Drawing: Peter Snell

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Sir Peter Snell is one of New Zealand’s greatest sports achievers – some say the greatest. He was voted New Zealand’s ‘Sports Champion of the 20th Century’ and one of 24 inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federation Hall of Fame in 2012.

Sir Peter won three Olympic gold medals; Rome in 1960 800m, Tokyo in 1964 800m and 1500m and two Commonwealth Games titles for the 880 yards and 1 mile in Perth in 1962. He was knighted in 2009.

I sent my caricature to him at the University of Texas in September 1990, and he signed and returned it with an accompanying letter.

Drawing: All Round Good Guys Part 2 – Khan and Botham

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Imran Khan is Pakistan’s most successful captain, in a career that spanned almost twenty years from 1971-1992. In 88 Test matches he scored 3807 runs, including six centuries, taking 382 wickets.

He is one of only eight players to achieve the all-rounders Test triple – 3000 runs and 300 wickets . He did so in 75 matches, second fastest behind Sir Ian Botham (72).

He retired twice. First after the 1987 World Cup, but due to popular demand he was requested by President Zia ul Haq to return to Captain the team again. At 39, he lead Pakistan to World Cup glory, winning the 1992 Championship, beating England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the final, then retired again.

An alma mater of Oxford University, Khan entered politics and was a member of the National Assembly (2002-2007). He is also known for his philanthropy, building cancer hospitals and research centres.

In 1996 he faced libel action taken against him by Sir Ian Botham, surrounding ball tampering and associated derogatory comments.

Sir Ian ‘Beefy’ Botham was a genuine all-rounder – a big hitting batsman with a classical straight bat style and a medium paced swing bowler. A controversial figure both on and off the field, Beefy was involved in a number of well-publicised incidents, including a suspension from the National team for smoking cannabis. He also captained England in 12 Tests. His right arm medium bowling resulted in 383 wickets in 102 Tests, accumulating 5,200 runs. He has taken five wickets and scored a century in an innings of a same Test match on five occasions. He still holds the record for the highest number of wickets taken by an English bowler.

A prodigious fund-raiser, he is renowned for his Charity Walks and has raised over £12 million for Leukaemia Research. Sir Ian became Sir Ian in 2007, knighted for services to cricket and cancer charity work.

Imran signed my caricature during Pakistan’s 1988/89 tour of New Zealand. Sir Beefy graphed his in Wellington, when England played New Zealand in the 1992 World Cup at the Basin Reserve.

Drawing: All Round Good Guys Part 1 – Hadlee and Dev

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Sir Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Sir Ian Botham were the top four cricket all-rounders of the 1980’s and early 90’s. They are all inductees into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. New Zealand’s ‘Paddles’ Hadlee is considered one of the great fast bowlers of all time. The 2002 edition of Wisden listed him as the second great test bowler in the history of the game. ESPN named him as the 12th Best Cricketer of all time in its Legends of Cricket selection.

Playing for the Black Caps from 1988-1994, his right-arm bowling was initially extremely fast, with devastating control. Over time his pace reduced but he gained more accuracy and movement off the wicket. The master of conventional ‘swing’ batting, he was the original ‘Sultan of Swing’, with his most potent delivery the unplayable outswinger. He was the first player to take 400 Test Wickets and after 86 Matches, ended his career with 431 at an average of 22.29. He scored 3,124 test runs, with two centuries including 151 not out. He was Knighted in 1990.

Kapil Dev replaced Sir Richard’s wicket-taking World Record in early 1994 and was Wisden’s Indian Cricketer of the Century (2002). Known for his grace and pace (involving a majestic leap at the crease) his right-arm outswinger and a potent inswinging yorker enabled him to take 434 test wickets before he retired in 1994. A naturally aggressive batsman, he scored more than 5000 runs in test matches and in ODIs and captained India to the 1983 World Cup Championship, beating the mighty West Indies who were looking for a hat trick of titles at Lords.

