Mr Bingo

0:23All right thanks for having me who likes pump do you like pump pumkins I really like pumpkins I love them on their own I find in big groups they're actually very terrifying so who's this does anyone know who this is it's Dan fer he's meant to be me. Now.

0:44This is meant to be Dan fer I'm sorry Dan fish is not here.

0:47So they called me a few days ago and said look we Bingo would you do this. And I was like yeah okay.

0:52So I'm replacing Dan Fisher if he was here he probably would have talked about his work this kind of stuff and his ad campaign it's very good all this sort of stuff it's brilliant look at that he did that classic Dam Fisher the penguin he did the penguin we all love the penguin I I apologized on Twitter about this a few days ago.

1:11I was like I'm sorry Dam fish is not going to be there I'm replacing someone and someone said this. So if you want to use the hashtag slightly Tuesdays please do that also if anyone's just completely disappointed that I'm not Dan Fisher just see anyone from theat Team for a full refund at the end of the night so I'm an illustrator and you know sometimes when you're at parties and stuff and people ask what you do and they're like what do you do oh I'm an illustrator cool what sort of stuff do you do what does it look like funny humor it's really difficult to describe funny art you know it's just like it doesn't really look like anything it's just funny you're just trying to make funny work you know you're trying to do things like this so some of the work I do isn't funny which which I don't always show people like this.

2:00This is like a a big ad campaign for NES Cafe where where they they got me to draw these kind of lovely renderings of of things for Ness Cafe and I don't really like doing things like this I do it because they pay me loads of money but I didn't enjoy it what I wanted to be doing was stuff like this which is what I enjoy drawing which is like funny pictures so I've always enjoyed drawing funny stuff it's just something. That's uilt in me it's kind of like the only thing I'm good out I suppose so this is some drawings I did when I was about eight or nine I think and I was basically just looking at I was into football.

2:39And I was just looking at you know the funny words and phrases that are used in football and kind of making little comics and and and illustrations about them. And I kind of enjoyed the reaction I got from people that looked at these and laughed and I sort of I I felt like I wanted to do more of this I was always into kind of attention seeking stuff so this is me on the on the right justess as a girl when I went to school when I was 10 years old there was no reason for this it was just I just thought it was funny a year later. I was drawing things like this.

5:24This is I don't know is that funny maybe that's not funny but this was for an old boy school. And this is for 11y olds and 11y old boys do think this is funny I think they did at the time couple of years later. I was drawing things like this at school I don't know why I did this.

5:27But I just decided to depict myself as a chip andell's and balls and I put this post up all around the school. So then.

5:29I did some other stuff and went to University while I was there.

5:32I did a lot of personal work just for fun just to amuse myself like these I used to do these kind of fictitious events and do these A4 posters for them laminate them.

10:58And then put them around the town just just for fun really. And I was kind of making work like this.

11:01This is the first sort of illustration work that I tried to do aesthetically I'm not sure about this now.

11:04But I I still find it quite funny you know it's just it's just silly and stuff like this as well I think this is about daytime TV ♪

11:06but yeah.

11:08So this was a magazine I was in in 2002 and I'm always just trying to be a bit silly I I I never take myself seriously I I'm not into I don't mind artists that take themselves seriously but I'm definitely not an artist who takes themselves seriously I kind of think everything's a bit of a joke and and so this is me in a magazine and you know I decided to dress in pajamas and walk through an airport carrying a vintage pornographic magazine so that's how I wanted to depict myself and it was really nice to look at this I hadn't looked at this article for years.

11:09And I read the little thing I said which was so this is me just out of University and I'm kind of talking about what I want to be and I found this really nice little quote from it where I said this my existence is simple I serve to entertain and amuse and I'm glad I said that because that's kind of still what I feel like you know. That's that's all I want to do I just want to make people laugh this is my MySpace profile from 2004 or something and you can see again I'm not taking myself seriously I'm I'm depicting myself in my profile picture as a a tattoo on a fat lady's back.

11:11This is some of my early work apologies for the the bad quality it's hard to find stuff that's done so many years ago.

11:13So this is I don't know 12 years old or something. And I was just doing flyers for nightclubs in London and just doing kind of funny stuff really.

11:14This is one of the first bits of work I did that. Actually gained a bit of recognition and and you know people noticed it which was nice and what I had to do was I was commissioned to do a double page two double page Spades in a magazine and draw the entire contents of a British Asian news agent so it was really fun kind like this big Marathon project and what was really nice about it was I got to put a lot of my own kind of personality into to it and jokes that I thought were funny so a few sort of jokes were kind of satirical stuff and taking the piss out of you know newspapers and culture and you know media and stuff like that. And it was really nice to be able to put these kind of jokes in a bit of work and for a magazine to print it. And someone to pay me. And I thought this is great you know so from this point onwards this was a real turning point and I thought if I can get away with doing this I'm just going to be really honest from now on and do do what I want and hopefully people will pay me to do it.

