Cartoonist career awaits

Stewart Francis wants to quit stand-up to become a cartoonist.

The Canadian comic says live comedy has always been a second career choice behind drawing; and hopes that his first book – a collection of jokes and illustrations titled Pun Direction – will give him enough impetus to quit the stage.

He is also trying to get a 'cartoony' sitcom made. If either are successful, he admits, ‘that would be the last you'd see of Stewart Francis in the capacity of live stand-up comedy'.

'Plan A was always to be a syndicated cartoonist but after getting rejection letters I shifted to Plan B,' he reveals. 'But stand-up – I've been there and done it now. I'm grateful for everything it's given me, including the chance to be what I always wanted to be – a cartoonist. It'll be a step back financially but personality-wise and creatively, a step forward as far as I'm concerned.'

Francis, who is currently touring the UK and Ireland with fellow Canadians Glenn Wool and Craig Campbell as The Lumberjacks, has become a popular live draw on the back of his appearances on TV shows such as Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow and Mock The Week. He won a public vote for the funniest joke of the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe with the gag: 'You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.'

Apart from a few illustrations on his old website, Francis has never published his cartoons before. 'They've been stored away but are some of my proudest comedic accomplishments' he says.

He was wary of being seen as a 'cash-grabber' for combining them with jokes that he'd already performed live and on his two DVDs for the book.

'But as my literary agent told me, and others have said since, people who buy books are different to those who buy DVDs and go to live shows. It's a different market.'

Pun Direction, billed as a collection of '500 jokes, 30 cartoons and one recipe', will be published in the autumn by Headline, whose back catalogue includes autobiographies by Jo Brand and Richard Wilson, as well as novels by Jenny Eclair and Father Ted actor Pauline McLynn.

Francis played the clueless boss of a news station in the Canadian fish-out-of-water sitcom An American in Canada between 2002 and 2004 and is currently pitching a sitcom pilot script to television commissioners with a 'very excited' production company.

It would star himself as a UK-based Canadian – 'I had to leave Canada because of an “incident”’ – and Francis says the show will embrace a cartoon-like disregard for cause and effect.

'There are no rules in Family Guy or The Simpsons beyond a basic structure but it can go off in surreal directions; it doesn't have to make strict sense' he explains.

'I will have a family off and on. Just like my jokes – sometimes I have a wife and kids, sometimes I'm single and looking to mingle. I could be wonderfully gay in one episode. Like cartoons, when you get hit over the head, there's a big lump, stars and birds, then in the next scene Fred Flintstone's head is perfectly fine.'

He cites US medical sitcom Scrubs as another inspiration for his 'gag-heavy' script, with its frequent use of visual cutaways for punchlines.

'In a perfect world,' he reflects, 'the show gets picked up and the book generates interest towards my cartoons. That would make me a very happy chap, just focusing on these two things.’

- by Jay Richardson