It’s been a few years since Rose Impey wrote the Animal Crackers book and I first illustrated them in black and white. Since then I’ve redrawn and coloured them in and now they are on a new set of covers.

So yesterday Rose and I did a double act in front of 275 children at the Cheltenham Festival talking about Animal Crackers and our more recent solo publications. I had a Visualiser to play with. This was a camera on a rostrum. As I drew the audience could follow on the big screen. I normally use a flip chart which allows me to shade in with pencil. This was a bit like a live youtube drawing school session.

We had a great fun and it was good to catch up.

The cheltenham Festival is a great mishmash of things. I was thrilled to see June Whitfield in the green room, but was to embarrassed to say hello. You never know if famous people want to be left alone or not. I’m sure there is some sort of protocol, but I don’t know the rules. Does anyone know or does one just instinctively know these things?