But what will he evolve into ..?

Up above the streets and houses ...

Three photos of a magnificent rainbow over central London today, photographed through a plate glass window on the 15th floor of an office block in Earls Court. Nature still has the best toys.

Talking heads

The new QI G Annual is out in the shops now. In case you were wondering (but probably weren't) which bits I did this year, I did two double page spreads of Glossoplegia; illustrated vox pops and bon mots by the show's stars popped onto strange little Punch and Judy bodies. Here's a sample.I also did a strange little illustration of Sean Lock as a goatherd which, incidentally, he really was at one time.

Get the annual from Amazon now! Oh, and don't forget the new 'G' series starts on Thursday at 9.30pm BBC1.

All illustrations copyright (c) QI Ltd and Faber and Faber Publishing.

Dreaming of a Pink Christmas

During yesterday's whine about the Oxford Street lights, I mentioned Carnaby Street. Well, here it is in all of its kitsch glory. Last year it was giant snowmen you might recall. No? Then look here.

So much more Christmassy than the vulgar commercial displays elsewhere. Yeah baby.

Fakin Cnut

My best friend Huw Williams is a commercials director. He spends much of his working day coming up with innovative ways to sell us things that we probably don't need but very much want after seeing one of his ads. And, once in a while, he comes up with something so irritatingly clever that I want to simultaneously beat him around the head with a Dyson vacuum cleaner and buy him a beer for being so damned creative.

This is one such occasion; his brilliantly clever flyer for the new British 'gangster' film 44 Inch Chest. It's out in January and stars Ray Winstone, Tom Wilkinson, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Stephen Dillane and Joanne Whalley. Want to know more? Check out this site and/or this.

Blinding work mate.

The Ghost of Christmas Commercialised

I drew this cartoon in 1992 and the caption was 'You Dude! I am the ghost of Christmas commercialised!' It was back in the days when my son, like so many young lads, was obsessed with ninja amphibians named after Renaissance painters and when parents would happily have gouged each other's eyes out to get the last Shredder or Splinter off the shelf in Toys R Us. Or, as I insist the store should be called, We are toys. Ah, sweet satire! Little did I realise back then just how far down the road to perdition we'd travel in just 17 short years.

These photos are of the Christmas lights in London's Oxford Street. And yes, they are one huge commercial for the new CGI version of A Christmas Carol. The lights were even turned on by the film's star, Jim Carrey. Am I wrong to hate this? For me, putting up the Christmas lights is a simple pleasure, a sign that winter is well and truly here and we can all look forward to some truly rubbish telly, an enormous turkey and dollops of goodwill to all men, women and small furry animals. I really really hate the idea that the lights are nothing more than a cynical last miserly grasp at making rich people even richer.

Want my advice? Go and see the Carnaby Street lights instead. Much more fun with huge pink reindeer and groovy 1960s inflatable hearts proclaiming love and peace. That's my idea of Christmas decorations and, incidentally, my idea of what Christmas is all about.

Oxford Street? Humbug.

Hip-Hip-Hipgnosis!

Last night I was at the Albert Studio Gallery in Battersea for the launch of an exhibition by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey 'Po' Powell - better known to us kids of the 60s and 70s as design company Hipgnosis.

In 1968, Thorgerson and Powell were photography students looking for a direction. The arrival of exciting and innovative LP covers such as The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper and the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers made them realise that there was potential to develop the 12" by 12" LP cover into an art form. The fact that they shared a flat at the time with maverick Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett led to them creating their first few covers ... and an almost lifelong association with the band.

Apart from designing almost all of Pink Floyd's covers - including the iconic Dark Side of the Moon and Animals - they also did covers for Marc Bolan, Yes, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney and Wings, 10CC, UFO, Styx, Black Sabbath and many more. Between them and Roger Dean, they probably defined the look of LP cover art for a decade.

The exhibition runs until 18th January and signed giclee prints are on sale at the gallery. In addition, the lads have produced a book (see here) called For the Love of Vinyl that catalogues their 40-odd years in the business with behind the scenes notes and essays by people like Nick Mason of Floyd. I'm loving my copy.

Top Tips: Get invited to a Viz party and drink all their beer

Last night I was very lucky to be invited to the opening party of the VIZ exhibition at London's Cartoon Museum.

The show marks 30 years of the UK's rudest magazine and features lots of original artwork. And, as you can see above, it's on until late January.

