‘Teeny’ series, ca. 1956
Newsprint on paper, 8.89 x 6.35 cm
It’s this bloke saying to another one, “Nasser? Who’s he?” And that kind of amused me because everyone would’ve heard of [Egyptian President Gamal] Nasser, I think, at the time with what was going on with the Suez Canal at the time.
I was thrilled to bits to be published. I’d been an engineer at De Havilland Aircraft Company in Chester. And I just couldn’t stand factory life. It was just hideous. So I started doing an art school course instead and going to a drawing office in Wrexham, North Wales. Art became a career for me when I was doing my National Service, around age 18.
If you look at this closely, you’ll see it’s signed “Stead.” I did that because the illustrators “Giles” [Carl Giles] and “Vicky” [Victor Weisz] did it. They were all five letters. So my name was Stead. And Giles and Vicky, they were all like that. I wanted to be a bit like them. They were my heroes.
My mother said to me, “Are you ashamed of your name, Ralph?”
So I said, “No, Mum.”
“Well, why don’t you call it ‘Steadman’ then?”
“Oh, all right.”
So, halfheartedly, I put on the M-A-N on the end, which you can see. That’s really how that came about, actually. Your mother does affect you in some way.