he described a rather verbose senior member of staff who was occasionally hired by the glitterati as an interior decorator, as the agency's "internal defecator." And on suffering a torturous meeting with two clients who weren't perhaps the sharpest knives in the drawer, he later described the experience as "stalling between two fools."*

* To be a tad anal, this particular line can be more accurately defined as a spoonerism where a pair of vowels or consonants are interchanged for comic effect.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

The lost art of negative advertising

These days, all forms of communication seem not only to be governed by the rules of political correctness, but also by a total aversion to any form of negative sentiment.

Only a few days ago, a junior account handler came back from a client meeting with a request to remove the word 'but' from some copy I'd written, on the grounds that this was too negative a word. If one were to follow this strange form of logic through to its conclusion, I suspect you'd have to lose an awful lot of words from the English dictionary.

As a copywriter, I am staggered and pretty irritated by this fear of the negative. After all, some of the finest and most memorable ads ever written have conveyed negative messages. Can no-one remember those wonderful ads for Albany Life that graced our newspapers back in the day? Headlines like: 'Are you making plans for your wife's death?' And: 'Answer these ten questions

and work out the date of your own death.'

Then, of course, let's not forget the famous pregnant man created by Saatchi & Saatchi that carried the less than positive headline: 'Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?'

Negativity can, of course, also be charming and witty. Parker pens ran a lovely ad penned by Tony Brignull that encouraged the reader to: 'Rediscover the lost art of the insult.' The long copy cited examples of very witty insults and put-downs, and encouraged the reader to let rip with a Parker fountain pen. Besides being a joy to read, it sold a lot of pens.

But perhaps the most negative yet remarkably successful and cost-effective adverts ever penned in the history of advertising were written back in the 60s, not by a copywriter, but by the client himself.

Roy Brooks was an estate agent in the fashionable Kings Road, Chelsea. He was, by all accounts, a sardonic individual with a sharp tongue and a very distinct way with words. And he clearly loathed the kind of disingenuous classified ads that plastered the property pages. So to put matters straight and to stand out from the crowd, he penned his own classified ads. To give you a flavour of the kind of thing he'd bash out on his typewriter, here's one he wrote for a property in Pimlico:

Wanted: someone with taste, means and a stomach strong enough to buy this erstwhile house of ill-repute in Pimlico. It is untouched by the 20th century as far as conveniences for even the basic human decencies are concerned. Although it reeks of damp or worse, the plaster is coming off the walls and daylight peeps through a hole in the roof, it is still habitable judging by the bed of rags, fag ends and empty bottles in one corner. Plenty of scope for the socially aspiring to express their decorative taste and get their abode in The Glossy, and nothing to stop them putting Westminster on their notepaper. Comprises 10 rather unpleasant rooms with slimy back yard, 4,650 Freehold. Tarted up, these houses make 15,000.

Besides being brutally frank, and not unamusing, the ad feels honest and undoubtedly appeals to that universal, deep-seated human instinct we all share of wanting to track down that elusive bargain.

The ad below is another wonderful example. I particularly like: '3 normal-sized bedrooms & a 4th for an undemanding dwarf lodger.' And: 'Nature has fought back in the garden - & won.'

So incredibly effective were Roy Brooks' classified ads that in time, even people like my father, who had no interest whatsoever in buying property, would turn to the property section of the Sunday Times just to read Roy's latest offering.

Roy Brooks himself became a multi-millionaire on the back of his successful classified ad campaign, and though he died over 30 years ago, his company still runs to this day. But alas, the property ads that appear on the comany's website are the run-of-the-mill variety, laden with the customary superlatives, and not a single negative adjective in sight. Enough to make poor Roy Brooks turn in his grave no doubt.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds and The Chair Man

The homeless commercial that's yet to find a home

Just over a year ago my old friend John Mac (who featured in my last piece) called me at home in a state of excitement. "Alex, can we meet up? I'd like to run an idea past you." John is a professional advertising photographer and is without doubt one of the most energetic and impulsive people I've ever known. He's also incredibly talented both artistically and technically when it comes to producing beautifully lit shots for some of the world's most iconic brands.