‘Paddles’ signed 15 limited edition prints as part of a set of New Zealand’s Best Cricket XI at his home in Christchurch in the mid 1990’s. They were sold for various charities. The caricature was signed at a sporting function in Invercargill in 1989. Kapil Dev signed his caricature on his final visit to New Zealand in 1994 during India’s one-off Test in Hamilton.

Tomorrow: Part 2, Khan and Botham

Drawing: Sebastian Coe, Lord of the Olympic Rings

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

After heading the successful London bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics Sebastian Coe became Chairman of the London Organising Committee and not only the head but the ‘face’ of the Games.

Along with fellow Brits Steve Cram and Steve Ovett, they dominated middle distance running during the 1980s. He won four Olympic medals, including successive golds in the 1500m at Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984). The other medals were successive silvers in the 800m at the same Olympics.

Lord Coe is actually colour blind, so I guess they all look the same to him. He also held eight outdoor and three indoor world records and in 1979 he broke 3 world records in the space of 41 days.

After retiring from Athletics, Seb was elected to Parliament as the Tory MP for Falmouth from 1992-1977. In 2000 he was made a Life Peer for services to William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, as his Chief Of Staff.

I mailed this caricature to his Parliamentary office in 1994 and he returned it, signed.

Drawing: Glen Campbell

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Country music legend Glen Campbell visited my home town of Invercargill on the southern coast of New Zealand in March 1991. An ideal opportunity to get Glen’s ‘graph. As usual, I left it late and in my haste, stuffed up!

In 50 years in show business, Glen has recorded 70 albums with 45 million sales, including hits such as Galverston, Gentle On My Mind, Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman. He made history in 1967, winning 4 Grammys in both country and pop categories. He also tried his hand at acting. In 1969 he was personally selected by John Wayne to play alongside ‘the Duke’ in True Grit.

I was a member of the City Council which managed the Civic Theatre, where Glen was performing that evening. I wasn’t able to get it in person due to a Council meeting – just wasn’t PC to ask for leave to get Glen Campbell’s autograph. So I enlisted the help of the theatre manager, who left the drawing in his dressing room with a request note.

Just before I went into the meeting, I quickly sketched Glen’s head, based on a photo in the ticket office, then attached a body and guitar without reference to reality. I went into the meeting, a lengthy public submission hearing that went long into the night. After the meeting, one of the theatre staff bought me an envelope with the signed sketch enclosed… and the mistake in the drawing noted – obviously using his right hand!

Drawing: Luciano Pavarotti

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Luciano Pavarotti was one of the finest tenors of the 20th Century known for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register.

He achieved worldwide fame as one of The Three Tenors and his rendition of Puccini’s aria Nessun Dorma from Turandot, which became the theme song for the BBC TV’s coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. It achieved pop status and remained his trademark piece. At the end of the Cup Final in Rome, he was joined by the other two tenors, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras for a concert, which was recorded and became the biggest selling classical album of all time.

He was also known for his humanitarian causes, especially his Pavarotti and Friends charity concerts in his home town of Modena, for several UN projects, with the likes of Eric Clapton, Celine Dion, Elton John, Queen, Sting and George Michael participating.

He signed my caricature after his Sydney concert in March 1994. Sadly, he passed away from pancreatic cancer after an international farewell tour in 2007.

Drawing: Victor Borge

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Victor Borge was considered one of the world’s great comedic geniuses. Dubbed ‘The Clown Prince of Denmark,’ he had no significant rivals in a career that spanned more than 7 years. His comic persona and stage routine was tailored to his personality quirks, musical gifts and extraordinary sense of humour.

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people,” he would say. Victor publicly ridiculed Adolf Hitler in his native Denmark just before WWII. When the Germans invaded, he managed to escape to America, obtaining a visa due to his American-born wife. He learnt to speak English and gained an understanding of American humour by watching movies; quickly rising to prominence with The Victor Borge Show on NBC from the mid 1940s. At one time he was the highest paid entertainer in the world.

Victor’s Comedy in Music one man show on Broadway reached 849 performances – the largest solo run in the Great White Ways history. It was based on a routine that became synonymous with his style, announcing that he was going to play a piece, but seldom actually getting around to doing it because of his hilarious interaction with the audience.

