Cartoons: The difference between a champion athlete and a record breaker, my coach Tony Farrell told me, is "A record breaker will run the race of his/her life on a day of their choice. The champion does it on a day decided by someone else".
Martyn Turner is undoubtedly a champion. Not for him, like so many of us, a witty comment on a good day and with the wind behind our backs. Ensconced in Kildare, gazing out the window, with a battery of televisions and transistor radios, spewing out the morning news from numerous stations, he absorbs and observes. He has no control over the stories of the day, yet inevitably he can extract a poignant point, which is turned into a sharp commentatory image.
The essence of the contradiction, the absurdity of the position or the nonsense of the situation are imaginatively conceived and transmitted to illustration. And this is the other great strength of Ireland's leading cartoonist. His graphic skills are matched only by his mordant wit. He has a range and control of pen and ink line drawing that is top of the premier division of political cartoonists, world wide. This paperback, one of 14 books, is a testimony to 32 years of excellence in a difficult trade.
Turner combines the righteous rage of a committed citizen with a humorous eye and ear for the pompous or corrupt. The laws of libel also apply to cartoons. We can now see, for the first time, cartoons that the tribunals' revelations have made it possible to publish. This citizen's values and prejudices are not concealed, nor are they exercised in any partisan manner. The freedom of the press and the obligations of the Fourth Estate shine through.
I laughed out loud, on seeing again, but not forgotten, cartoons of the past. Haughey's encounter with the eagle, who recognised the Taoiseach as "the guy who won the Tour de France". Far from being funny was The Introduction of Internment in Ireland, 17th February 1992, about the restrictions on the Right to Travel, with the forlorn 14-year-old girl, teddy in tow, surrounded by the metal-fenced Irish coastline. The north, the environment, the international scene as well as the world of Irish politics are all in this book. Turner has developed a portrait gallery of prominent personalities who appear regularly. He accentuates a physical attribute, extends a particular expression and in so doing reminds us of their foibles. The feet of the great are made of clay.
Martyn Turner has been producing cartoons since he came south from Belfast to work for The Irish Times. I can think of no other cartoonist in Ireland or Britain who has maintained such a level of observational consistency with graphic greatness. His use, on occasion, of the cinemagraphic sequence of images can be powerful. An old cartoon, Hands up those who do not want an Islamic Republic, has a shocking contemporary reference. That, in a way, is one of the roles of the political cartoonist which Turner carries out so well. The complex detail of an unfolding story is caught in an exaggerated visual image which encapsulates the essence of the news with a cruel humour. Nobody does it better than he when he portrays, for example, a Provo IRA volunteer mixing semtex into semantics to obfuscate the Sinn Féin party's decommissioning obligations under the Belfast Agreement.
This is a must-buy book to have at home, in the office and in any waiting room. It can be dipped into for an instant laugh or perused for some time. Some jokes, over 30 years, repeat themselves but that is only because the jokers are still with us.
Martyn Turner's Greatest Hit, By Martyn Turner, Gill & Macmillan, 205pp. €14.99
Ruairi Quinn is a Labour Party TD