The man behind those Footrot

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 17

The man behind those Footrot

DAVID McGILL,

of the “Evening Post,” Wellington,

went to Gisborne to get in behind the man who draws Footrot Flats. Murray Ball talked to him about Wai and The Dog and Aunt Dolly and Cooch and all the other characters of his own Animal Farm.

GEI OUT.” bellowed Murray Bail, in a voice fit to crack a farm gate. The command boomed off round the Gisborne hills, but it failed to have the desired effect. The sheep kept on contentedly poaching grass, its head stuck through the top fence oblivious to the outrage of the farmer below. “HOI. HSSSS. GERROUT..” shouted Ball, bounding up his hill farm like a goat up a gully. The sheep chose not to get in behind until Ball was almost on it, at which point it turned slowly and trundled off. “If it was one of mine.” muttered the descending Murray, •‘it'd obey.” Ball has a decibel rating approaching Wai’s mustering roar, but unfortunately he doesn’t have a dog to back him up. He does have five ewes and two iams on his four near vertical acres outside Gisborne, and two cows, a calf, an unknown number of wild bees, geese, ducks, hens, a rooster — and two cats and two kittens. But really they are only a backrise to his cartoon industry; not so much a Footrot Flats, more a Hogtied Heights. However, it is not the animals that get Murray Ball up at 4.30 am. six mornings out of seven. He rises to go to work in his cartoon shed, so he can have time after school with his wife Pam, and the kids, Mason, 11, Gareth, 8, and their lovely f i v e-year-old adopted Malayan daughter Tania. In fact, a handsome family all round — even if Mason wasn’t at his happiest. He had just got his bicycle back, one of 600 stolen each year in Gisborne, but it was minus a few of its choicer fixtures. Dad tried to ease the pain, saying it was lucky it came back in one piece.But he admitted that he could not put it together. He is still learning how to put up a straight fence. (Readers might recall the staples machine-gunning into Wai’s back in one strip — an extension of a real incident). The local farming lads down the road, Rick and John, give him all the help he needs in learning the farming game, including the habits of bulls, pigs, and goats. He did have a goat last year, but he got rid of the “mean critter” after winning a few battles, wrestling it to the ground, but finally

losing the war. It butted him. He sold it. Not that Murray Ball is a city slicker. He is as lean and as fit as the goat he got rid of, and plays a mean game of squash. Rugby buffs would recall Murray was a Junior All Black trialist. And at 39 he still looks a likely lad. But then you look at the hands; they are definitely not the great gouged bunches of sheeptossing fives. Murray may have overtaken Colin Meads for the all-time Kiwi bestseller as his latest Footrot Flats collection zooms up to 70,000 sales; he’s got a way to go before he could match “Pine Tree” on the farm. Ball has the soft, supple Lands of a working life as a cartoonist, mostly in England, where he had to go to make a living. His Bruce the Barbarian and c iveman Stanley were established in Britain before he was known here. He had always wanted to make his way here, and now he does, as virtually a one-man cartoon factory. Pam looks after the clerical side, and gets a wage for it, while Murray whips out daily strips of Footrot Flats and Stanley, which has conquered Australia, the United States, and Canada, and has just moved into New Guinea. Footrot Flats was intended first and foremost to be

his homegrown Kiwi strip, but now it has taken off in Australia, and the United States is showing interest. Murray would never have left if he could have made it here. Born in Feilding a few years ahead of columnist Tom Scott and John f (Fred Dagg) Clarke, he was copying Donald Duck as a lad. Aunt Dolly, he says, represents a blend of a lot of his relatives. His mother’s relatives came from the other side of the island, Manawatu landed gentry, Royalist, Right Wing, conservative — just like Aunt Dolly. His father’s lot came from the Gisborne side of the track. His dad was a barber who owned an amusement park and messed around with farming. His relatives were spread around the world. Some of Murray’s schooling was in South Africa, where he won a drawing competition: the prize was 10 pounds of tea. This may have curbed