11:18And so here's a few and again earlier kind of editorial pieces just stuff that was in magazines there was an art director called Andrew dios from GQ Magazine who was very early on kind of noticed me and gave me some work. So that was really nice and a lot of the stuffs with GQ Magazine so that's obviously about schizophrenia they kind of speak for themselves what one of the things I really like doing when I make work my my main kind of thing that I try and do is I you know I want to please the client and I want it to support the article that it's about. And I want them to be happy but at the same time I want every bit of work I do to kind of work as a standalone piece on its own so you take the article away or the advert or whatever it's for and you can just show this picture to people. And it's funny that. That's my kind of objective with every every job. And it's great to do things like this you know.

11:20This is the Washington Post you know it's a very sort of prestigious newspaper and there's two rats in the middle of it it's fantastic and it even goes into advertising as well so you know funny stuff sells and people big companies love funny stuff because when people think things are funny they have a nice kind of emotional response and then they want to buy things. So it's it's great for advertising and I do get some work doing that as well.

11:21So this is for a vodka and it was a campaign about being manly this is something I did for ♪

11:23perer yeah and so what's nice about doing funny work is you sometimes end up at some point working for funny people it kind of lends itself to that so you know I did some work for Qi the TV program very funny kind of intelligent people really kind of nice to work with these are some illustrations I did for the inside of the QI book just illustrating lots of little little moments did this for the Mighty B TV program did some stuff for Jimmy car that was actually my own little joke that I put in there which I thought was quite funny the system he probably took the credit for that it's another thing for Jimmy car nice thing about working for funny people.

11:24Actually I don't think most of Jimmy car's stuff's that funny but some of his stuff is and so you know like drying your balls with a hair dryer you get to draw this stuff which is great and even when I do work that isn't about stuff that's meant to be funny like this book cover I just have to sneak little funny things in there.

11:26I think like like what Wilfred was saying earlier you just can't help yourself you just got to make little jokes all the time so you know dwarf's chin for rent on the front of a book and hiding things in ad campaigns that's why I hid this in a magazine for I hid the word on a book in in an ad campaign in the guardian which was fun everyone here uses phones right we all look at our phones a lot who uses Instagram everyone yeah everyone uses Instagram I worry about Instagram I love Instagram and I use it a lot. And I look at a lot of my friends pictures I just s of follow mainly people I know. And some kind of creative people and stuff and so many people post pictures of food have you noticed that there's a lot of food pictures and I spend my life looking through these pictures of food and I sort of worry a little bit that if I get hit by a bus you know when people say if you get hit by a bus that you're just about to die your last thoughts go through your mind I kind of worry that it's going to look through this I just like funny things in life as well you know things that you see when you're walking around so I was just walking to work.

11:28And I saw this fat dog watching two fat people exercising theart. So it's weird I've never seen those three birds in the background actually. That's quite nice as well.

11:29So I got to work. And instead of doing what I was meant to be doing I just had to draw them and and then put this on Twitter and and you know tell people about it and you know I often get like briefs in for things I seem a bit boring and you know they like have you have you read the brief and it's like no I'm busy drawing some beef curtains just doing stuff I want to do this is not my work.

11:31This is Steve Bell who's a you know sort political cartoonist and this is what I think a lot of people think funny illustration looks like when you tell them you're an illustrator and you do humorous stuff I don't really do stuff like this because I can't because I don't know enough about news and politics I'm just not aware enough about this stuff so what I like drawing is pictures that are just funny for the sake of funny they're not saying anything they're not trying to there's no message or they're not trying to prove a point they're just it's just like a silly combination of things you know.

11:44This is this kind of stuff I like doing here's a little tip actually if anyone ever wants to make funny work it's actually quite easy what you mainly do is you just put two things together that don't normally go together. And some of the stuff I do I turn into prints that you can buy and so I like to advertise this. And I like to get people interested in buying them.

12:12So I make these little adverts which I put online to just to give you an idea of what it might be like in your home you know it's it's nice to do that you know just to give you an impression it really helps with the sales I find ♪

12:40one of the nicest things is when instead of working for clients you just work for people just normal people and the best thing about personal commissions is that there's no bollocks or about you know it has to it has to be a certain language that pleases the client or the audience or the readership sh or anyone so you can just do anything you like so occasionally these lovely perfect little jobs come in like this one where someone just emailed me and said can you draw a horse wearing hook a boots to my website I was like yes I've been waiting 15 years for someone to say that and great stuff like this.