We met in one of Soho's many watering holes and here he explained that he wanted to shoot a commercial to raise awareness of the homeless in the UK, and donate the finished film to any homeless charity in the UK that wanted to use it. He had recently been given a professional video camera to look after and was keen to put it through its paces.

"I have this idea in my head of a beautifully lit black and white film noir piece shot in the style of an early Roman Polanski. We see an attractive girl running away, and we can hear her terrified thoughts. But we can't understand a word she's saying because she's foreign. And that's the point. We all think we know what homeless people look like. But we don't have the faintest idea." He looked me in the eye. "I think there's something in it. What do you reckon?"

I liked the intriguing nature of the idea, but knew that it would rely entirely on  the power of a superimposed copyline that could encapsulate the idea and make sense of this otherwise incomprehensible piece of drama, and I said as much.

"Couldn't agree more, mate. That's the reason I wanted to get you involved." John finished his pint. "Don't suppose you could write us a line could you, and some dialogue? I'd like to do a casting next week. All being well."

It's not the conventional way one would normally approach such a project. Usually there'd be an official briefing with an account director and planner; there'd be a written brief; an agreed marketing strategy and a creative proposition to reflect the strategy. But John had come up with his own strategy and creative proposition in one fell swoop. And it went something like this: tell people that homelessness can affect anyone, and challenge pre-conceived ideas about the kinds of people who become homeless through no fault of their own.

As far as I was concerned, it was a reasonable proposition. And in John's hands I knew that it would be a compelling piece of film. So I slept on it and penned a line in the morning.

Sarah-Laure Estragnat

Casting took place the following week at the Soho Hotel, and John was keen for me to attend. He had been through a list of drama school students who were fluent in at least one other language and had selected a handful for the part. Following that one casting there was only one he felt could do the piece justice. But even then he wasn't 100% convinced. And then, as is so often the case when working with John, he had a piece of good luck. One of his make-up artists from Paris called him to say that her best friend, the young French actress, Sarah-Laure Estragnat was in town. John isn't one to miss an opportunity. Within a couple of days he'd arranged a meeting in Maida Vale, and with a digital recorder in hand we did a few test readings. She was brilliant and didn't need any directing.

John spent the next few days doing a recce. Locations would revolve around Woolwich tunnel, Borough market and Waterloo. Sarah-Laure would return to London in two weeks and shooting would take place over two evenings from around 8.00pm to 2.00am. All he needed was a small crew to help with lighting and a make-up artist. (As it turned out this wasn't to be Sarah-Laure's Parisian friend but John's long-standing make-up lady, Anne-Marie Simak.)

I attended the second night of shooting around Borough market. It was fascinating to see John at work on a film, frenetically waving directions to his actor and lighting men. The locations he had selected were particularly atmospheric, especially in black and white. And shooting each scene from different angles was fairly intense. Sarah-Laure was incredibly professional, following every instruction to the letter. Some scenes would be shot umpteen times, and it was distinctly chilly. This was November after all.

At one point, a young couple canoodling in an archway had inadvertently found themselves in one of John's immaculately framed scenes, and he wasn't too happy about it, so he prized himself away from his camera and stormed over to the offending couple. "I'm sorry, but can I ask you to do that somewhere else? We're filming." The couple looked a little startled, giggled and shuffled off in search of another dark corner away from prying eyes. John came back to his camera beaming and chuckling to himself. "Nice night for it." And that was about the only short break in the proceedings.

I took my leave of them at around midnight. It was exhausting just watching all this nervous energy.

A couple of days later John sent me his rough cut. To my eyes it looked perfect, with each short set-up flowing seamlessly into the next. And, of course, the lighting had John's inimitable fingerprints all over it. Final editing, grading and dubbing were completed by Vee Pinot, Matthew Lee-Redman and Zak Kurtha over at Hogarth Post-Production.

The upshot is that this commercial received a great deal of praise from a number of senior figures from various national charities. One in particular (which will remain nameless) loved it, but was unable to screen it for certain "political reasons" which it wasn't prepared to divulge. And as we speak, no other homeless charity has wanted to make use of this free commercial, which John had kindly produced as a favour.

