Latimers Q & A
1. Tell us a little more about Osteus and Finbar – are the characters autobiographical? And if so, which one of you wears a colander on his head? You say that the cartoons aren’t necessarily character-dependent, and the pair are more often just foils for the ideas being put across – so why choose these two particular characters for what you’re trying to say?
Was that one question? No the characters are not autobiographical, though to a certain extent they are biographical, so neither of us wears the colander (though if push comes to shove, Alex will wear it – he likes the pasta smell it leaves in his hair). Why Osteus and Finbar? It was either them or a man and his lasagna-loving cat, but that was apparently already taken. There’s no real reason we chose these guys – they’re a bit funny looking and that helps but we could have used any characters. A block of butter and a flu virus might have worked just as well.
2. Apart from minestrone soup and weekly swims in marsh water, how do you come up with an idea for a panel? Do you read the papers, watch the news, watch the world around you, or just take strong drugs and wait for inspiration to hit?
Inspiration comes from the world around us, from conversations with shop attendants, reading the paper and paging through the dictionary. The strongest drug we take is rooibos tea – twelve bags brewed in one cup. You can barely stir the stuff. Just don’t watch TV after drinking it, you’ll go mad.
3. Who are your favourite local and international cartoonists, and what qualifies them to be on that list – in other words, what makes you look at a cartoon and say, “Damn, that’s good!”
Great cartoons are consistently funny- having been cartooning now for several years we understand the temptation to just draw the first half-baked potato that comes to mind, even if it isn’t soft in the centre. Sorry, the rooibos. Dilbert, The Far Side, Monty, Wulffmorgenthaler and a bit of Red Meat – oh, and The Western Nostril.
4. Apart from wanting to make some dosh (to buy more minestrone soup?), what made you decide that now was the time to put together a book?
We’d finally made enough cartoons to make a book that was more like a book and less like a pamphlet – and seeing as the pamphlets did quite well it was the logical decision. (And we were running dangerously low on minestrone soup.)
Finally: if you were a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would you be (it would be nice if you’d both answer this, though if the rumours are true and you’re only one person, we’ll let it slide).
Alex: An orthodontist, definitely.
Patrick: A Merino.