13:13So this guy emailed me and said actually loved the bit where he said I'm a friend of Mark hopkinson's we met briefly at your cden toown book signing just you just signed somebody's penis lovely detail that did happen and so what he wanted me to do was basically a wedding cake topper which is like a thing that you print and you put on top of the wedding cake so it turned out he had 150 quid 150 quid isn't that much money and I said okay I'll do it.

13:40But if it's going to be so cheap the rules are that I do whatever I want you get no client amends it's just whatever I want to do and you put it on the cake and you pay me. And we agreed on that which was great so that's I don't know this guy but this is a photo from the wedding so did happen apparently was yeah they were all very happy and someone asked me to do a pet portrait.

14:05This is for someone in America and I said I don't really do Pet Portraits it's not really what you know Pet Portraits are generally done by kind of weird you know old ladies in Southern America and they do these little sketches and stuff and I said well I can do it I can do a pet portrait.

14:20But it needs to be in my style and my tone of voice and again it has to be my rules and they said okay and so I did a tattoo of the of the cat and on the on a big lady Pet Portraits are weird aren't they you can you can buy these a lot on the internet like you can go on eBay and just type in pet portrait and there's loads and loads of artists out there that will do this for like 20 quid 50 Quid and I really want to kind of play around with this thing sometimes and I've I've made this sort of slightly interesting photo of a cat which I'd like to send to them and just say can you draw my cat and see if they say anything or you know if they try and you know there's weird photos of cats on the internet there's a lot of photos of cats on the internet I mean we all know this but like I look at quite a lot of stock photography and there's so many photos on the internet of children holding cats and I don't know why this happens because the cats are never happy they're never happy they're always sad the child is always happy and the cat is always sad I just don't understand why they do this they keep doing it there's just more and more photos and it just doesn't stop and people need to stop doing this cuz the cats don't enjoy it he doesn't love her.

15:30So this is the thing that I like doing the most which is called hate mail which I'm not going to talk about too much I think I've talked about it too much. But in the past but basically strangers pay me to send them offensive postcards and they look like this. And this is this is me doing pure work. This is like my most pure kind of me you know.

15:52This is what I want to do this is what excites me. And I love doing so I just get name and address and I just send them a postcard and some of them are quite harsh and they have quite kind of nice little comments about Modern Life.

16:09And it's nice to kind of get these jokes in there and people really love this they really enjoy it and there's like a huge waiting list for these and and the the people that get it like to interact with it and they they sometimes take photos posing with them. And it turned into a book which is brilliant so it's just so funny that such a silly idea ended up being a book and off signed books and when people buy a signed book They're allowed to ask for a little request and so I get a lot of requests from people you know with with various things they want me to insult them about or their friend or their loved one or whatever it is and so I get all these weird facts sent to me in these orders and the these are two kind of they make a bit more sense but then some of them will get really strange and I don't ask the people I just do what I'm told I just do what they're asking for there's been a few personal commissions with hate mail as well.

17:03So these two guys were getting married and both them big fans of the work.

17:07And someone said can you do a hate mail to the to the married couple and I was like yeah sure and we did that it's about tying the KN in case and a birthday card as well this was for Nicole Appleton from All Saints who remembers all Saints yeah. So apparently yeah she's got dogs and and I was commissioned to send her a birthday card so this is what I did to just go back to stock photography who who uses stock photography here in their line of work and you ever come across kind of weird images when you're looking for something else it's a very strange thing.

17:51So yeah I'm just going to do a little wrap about that ♪

18:08for the suicide because I'm so depressed I'm a off his test gra a L's chest and I only carry bread when I'm undressed don't hold me like that yo you know what makes me dress yo I got so much love for my Cactus the fact is I'm too schol to fing of this actress perhaps this is the only way I gain access I celebrate that in a way. That's ♪

18:34tackless and now I'm stres while you're turning Pages nowadays I'm crazy can't control my rages and I hate it when we fight but a hold a story nearer if her ass is tight so give me some fruit and a photo shoot and we can go start some Wars in my birthday suit I'm mod a man with a tampon ready for action.

18:54And I'm so happy with my latest transaction I got a miniature bathtub to keep myself clean and I hope I don't get seen in the washing machine I keep my head on mistak so I have a sweet dream and I've always got my brother when I want to double team H I'm so sick of this cat food I might even eat my cat ♪

19:27dude [Applause]