Not Welcome Here

Last Wednesday I drew a single-panel gag cartoon for the first time in years, and a topical one at that, and for the first time submitted it to Private Eye. I then spent the rest of the day trying not to read jokes about the town it references on Bluesky to see if someone else had stolen my thunder, and the rest of the week sweating on whether Lord Gnome & co. would publish it. They didn’t, so now I can post it here. (Their list of acceptances includes another Piddington Bear gag in issue 1684, so I expect that did for my chances.) I was pretty happy with it myself, but it would have been more timely last Wednesday. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see any pernickety letters to the editor pointing out that Piddington Station closed in 1962. Keen observers will note that it references the news out of Dover two weeks ago, along with last week’s xenophobic stunt by a small English village, and features everyone’s favourite fictional undocumented immigrant. I sent them a couple of less…