Well its been a long time since I was drawing cartoons for Smash Hits, I was a young punk rocker living in Suffolk when I first contacted Ian Cranna the then editor of Smash Hits Magazine. I really wanted to work for a music paper and get my cartoon published and sent off a few ideas to Ian who then invited me up to London to have a chat with him.

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Ian was such a lovely guy and it was a pleasure working for him, after a chat and a cup of tea in the Smash Hits office it was agreed to start the Strip with a focus on the magazine and the staff and call it Strange Tales From A Music Paper. I was over the moon and when the strip first appeared remember rushing out to get my copy.

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I later on moved up to London and did the cartoons from there, occasionally going to the Smash Hits office in Carnaby Street and working on it in a small room at the back of the studio. It was always busy but had a friendly casual feeling about it with lots of mess and paper cutting everywhere and posters of the bands on the walls.

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While working on a new idea I decided to introduce a young wanna be pop star called Zitty Ben based on a friend of mine called Ben who was a little bit spotty at the time. After a few strips I decided it was time to kill him off and finished the strip with this being the end of Zitty Ben. To my great surprise when I came in the office the following fortnight Ian Cranna said you better not kill Zitty Ben off Mark and showed me a huge stack of fan mail demanding Zitty Ben remains, there was even a Zitty Ben fan club some group had formed. So Zitty Ben had to continue and I set to work on another adventure of our spotty hero.

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The cartoon strip ran for about a year I think and then when I moved from London and went to live in Colchester and trained to be a chef of all things. Looking back at those times I don't think any of us really new just how big Smash Hits was going to become but it was a lot of fun being a part of it all.

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I remember Ian Cranna was managing Orange Juice the band and popped into the Hotel I was working at in Colchester with them to say hello and see how I was getting on, like I said he was a very nice chap. One of my favourite memory's was working in the office when Savage Pencil the cartoonist for NME came in to see me and drew me a cartoon which I still have to this day, that and going to see Echo and the Bunny Men with Ian Cranna.

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Time however moves on and all of the bands that we loved so much during that time have also moved on shaping the past and the future for us all with there music and talent.

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I continued to draw my cartoons on a free lance basis but have always been a person with many interests and hobby's to keep me busy. A few years ago I was looking on line to see if Zitty Ben was on the internet in some form or another and was pleased to discover Brian McCloskey site "Like Punk Never Happened", I wrote to Brian and asked him if he could send me some high rez scans of my cartoon strips having lost the original art work and thanks to Brian was able to get them all back and enjoy reading them all again. That along with the excellent site that Michael has put together means we can all enjoy reading Smash Hits once again and relive those happy days back in the 80s and 90s.

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So what of Zitty Ben? has he gone forever? Nope he is back again in a new set of adventures which you can follow on my blog,

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