In a recession, it's rather bizarre that charities are happy to employ designers and advertising agencies for which they have significant budgets; and yet turn away free advertising when it comes their way. A case of charities turning their noses up at charity perhaps?

You can see the commercial below:

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Bit of a ladies' man

Vilna, 1900

There's something captivating about digging up the past, and I suppose it explains why the TV series 'Who Do You Think You Are?' has proved to be such a hit. It's human nature, after all, to be curious about our forebears; to know who they were, how they made their way through life, and perhaps most importantly, if they shared some of our own human traits and foibles.

In my own case, digging very deep is particularly difficult, since both my paternal and maternal lineages stretch back to Russia at the turn of the century, and most records were destroyed in the upheaval of the Bolshevik revolution and the overthrow of czarist rule.

It's a shame, because there are fragments of a shattered past that are intriguing to say the least.

My father's grandparents owned orchards and were inn keepers in or near Vilna, and by all accounts had a relatively comfortable life, until, that is, the Pogroms swept the country. As Jews, their lives would have been thrown into turmoil and in a desperate attempt to escape the violence they, like so many others in the same predicament, fled, leaving everything behind. In doing so they boarded a ship which they mistakenly believed to be bound for New York, but was actually destined for Liverpool.

Today one of my cousins has a handful of sepia prints of our forebears in Russia. Draped in sartorial, silk robes and sporting long, distinguished beards, they peer out of their brown tinged world; a world that was not to last.

I remember my late father talking about his own father recounting his childhood: "Father had a happy childhood," he used to say, "and would often fondly reminisce in old age how much he had enjoyed playing in his parents' orchards as a boy."

Of my mother's Russian lineage, I know next to nothing, other than the fact that one of her grandparents was both deaf and dumb and had settled in Whitechapel. The mind boggles.

Some months ago the subject of genealogy surfaced while sitting in a Turkish bistro in Soho with my old mate John Mac. John, a photographer by trade, began to tell me about his own grandfather who died before he was born, but whose wife he knew well and remembers fondly as 'nan.'

"He was a hugely successful artist, and a bit of a character," confides John while tucking into his shish kebab. This was the first time John had ever mentioned his grandfather, and I was all-ears.

Alastair Kenneth Macdonald, better known in his day as the artist and illustrator, A K Macdonald,
was the son of an eminent  doctor who had worked with Lord Lister - the man who brought us antiseptic surgery. Macdonald's Spanish mother tragically died shortly after giving birth to him, and the family moved to the ancestral home on the Isle of Skye. Here the young Macdonald and his brother explored the wild landscapes of Skye and would eventually be packed off to school in Edinburgh. The boys' grandfather was a man of considerable means having established his own civil engineering firm during the height of the Industrial Revolution. But after his schooling, the family's fortunes collapsed and the young Macdonald took up an apprenticeship with an architect in Glasgow on account of his keen interest in sketching. The appointment wasn't to last as the boy preferred drawing from life, and felt stifled by drawing buildings. So he sought training at the Glasgow School of Art, but in fact left after just six weeks. He subsequently showed some of his sketches to the Editor of the Glasgow Evening News, Neil Munro who immediately saw the lad's talent and gave him his first commissions there and then. From then on, there was no looking back. The commissions began to roll in. During this period, Macdonald was to meet the actor George Hawtree who was appearing in a Midsummer Night's Dream in Glasgow. The actor was so taken with a piece Macdonald had produced for the production that he promised to introduce him to a London editor. He was as good as his word, and weeks later, the young lad found himself on the staff of The Longbow, a noted London periodical. His work got noticed immediately and it wasn't long before he'd be producing work for some of London's most prestigious publications including The Tatler, The Bystander and The Sketch.

"So when you say your grandfather was a bit of a character, do you want to elaborate?" I ask John quizzically. "Well, he was obviously a man of great charm as well as talent. And he was clearly attracted by the opposite sex," John manages between mouthfuls of chicken. "He was surrounded by all these lovely young things. That's all he ever seemed to draw. He drew them beautifully, of course."

