Wally Fawkes

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Wally Fawkes (born 1924 in Vancouver, Canada (left in 1931 for England)) is a British-Canadian jazz musician and, until recently, a satirical cartoonist. As a cartoonist, he generally worked under the name of 'Trog' until failing eyesight forced him to retire from cartooning in 2005 at the age of 81 to concentrate solely on his clarinet playing.

He was a founder-member of the original Humphrey Lyttelton revivalist jazz band in the late 1940's, and stayed with the band until 1956, by which time it had evolved from "revivalism" into "mainstream" - not that Fawkes minded that: his own bands from then on could be broadly described as "mainstream". He has re-united with Lyttelton periodically ever since, and, though highly talented on his instrument, remains (in the best sense of the term) an "amateur". He has never lost his admiration for the playing of Sidney Bechet (with whom he recorded, as part of Lyttelton's band, in 1949); but he has always been his own man on the clarinet, and not just a Bechet clone.

An interesting aside on the Lyttelton / Fawkes relationship, is that they discovered that both were descended from participants in the "Gunpowder Plot" to destroy the English Parliament in 1605, Wally being descended from Guy Fawkes.

His most famous work as a cartoonist was 'Flook' - the unlikely and increasingly satirical comic-strip adventures of its small and furry eponymous hero, the most notable adventures occurring during the 1960s.

Fawkes's role was chiefly as illustrator, and he had a strong team of collaborators on the scripts for Flook over the years, including George Melly, Barry Norman and Barry Took.

There is a panel from Flook and another short biography of Fawkes at http://www.lambiek.net/trog.htm

He married the journalist Sandy Fawkes in 1949 and they had four children.