Freaky Fables: The Career of Richard the Lionheart – according to Handelsman!

Those of a bookish disposition have a tendency, in middle age, to go in search of the books that they read in their formative years.  I will not disclaim any such tendency.  Rather, I have just come across an item that I read when I was very much younger, which I thought that I might share with you.

By some process unknown to me – for I do not think my parents were subscribers – I often saw copies of Punch magazine in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  This often contained a full-page cartoon by “Handelsman”, headed “Freaky Fables”.  The cartoon retold some fairy-tale, or traditional or biblical story, much in the manner that we find in 1066 and all that; and none the worse for it.  Many of these have remained in my mind, and probably informed me subtly in various ways.

One of these was a cartoon on the career of Richard the Lionheart (do modern schoolboys even know who he was?).  It was memorable for Handelsman’s version of the song of Blondel:

Paul the apostle
Possessed an epistle
So very colossal
It made the girls whistle.

(I imagine that a few people remember this, which is why I give it where Google can find it!)

Of course there was a certain coarseness to much of the material in Punch – sometimes it could be dreadfully louche.  Another problem is that humour is one of the things that dates most quickly; and what was sharp in 1980 often seems flabby in 2015.

J.B. Handelsman did publish a couple of collections of this well-remembered material, and a copy of one of them came into my hands last week.[1]  To my delight it contained the Richard the Lionheart cartoon.  I post it here for your amusement (or not!).  (Click to get a larger version, and save locally if using IE which doesn’t display mono .png’s very well)

Freaky Fables: Richard the Lionheart. By "Handelsman".
Freaky Fables: Richard the Lionheart. By “Handelsman”.
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  1. [1]J.B. Handelsman, Freaky Fables, Methuen, 1984. ISBN 0-413-55980-7.  Foreword by John Cleese. 64p.