Indeed, it does seem to be the case that a great deal of his illustrations are of diaphanous young ladies in various states of undress, though these are always charmingly rendered, and never suggestive or vulgar. And his line work is extraordinarily fluid and precise. You can see from his work why he was in such demand, and it's remarkable that he was able to produce these drawings with no formal art training to speak of.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Macdonald enlisted in the London Scottish and found himself in the trenches in France, and within three months was invalided out, returning later as an officer with the Gordon Highlanders. He didn't stop sketching, however, and his frivolous young ladies would adorn the walls of his mess and draw the admiration of one particular Colonel.

Following the war, his work continued apace. And by 1924, Alastair Macdonald, now a married man with a daughter of his own, was to meet a distant relative, the illustrator Alice Helena Watson who shared the same agent, Francis & Mills. He offered her the opportunity to come and work with him in his studio. In normal circumstances it would not have been deemed proper for a married man to make such a proposition, but Macdonald was family, after all and Alice's mother could see no harm in it. Inevitably, a relationship developed, Macdonald's marriage fell apart and the two eventually married in 1926. She was 20 and he was 45.

The alimony of £8.00 a week was initially something of a financial burden, but as the two took on work together and finished each others drawings, their finances improved steadily, and by the time they were parenting two sons in 1928, things were certainly looking up. In 1931 they moved to the affluent and leafy neighbourhood of St John's Wood, occupying number 16 St John's Wood Park, a large imposing property that had previously been the magnificent home of the best-selling author, Ellen Wood - better known as 'Mrs Henry Wood.' While Alice took on numerous commissions to illustrate children's books by such authors as Compton McKenzie, Margaret Lodge, A. S. M Hutchinson and her own sister, the author, Effie Watson who wrote under the pseudonym Dale Maniford, her husband's work continued to grace the pages of high society journals.

At around this time Alastair received a commission to design a sumptuous promotional booklet for one of Cunard's luxury liners: The Acquitania for which he would receive the astonishing sum of £1,000. In addition, he and his wife would enjoy free board upon the liner to the USA. They were in fact offered the Royal Suite and dined at the Captain's table. The trip, which must have been quite something was ultimately marred when Macdonald's agent absconded with all the money. To give you some idea, £1000 back then would be worth around £57,000 in today's money. A huge sum to have had stolen.

That misfortune marked a turning point in Macdonald's career. Magazines increasingly turned to photography and many that had employed his talents either changed in character or disappeared altogether. "There are," says John, "many parallels between his industry and mine. Look at the way digital technology has affected the world of photography, film making and retouching. If you can't embrace the changes, you tend to get left behind."

Alice, by contrast, found that more and more children's books wanted her work, so she had to work twice as hard to compensate for her husband's lack of work.

By the time the Second World War had broken out, the shortage of paper had dealt Macdonald's business a fatal blow, and his work dried up. To add insult to injury, their home was bombed in 1940, and the couple moved to number 24 Church Row, Hampstead. It was hardly downsizing. Church Row is one of Hampstead's finest roads, and its Grade II listed Georgian properties are today among the capital's most desirable. (Some years later, the famous comic genius, Peter Cook chose to live on this very same road at the very height of his professional career.)

To make ends meet, Alice had to go into overdrive on the work front as well as letting every spare room to students while cooking ten meals every night. Naturally, Alastair would help by taking on some of his wife's work, but there can be little doubt that it must have been difficult for them to sustain the lifestyle that they had become accustomed to.

John remembers seeing a letter addressed to his grandfather from the Savage Club which he had been a member of. His account stood in arrears to the tune of £1,000 and the club had regrettably taken the decision to reject his membership.

During this period, the two boys James and David lived with Alice's sister Effie in the Chilterns. They stayed there for three years, received no schooling and were looked after by a housekeeper.

Alistair only received one commission following the war, and this was to illustrate Anthony Armstrong's fairy tale The Naughty Princess, which had first appeared in 1935 alongside Macdonald's drawings in The Strand magazine. In the late 1940s, Alistair became ill, but continued painting until he died in June 1948 at the age of just 67.

It was a sad demise, and the family had no choice but to leave Church Row.