his interest in the rewards of a cartooning career, for he started out as a cadet journalist on the “Dominion,” Wellington. He usually came back from assignments with more cartoons than copy, .which prompted a fellow cadet, Alan Hitchens, until recently editor of the “Sunday News,” to suggest that if he wanted to be a' cartoonist he go off and try it. He did. He resigned and went back to Feilding to draw. He got back on the “Dominion” briefly as a cartoonist, but he could not find enough openings. His caveman Stanley first appeared in the “Listener” whose editor, Monte Holcroft, told him to stay with the palaeolithic hero. Stanley travelled abroad with him. When he had done 110 strips he offered them to a publisher, who suggested he try “Punch” first, the convention being that cartoon strips should first see the light of the day in magazines or newspapers. “Punch” agreed. Not that it was that

easy. Ball offers more paragraphs on the grind and poverty and dispiriting round of rejects. Now-a-days his gripes are all'farming: the drought, the floods, and the endless clipping of hooves. The strips he illustrated for comics like the Beano he regards as the most punishing but most important training he haa. He still does Tilly the Trier for Buntry comic and his own Thor Thumb, the Viking in Topper. Once he ghosted the immortaT Bash Street Kids. He used to get his scripts back with many harsh corrections, and it is this discipline that he still feels valuable. This was where he learned much of his distinctive action style. He likes movement. A farmer was an obvious choice for a strip. He likes the possibilities of such an active job — the barked knuckles from fence posts slipping, the sound they make entering a water-filled hole, the sun blisters, the physical effort of shearing. He did three-quarters of a sheep himself last season. He had always wanted to offer New Zealand its own strip. Footrot Flats started with Wai, who typified the businessmanfarmer, somebody all Kiwis know, even the townies. A farmer, like Murray’s Manawatu relatives. Next you need the tension between opposites. Enter The Dog. The wonderfully intelligent New Zealand sheepdog. Here were, the two sides of human nature — . the dominant aggressive side exemplified by the farmer; the softer, gentler side you see in the dog. The tug between the two gives you the situations, the humour. You couldn’t, you see, have Cooch and The Dog. They’re too alike. Cooch is based on a farmer friend up Coromandel. Lives on an estuary island with too much blackberry and trees coming through the floor.

Last time Murray was up “Cooch” had two pianos in the lounge. When Ball talks about his craft, you can see how it draws its inspiration from the same kind of split that he saw as a lad in his relatives. He expresses strong dislike of the philosophy of the Manawatu side of the family. The feeling was much more apparent in England, where his Bruce the Barbarian ran in the “Labour Weekly” and his All the King’s Men in “Punch” — both showing the clash between capital ist and socialist, between Left and Right. He got embroiled in parish-pump politics when he lived in the fox-hunting belt in Devon. The local squire was a local councillor and in the latter capacity turned down the free offer of a state nursery as something there was no call for in that part of the world. Murray and Pam organised the petition to dispute this theory, and won the nursery. Next thing, Murray found himself on the Labour ticket, opposing the squire. He was relieved to lose, for he had got a sight of council agendas and thought them very boring. Nearby in Devon lived Frank Pepper, who still wrote the adventure stories that Murray had thrill* ed to as a lad in Rover and Champion comics. Although Murray spoke admiringly of many modern cartoonists, like the American Jules Feiffer, clearly his mainsprings lie with the comics he still illustrates, as well as, of course, with the schizoid family ties. When he came back he went where his affections lay, up the Gisborne side of the island. The family got as far as Ohope, ■ where he was appalled at how the once-beautiful beach had been built out. They retreated to Gisborne. There he lives a busy and contented existence. His main worries are how the cowshed he is building will turn out and where, back here, he can get another supply of nibs. He is not happy with the felt pencil. As Footrot Flats approaches its 500th strip, he is very happy to be down on the farm among his animals — with a new character in the wings.