Hotspur Towers - What the papers drew

This series tries to look at every aspect of Tottenham Hotspur and this time its a look at how the outside world has viewed the club over the years through the eyes of the cartoonist. All these examples are from the UK press. They come from over a hundred years ago right up to recent events and show how the role of the cartoonist has changed in that time. The cartoonist can make us laugh at the world or at ourselves, and he can make us think.  The best can do both at the same time.

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This first image is one I’m sure many of us will relate too. Even though it’s from 1963. The Daily Mail’s Jon has the fan, with his music sheets heading for the door.

This appeared the day after Tottenham lost 0-2 away to Slovan Bratislava in the second round of the European Cup Winners Cup. This left us with a nine days gap to the return and the chance to turn the tie around. Spurs did just that in style winning 6-0 so the singing paid off. 

For the record it was Greaves 2, Mackay, White, Smith and Jones one each. 

(or was the husband just sneaking off to see his mates?)

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Jon used Spurs on a number of occasions.  Image 2 comes only a month later. The main news story in England was a protest match against nuclear weapons / power.
Here Jon combines this with the game at White Hart Lane the previous day. When Tottenham triumphed over Liverpool  7-2,  in case you didn’t guess. Greaves scored 4, Jones 2 and Saul 1. (no caption was required).

Next we go back to 1967 and here Giles from the Express newspapers (he appeared in both the Daily and Sunday versions) sets the scene before the FA Cup final where we would beat Chelsea.

The gentlemen depicted are ‘Chelsea Pensioners’ who live at the Royal Chelsea Hospital.  So they are all ex- military men from the rank of senior NCO upwards. Here on what is meant to be the Chelsea embankment of the River Thames they are throwing in one of their number.
As the caption say's he had the good taste and foresight to back the Spurs.

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We skip forward (image right) to the August of the same year and again Giles strikes. Here at the height of the holiday season in England we see an English stately home and the tourists being shown around.

While one of the husbands is listening to the radio with a Tottenham commentary. -

Published caption: "Greaves passes to Gilzean, Gilzean to Greaves, Greaves puts the ball
across to Mackay, brilliant header by Chalmers.."

This appeared the day after Tottenham played Glasgow Celtic in a pre-season friendly in front of a crowd of more than 91,000!


The little boy at the back just easing a priceless statue to its destruction is a typical Giles trademark.  He had honed his art during the war and his pictures were full of such lovely little asides.

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The cartoonist also reflects the club and some of it’s off the field actives. Tottenham have certainly given them plenty of ammunition over the years.

In Image 5, it's Brookes in the London Evening Standard from 1993. The club had ended up in the High Court with a dispute between Chairman Alan Sugar and the manager Terry Venables.

The two of them playing are playing a table soccer game, with the players wearing legal gowns and wigs. There is no caption the drawing says it all.

This is one of the earliest cartoon's I have discovered (too date) and this dates back to 1908. This is a time when the photography art was still evolving and was a costly, slow process. Cartoons were often used to tell the story almost as an alternative to reading the text.  This is Tottenham's second game in the football league. After our opening day victory with Wolves we traveled to Leeds City and lost by the only goal. The team showed one change as forward superstar Vivian Woodward was an amateur he was busy at his day job and Billy Minter stepped in.  Oddly the Leeds City manager shown here, Mr  Frank Walford played for Spurs as an amateur. Leeds City went out of business in 1919.

Then we move to  moving forward to 2012 and its back to the lawyers as the press gave us their view of the Redknapp case. On the right we have Matt's gem from the Telegraph. 
 
You will remember that a critical part of the defence had rested on the fact that the accounts had been opened in the dogs name.  As will see in the next cartoon (No 8) the defense also included the admissions that Harry can’t write properly, has never written a letter  and doesn’t really understand emails. (qualities you would expect a top football manager to have).  The same day as Harry was found not guilty the England manager left his job and Harry was very quickly linked to it.

The following morning and Mac again in the Daily Mail, this time he links those two stories and shows parents explaining to their idle son why he should be applying for the England job. Here the mother says
'Just think - if they can't get Redknapp, you write like a two-year-old, don't know what an email is and have never written a letter either....' This story really was a gift to the cartoonist.

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The other image is again Mac from the day before when  Harry Redknapp was acquitted. This time we have the judge wearing his Tottenham colours walking from the courtroom with the fans toilet roll on the floor behind him. The judge is saying to his clerk.
" It was touch and go for a while. At least two of the jurors were Chelsea supporters."

TW Ellison was the resident cartoonist with the Birmingham Evening Mail, This cartoon of his shows Tottenham's Cockerel perusing the menu before the game at Aston Villa. This is advertising the day’s special as “Roast & Boiled Fowl” and is believed to date from the 1920s.

What Is interesting about this cartoon, apart from how it built up the game for local fans is that this is from the Mail’s archive and is the original board submitted by Ellison rather than a reprint from the paper.

You can see across the base Ellison has actually included the Cockerels reply although it did not make the final version.

It says “Visitor from Tottenham ‘Oh indeed! Well he’s got to catch his bird first’”.

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This last image I well remember making me chuckle when it appeared in 2001. Here the cartoonist (Pugh from The Times) draws together two stories to form the joke.

The main news headline that day was that scientists had made a major breakthrough in the research into DNA and that in the future they would were sure they would be able to engineer a baby  to produce a child with the characteristics the parents requested.

At the same time the sports pages were filled with the news that  Campbell had turned his back on the club and would be joining Arsenal.

I do hope you enjoyed this look back at how the outside world has seen the club over the years.
Next time in the 'Towers' we celebrate the short life of one of the club's famous players.


COYS
Keith Harrison.     HT43
t- Keith 16024542
f- peter shearman (old non de plume reserved for THFC matters)

With thanks to the papers named, The British cartoon archive and Paul Brown.

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