For The Australian and The Weekend Australian‘s cartoonist Bill Leak, the idea for today’s cartoon came right on schedule — at 10.30am yesterday, just before the paper’s morning news conference.

“The doctors have warned me that I will discover I can’t do things I have always taken for granted,” Leak said. “I live in quiet expectation of finding out what those things are. It is awful. It is a fear something is going to be taken away.”

Leak still looks at ease as he sketches rapidly. “The drawing is pure pleasure,” he said. “But cartoons are more than just about drawing, they are visual concepts.

A CARTOONIST’S working day is divided into two halves — pre-idea and post-idea. Once the concept comes to mind, the rest is comparatively easy.

For The Australian and The Weekend Australian‘s cartoonist Bill Leak, the idea for today’s cartoon came right on schedule — at 10.30am yesterday, just before the paper’s morning news conference.

What makes today’s cartoon remarkable is that 11 weeks ago Leak was lying in a coma in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital. He had landed on his head after falling from a balcony while feeding parrots during a party at the NSW central coast property of adman JohnSingleton.

His brain was swollen and there were concerns for his life. Even if he survived the two operations he underwent to remove a blood clot, no one knew whether Leak would ever be able to draw again.

“Having the idea was such a relief, a moment of pure joy,” he said yesterday.

After the idea came to him he followed what has become normal practice — bouncing it off someone he trusts. In this case it was a popular blogger for The Australian, Jack The Insider.

Jack liked the idea: a brain-damaged cartoonist, in a Rip Van Winkle moment, complaining that the world no longer made sense. Thecricket team regarded as the world’s best only three months ago was in disarray, while, counter-intuitively, the Government was urging people to prepare for tough economic times by spending as much as they could.

Leak said that among the most disturbing aspects of his brain injury were the hallucinations that left him with vivid recollections of things that never happened.

In hospital he would complain bitterly about the raucous conduct of the old lady in the bed next to him, yet she was unconscious thewhole time.

When he regained consciousness after four days, he refused to believe he had been in an accident. For a start, he could distinctly remember submitting his regular cartoons.

When, after several weeks, he finally got home from hospital the first thing he did was check his computer — and sure enough the last cartoon to be published was on October 18, the day of his fall. With Wall Street crashing, it showed Marx and Lenin celebrating theend of capitalism while reading The Age.

“The doctors have warned me that I will discover I can’t do things I have always taken for granted,” Leak said. “I live in quiet expectation of finding out what those things are. It is awful. It is a fear something is going to be taken away.”

Leak still looks at ease as he sketches rapidly. “The drawing is pure pleasure,” he said. “But cartoons are more than just about drawing, they are visual concepts.

“Coming up with the idea is the most difficult part. I’ve been afraid of the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate long enough and hard enough. I was so happy when the idea came.”

Leak’s view — Page 14

For an extended interview

with Bill Leak go to www.theaustralian.com.au

Credit: John Stapleton