Alice continued illustrating books into her old age and lived with her sister who became ill with cancer and died in 1960. Following Effie's death, Alice lived in various different properties in London and took on occasional illustration jobs. In her 70s, she sadly began to lose her eyesight, and her remaining years were spent in Lewisham where her son David had bought a flat for her. She died in 1984 aged 88.

POSTSCRIPT

In writing this piece I was struck by a couple of uncanny coincidences that span the generations. Like his grandfather, John has also spent much of his professional working life capturing images of young female fashion models albeit with a camera rather than a pen or paintbrush; images that have appeared in the equivalent up-market publications that his grandfather's work would have appeared in all those years ago. And like his grandfather's father, John's own father married a woman of Spanish origin.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Fighting cancer with words

Sometimes it pays to stick your head in the sand

I first encountered Martin Handford at Maidstone College of Art back in 1980. He was a couple of years above me and had got himself onto the prestigious illustration course, which at that time was one of the best in the country. (The college has since been merged into the Kent Institute of Art in Canterbury.)

At the time I remember him being a pretty chirpy chap despite being so skint that he had resorted to selling his entire wardrobe, including an impressive pair of brothel creepers, in a desperate bid to raise much needed funds.

Unlike all his compatriots at Maidstone, Martin stood out from the crowd ('crowd' being an appropriate word to use here). You see, all he ever drew were crowd scenes. And his technique hadn't changed a jot since he was a young lad. He would labour over his intricate compositions for weeks on end, using nothing more than felt tips. And his finished pieces were mind-bogglingly detailed with countless characters immaculately rendered in miniature.

The tutors at Maidstone went to great pains to get him to experiment and evolve his style of drawing, but Martin wasn't having any of it. For his entire time at Maidstone, he continued producing the most astonishing series of crowd compositions, and I very clearly remember his final year exhibition, which attracted by far the largest number of visitors who seemed drawn by these unusual works like bees around a honey pot. One piece in particular still sticks in my memory. It was a crowd scene depicted at Lords cricket ground. Besides being able to see thousands of spectators, ones eyes were drawn to the playing area where you could discern several little white figures, and one solitary pink figure jumping over the stumps. This, of course, was the famous Lords streaker whose unexpected appearance during the 1975 test match prompted the late John Arlott to coin the phrase 'freaker.' "We have a freaker down the wicket," quipped Arlott. "It's not very shapely; it's masculine; and I would think it's seen the last of its cricket for the day."

By this stage, Martin was already getting real illustration jobs for national publications and was much in demand. A couple of years later while in my first advertising agency and working with my Art Director, Colin Underhay (also from Maidstone), we had the opportunity to employ Martin's considerable talents. The agency wanted to create a special Christmas card, and Martin seemed like the ideal illustrator for the job. We deliberately kept the creative brief fairly open and asked Martin to create an amusing Oxford Street Christmas scene. His solution was certainly novel. The scene he came up with depicted a throng of shoppers intermingled with  a series of unconventional Father Christmases indulging in the most uncharacteristic activities including vomiting, urinating, mugging passers-by and in one instance, carrying a blow-up sex doll. It was a kind of modern-day take on one of those debauched scenes by Bruegel or Hieronymus Bosch. And had it been produced in today's politically correct atmosphere, I'm sure it would have been shelved in favour of something rather tame and less offensive. But this, of course, was 1980. The card went into production and was sent out to all the agency's clients.

In 1986, Martin was asked by Walker Books to create a character with distinctive features that would give his compositions a focal point in much the same way as his pink figure jumping over the stumps or his Father Christmases did. His response was to come up with a character named 'Wally' - a world traveller and time travel aficionado. And in 1987 'Where's Wally?' first appeared in the UK. Its popularity was instantaneous and huge. There would be seven books published in 28 countries. (In the US, the title was tweaked to 'Where's Waldo?') Then there were the inevitable spin-offs of notebooks, pillows, posters and video games, not to mention syndicated comic strips and an animated TV series.

By 2007, 'Where's Wally' had sold no fewer than 74 million copies worldwide, and in the same year Martin sold the global rights to the acquisitive Entertainment Rights group for £2.5 million.

I don't suppose Martin has recently felt the need to sell off items of his wardrobe. Though I suspect that signed copies of red stripy T-shirts might fetch a small fortune.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds