A Co Antrim cartoonist is celebrating after winning an award for his satirical depiction of the Conservative Party’s wipeout in the UK General Election.
Fergus Boylan, AKA Infinite Guff, won the main title at this year’s Political Cartoon of the Year Awards, hosted in London by recruitment firm Ellwood Atfield.
Hailing from Portrush but living and working in Co Wicklow, the 33-year-old artist contributes cartoons for online news publication, The London Economic.
His cartoon published a day before the General Election in July predicted the Tory ‘extinction event’ feared by the party, which came to pass and saw them reduced to just 121 seats in the House of Commons, down from their 2019 election victory high of 365 MPs.
It depicted now ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and fellow former Tory PMs Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, with ousted MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, in a museum alongside a dinosaur and a dodo.
The cartoon was titled ‘They were known as Conservatives’.
Fergus beat rivals including The Guardian’s Rebecca Hendin and its former cartoonist Steve Bell; The Sun’s Steve Bright; and Private Eye’s Graeme Keyes to claim the Political Cartoon of the Year title.
Fittingly, his award was presented by former Conservative MP-turned Peer, Sir Graham Brady, who until July was chair of the Tory backbench group The 1922 Committee.
Others to win at the event last Tuesday were The Independent’s Dave Brown, who was named Political Cartoonist of the Year, and the Financial Times’ Banx, who won the Pocket Cartoon of the Year title.
The award is the second prestigious industry gong for Fergus, who in 2020 won the under-30s category of the Young Cartoonist of the Year, for an image depicting then-PM Boris Johnson with party colleagues Matt Hancock and Michael Gove attempting to dig Johnson’s controversial senior advisor Dominic Cummings out of a hole.
“I’m thrilled to have won, and hadn’t been expecting it, but it was a real privilege to attend the awards alongside some of the best in the business,” Fergus told the Irish News.
“Ahead of the election the Conservatives were polling terribly, and my cartoon was a straightforward idea, based on their anticipated hammering at the ballot box, to depict them in a natural history museum.”
The artist, whose day-job is in e-learning, includes legendary Irish News cartoonist Ian Knox as one of his heroes and inspirations.
Last year he created and released a set of playing cards, ‘Catholics and Protestants’, featuring characters he based on stereotypical personalities found across Northern Ireland, which proved a hit among buyers on his infiniteguff.com website.
“My long-term goal would be to be able to do cartooning full-time, and this week’s award is a step towards that, so I’m very grateful for all those who voted for me,” he added.