Simon Donald, Andy Colman (Golddust Comics) and Joel Meadows (Tripwire magazine) ignoring each other

It was a boisterous and busy affair with around 100 of us crammed into the gallery drinking Old Speckled Hen, decent wine or - for the dieters like me - apple juice. Sob. The exhibition boasts a lot of original page art plus quite a few of the fully painted covers to the magazines and the hardback collections.

I first came across VIZ in the early 1980s. I still remember buying my first ever copy - it was printed on tatty paper and had one colour (red) only but what it lacked in paper quality it made up for in gag quality. As I was introduced to the joys of Sid the Sexist, The Fat Slags, Buster Gonad (and his unfeasibly large testicles), Spoilt Bastard and so many others I thought I was going to burst. It was just so funny. And the accompanying features and spoof adverts were the best I'd seen since the old Python Papperbok and Big Red Book of the 70s. A few years later I made regular submissions to the 'Top Tips' section, usually under the pseudonym of Mr S Goblin. At the time, I was working with Chris Hale and he had a few published too.

Paul 'Little Britain' Putner gets taken roughly from behind by Davey Jones

Simon Donald and Sid the Sexist sizing up the interviewer's shirt potatoes

John Brown - the publisher who helped make VIZ at one time the third best-selling magazine in the UK (after the Radio Times and TV Times) - gave a rousing and very funny speech despite constant heckles from Simon Donald. One story involved original VIZ editor Chris Donald who had a run-in with the W H Smith chain over the amount of swearing there was in an issue featuring a new character called Sweary Mary. Eventually, in order to get published, Donald was forced to compromise by placing black squares over the swear words on the cover. However, in the following issue, Sweary Mary was depicted using semaphore flags in several panels. Had anyone bothered to translate it, the message was very, very rude and aimed at a certain High Street magazine retailer ...

Andy and I score with a couple of local birds who seemed up for it

Simon Donald and Graham Dury - they have immatured with age

John Brown - seems tall but is standing on a poor person

Charlie Brooker smiling because he got my allocation of wine

Most of the VIZ mainstays were there including Simon Donald, Simon Thorp, Graham Dury, Davey Jones and Alex Collier. A notable absence was Chris Donald who started the magazine but then retired from it 2001. However, I did meet Chris earlier in the year after a recording of QI's The Museum of Curiosity. Already having a signed copy of his fantastic VIZ memoir and autobiography Rude Kids, I asked the others to also sign it. Here's the finished result:

A great night for a great magazine. Here's hoping for 30 more years.

Create some evidence, dammit

I took the dogs out for their daily romp around the fields this morning. And why not? The sun was shining, the weather unseasonably warm - I didn't even need a coat - and there were hedgerow goodies to be gathered in for wine-making etc. I hadn't been more than 10 minutes from the house before realising that I'd spotted more than 20 species of birds including crows, rooks, blackbirds, starlings, a thrush, two or three different types of seagull, sparrows, wood pigeons, collared doves, a cock pheasant and, most spectacularly, a kestrel, several red kites and a truly huge buzzard. And I found myself thinking, 'How can any reasonably free-thinking intelligent person look at all of this variety and still believe in the idea of a single creation event?'

I've blogged about this before but, every so often, I get the urge to shout out loud about Creationism and why I find the idea so ridiculous, so inherently flawed and so utterly lacking in any palpable truth. I simply cannot understand how anyone can believe it.

Firstly, I must point out that this is not a religious argument. As far as I am concerned, everyone has the right to believe what they want. If people choose to believe that there is a god or gods, or that we didn't land on the Moon or even that aliens are visiting us regularlly to play with our bumholes, that's fine by me. We must all be allowed the freedom to believe whatever we want and it is fundamentally wrong to take that right away from us. It's one of the reasons I wasn't opposed to Nick Griffin's appearance on BBC's Question Time this week. Although I find his views abhorrent, tasteless, outdated and just plain wrong, he has a right to believe his own diatribe, a right to free speech and the right to look like a twat on national TV. I anticipated that the BBC was giving him the rope with which to hang himself and, sure enough, he looked utterly ridiculous and has probably done a lot more harm to the British National Party than good. But believing that something exists is not the same as something existing. And in order to accept that something exists, you need some degree of proof. The alien abductionists, Bigfooters and Moon landing conspiracists do at least try to provide some kind of evidence to support their beliefs, dubious though much of that proof sometimes turns out to be. But Creationism? There is such overwhelming evidence against the concept that it is completely discredited surely? Isn't it?

