RIP Clare

The Guardian’s loss is our gain

In August 2020, the Brighton-based cartoonist Harry Venning, who had been drawing the weekly strip Clare in the Community in the Guardian’s Society section for 25 years, received some bombshell news. As part of a widespread cost-cutting measure, he was told, the paper had decided to axe the series.

He likens his relationship with the character he created –a pious lefty social worker, whose personal politics didn’t always live up to her right-on self-image – to a marriage. “I was devastated,” he tells me, sitting in a coffee bar in North Laine, Brighton. “I thought it was going to go on till I died.” Clare had given Harry a good run, and not just in The Guardian. A radio version on Radio 4 – starring Sally Phillips in the titular role – ran over twelve series from 2004 to 2019.

Many heard the news from the horse’s mouth: Venning’s valedictory strip (left, bottom) featured a bemused Clare listening to a breakfast news announcement on the radio: ‘and in other news, the UK’s social workers have done such an exemplary job of eradicating societal ills, they have put themselves out of a job.’ She responds, simply, ‘Bollocks’.

“The irony was,” he continues, “the strip was more popular than ever. In the last few months, it was regularly getting into the ‘Most Popular’ list of links on the online version of the newspaper.” There was an outpouring of dismay – grief, even – on social media, after the unexpected announcement. For many, Clare had been the only reason to turn to that section of the paper, or to click onto the site.

Did Venning’s demise, I wonder, come about partly because the newspaper could no longer stomach running a strip that – in effect – took the mickey out of its readers? Not quite, he responds, then reveals that I may not be far wrong.

“For many years they didn’t change anything, ever”, he says. “Latterly they were really on it, and if there was anything that they thought might cause offence, the joke would get spiked. They even came up with a few alternative captions they’d thought up, that wouldn’t offend anyone… It was really frustrating, because I’d come up with an idea and I’d think ‘that one’s never going to get through’, and I wouldn’t do it. That took a lot of the pleasure out of it. Self-censorship and social satire are not a good fit.”

Venning continues to create cartoon strips for several magazines, including a send-up of the acting profession –Hamlet, featuring an anthropomorphic luvvie pig – that has been running in The Stage for longer, even, that Clare graced The Guardian. His latest strip, we are delighted to say, will be published in ROSA, and will be a “gently mocking pisstake of the art world”. You can see it overleaf. We promise that we haven’t vetoed the caption.

Words by Alex Leith