Ironically, his most famous pieces aren’t musical. Phonetic Punctuation recites all of the punctuation marks as exaggerated onomatopoeic sounds. Inflationary Language uses the incremented numbers embedded in words such as “once upon a time” becoming “twice upon a time”, “wonderful” – “twoderful”; “tennis” – “elevenis” and so on.

He toured New Zealand on many occasions. I can’t recall the exact year, but I sent him this caricature and some copies at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre either in the late 1980s or the early 1990s and received these two copies back signed. He kept the original. Not sure what the inscription is all about…

Victor performed to the end. After returning to his Greenwich, Connecticut home from a December 2000 concert in Copenhagen, he died the next day aged 91.

Drawing: Sir Peter Ustinov

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

One of the people I had always wanted to to meet was Sir Peter Ustinov – actor, writer, noted wit and raconteur. In July 1990 I was privileged to see his one man show at the Civic Theatre in Invercargill, New Zealand and meet him afterwards.

In an interview, Sir Peter mentioned the Invercargill incident, “in a theatre that smelled of a furniture depository and made it very clear that it wasn’t very often used. Suddenly in the middle of my performance all the lights went out, including the exit signs.”

He continued performing in the dark, and got more laughs. He compensated for the lack of being seen by verbally expressing his actions in a more descriptive manner. After 20 minutes, the lights came back on, “I was dying for them to fail again,” Sir Peter said.

The interview was in 1992 – two years after the performance, when time allowed him to view the incident in a more positive way. But on the night his mood was colder than the Winter’s evening. At the time I was Deputy Mayor, and hosted a function for Sir Peter after his show. As you could imagine, he was not in a good frame of mind and his sense of humour had vanished. It took some coaxing by our City Manager, Richard King, to get him to the Mayoral Lounge, next to the Theatre.

Once there he was very charming. I asked him to sign my caricature. He looked at it for a while, then quipped, “yes, that’s me.”

My wife, Senga, had given birth to our son Ben the day before, so I asked him to add on “and wee Ben” to the inscription. He duly obliged, with ‘Ben’ in much smaller script. His sense of humour was restored, but no one mentioned the unscheduled black-out.

Caricature: Barry Humphries

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Barry Humphries has a face destined for caricature. I was visiting Sydney in early 1991, actually I was visiting Sydney every year since the late 70’s … but on this particular occasion Barry was performing his solo show, The Life and Death of Sandy Stone – his third most recognised alter-ego behind Dame Edna, the Melbourne housewife with a rampant ego and Sir Les Patterson, cultural attaché to the court of St James. Sandy Stone is the ‘returned gentleman’ – a digger from WWI.

I saw this great pic of Barry in a local rag, so I drew this caricature. I thought, he could keep the original and sign a copy for me… so I sent 4 copies for good measure. I could donate one or two to my favourite charities.

I dropped it off at the Theatre. I’m not sure which one, I think the Philip Street Theatre where Barry had connections since the late 50’s.

Anyway, a week later a parcel arrived back in New Zealand with the copies all signed… as you would expect with a witty twist. This one is simply his sig. On the others – remembering it was a copy of the same sketch – he wrote “I like this one,” “this one’s not me,” and “not a bad likeness”.

I couldn’t get a ticket to his show – sold out – but he is doing a farewell tour, which is headed for London later this year and includes Sandy Stone. So here’s hoping!

Drawing: Dustin Hoffman in The Merchant of Venice

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Known for his versatile portrayal of antiheroes and vulnerable characters, two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman took on the challenging role of ‘Shylock’ in Peter Hall’s production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in London’s West End. After a 13 week run at the Phoenix Theatre, mixed reviews and packed houses, the production transferred to The 46th Street Theatre on Broadway in December 1989, where it played till March the following year after 19 previews and 84 performances.

Dustin continued his role as the Jewish money lender with his thirst for revenge and ‘a pound of flesh’

Dustin was nominated for both a Tony and the Drama Desk Award. He signed my sketch at the theatre in New York in February 1990.