I could talk about the massive fossil record (which, large as it is, probably accounts for considerably less than 1% of the species that have ever existed). I could talk about the discovery of genes and DNA. I could point out that the pheasant and the wood pigeons I saw this morning look nothing like their ancestors who were introduced to Britain millennia ago from Africa and Europe. They didn't exist at the supposed Creation, yet they're here. How? By what mechanism if not evolution? And I could point out that evolution, as a theory, has been supported time after time after time by reasoned, unbiaised scientific experimentation. Whether it's a process created by a god or has simply evolved itself like a solar system or oceans or the weather, there can be no denying the fact that it exists. There are fossils that clearly show the evolution from Hyracotherium to horse, from theropod dinosaur to bird, from Ambulocetus to whale. If a single creation event caused every species that has ever existed to appear on this planet simultaneously, instantly and fully-formed, why do we have transition fossils that show one species moving towards becoming another? Why are the fossilised wasps and spiders trapped in amber more primitive than the ones we run away from now? Why create millions of species ... and then allow the vast majority of them to become extinct? It simply makes no sense whatsoever.

At this juncture, it's worth pointing out that there is a difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design. The ID people (mostly) accept that change occurs in species, that there is a fossil record and that the process is still ongoing. Many ID proponents believe that this shows the hand of God at work. However, many others are happy to divorce themselves from religion. Intelligent Design champions include a number of very clever people who produce well-researched books; people like Dr Michael J Behe (Darwin's Black Box, Edge of Creation) and Dr Antony Latham (The Naked Emperor: Darwinism Exposed) who do, at least, attempt to prove that the story of life on Earth could not have happened without some kind of guiding 'hand'. I've read many of these books and enjoyed them. And by balancing their arguments against those made by Darwinists I have made informed choices about what I choose to believe.

But Creationism is a very different thing. It states, categorically, that all life on this planet was created by God during a single enormous creation event. It proposes that bacteria and beetles and kangaroos and oak trees and vultures and crocodiles and frogs and dinosaurs and mammoths and every other of the billions of species that have ever existed all appeared together in that instant. It insists that the fossil record is wrong, faked or misinterpreted. And yet, they provide no evidence for these outlandish statements other than pointing us towards what's written in holy scripture. In fact, the majority of their literature does little more than attack accepted theory. For instance on the website of the Creation Evidence Museum (Yes, there is such a thing. The site is here), it boasts ten reasons why Creationism is right. None of them actually provide any evidence of this. For example, number nine is: 'A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations. A minimal cell contains over 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations. The chance of this assemblage occurring by chance is 1 in 104,478,296.' Assuming this is accurate, how is that proof of the Creation? Wishy-washy, unsupported comments like 'stagger the imagination' and 'defy evolutionary explanations' are unscientific and, the case of the latter, untrue. And, anyway, one in 104 million is only about eight times more unlikely than winning the lottery. With four billion years and an infinite number of organisms having lived, bred and mutated in that time, the chances don't seem quite so remote do they?

Another argument is: 'How could something as complex as our eyes have arisen by chance?' Again, the simple answer is time and inheritance. Our eyes are very sophisticated organs to be sure. They are perfectly suited to the environment our ancestors evolved in. But that's the point isn't it? They evolved to suit our environment. Consequently, they're not very good underwater. And we can't see ultraviolet, infrared, x-rays or heat like some animals can. And we are pretty rubbish in the dark while some supposedly less advanced creatures than us can see as clear as day. Why weren't we equipped with those abilities? And why would any Creator bother creating much more primitive eyes like those found in worms and crustaceans? Or the sophisticated but very different eyes found in molluscs and insects? If the template for really good eyes existed at the time of the Creation, why not equip every animal with them? And maybe the plants and fungi too?

Meanwhile the Museum provides 'evidence' of human footprints alongside dinosaur prints, claiming that this is proof that we all arrived together. The Alvis Delk fossil, for example, was 'transported to a professional laboratory where 800 X-rays were performed in a CT Scan procedure. Laboratory technicians verified compression and distribution features clearly seen in both prints, human and dinosaur. This removes any possibility that the prints were carved or altered.' A professional laboratory eh? Not the Smithsonian or the Natural History Museum I suppose. And this from the same museum that claims it has footprints of a seven feet tall human from the Cretaceous Era (so why did we shrink if that was God's optimal design?) and that mammoths frozen in ice are absolute proof of The Flood (Don't get me started on The Flood. See my previous blog here).

The point I'm coming to is that if Creationism was a harmless belief like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, I wouldn't take any issue with it. Nor would I take umbrage if it made some kind of effort to provide evidence of its own, rather than just attacking everyone else's. It's the fact that it's gathering pace as a viable alternative to Darwinism that concerns me. It's the fact that it's hi-jacked the ID argument and uses it to further its own agenda, even though much of the best ID literature doesn't actually mention God. It's the fact that there is such a thing as a Creation Evidence Museum that peddles its dodgy 'proof' to children and their religious parents as substantive evidence. It's the fact that I have recently seen Creationist books in the science section at a branch of Waterstones despite there being little or no science in them, just anti-evolutionary dogma. It's the fact that the (currently) most powerful nation on Earth is torn between religious belief and hard science. Even if schools are not yet teaching Creationism instead of evolution, there is sufficient doubt among parents to insist that both options be presented as equal theories.

In March of 2001 the Gallup News Service reported the results of a survey that found 45% of Americans agreed with the statement 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,' while 37% preferred a blended belief that 'Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,' and just 12% accepted the standard scientific theory that 'Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.' In a forced choice between Creationism and the theory of evolution, 57% chose Creationism against only 33% for evolution (10% said they were “unsure”). Only 33% of Americans think that the theory of evolution is 'well supported by evidence,' while slightly more (39%) believe that it is not well supported and that it is 'just one of many theories.' One reason for these disturbing results can be seen in the additional finding that only 34% of Americans consider themselves to be 'very informed' about evolution. Clearly the 66% who do not consider themselves very informed had no problem in saying that they didn't believe in it. Worrying? Hell yes. But it gets worse.

During the recent US elections, a USA Today and Gallup poll asked registered voters the question 'If a presidential candidate stated that he or she DID NOT believe in the theory of evolution, would that make you: much more likely to vote for that candidate, a little more likely, not make a difference either way, would it make you a little less likely, (or) much less likely to vote for that candidate?' The results showed that 53% said it would make no difference to them and 3% had no opinion. 15% said it would make them more likely or very likely to vote for the candidate. But, most worryingly, a whole 14% said less likely and 15% said much less likely. 29% is a pretty big swing away from a candidate. It could win or lose an election. Whichj means that the candidate who gets the most powerful job in the world could win or lose depending on whether they believe in evolution or not. It's genuinely scary to think that if the Creationist leader got in ... the USA would have a president who cannot understand or accept basic science.

I'm all for a rational discussion of Intelligent Design versus Darwinism. I'm happy to read arguments from all sides, even Creationists. I am not a zealot. I have, and no doubt will again, been persuaded to change my views on certain topics when the arguments have been strong enough. So here's my challenge to Creationists ... supply me with something I can test, or show me some evidence that supports your beliefs. If you can't do either, then stop poisoning the minds of the next generation of doctors, scientists, writers and artists. Give them the same right we should all enjoy - to decide for themselves what they choose to believe based upon properly and rigorously tested evidence.

And my final question ... if 57% of Americans don't believe in evolution, why is Heroes such a popular show? After all, at its heart is the idea that humans are developing extraordinary powers naturally - by evolution. Discuss.

Another week, another WIP

Yes, it's lazy blogging but I've been very busy this past week and din't get time for much other than work. Proper blog coming shortly. Meanwhile, here's another WIP using the same techniques as you used on the Apache pic last post.

This is Svarog, a Balkan god, and here's his story: The world was made by a god called Rod (true) who then sat back and relaxed. He popped out a son called Svarog and left him in charge. To help him do his job better, Rod gave him four heads so he could see everything at once. Svarog then realised that he had absolutely no idea where Dad had put the Earth. ‘Somewhere under the water’ being somewhat vague, he asked a small grey duck to dive to the bottom of the ocean to look for it. The duck returned a year later saying that it could no longer hold its breath. So Svarog asked Rod to intervene. The elder god blew a mighty wind that pushed the duck deeper below the waves. Two years later, the duck returned, once again moaning about the lack of oxygen. So this time, Rod used the thunder and lightning to make a storm that pushed the duck deeper than ever.

After three years the duck returned with a branch in its mouth. Svarog rubbed the branch between his palms and called out, ‘Make warmth, Sun! Light up, Moon! Blow, Wind! We must save Mother Earth, our nurturer!’ All the elements came together in a mighty blast and the branch was blown from Svarog’s grasp. As it plopped into the ocean, Moist Mother Earth appeared at the surface, and the Moon quickly cooled her down. As his last act of creation, Svarog created a great and mighty snake, Yusha, whose job it would be to hold Moist Mother Earth above the water like a lifebelt. When the snake shifts position, the earth trembles and quakes.

So now you know! Click on the final pic for a larger version.