Ed McLachlan obituary

Cartoonist whose work appeared in Punch, Private Eye, the Spectator and the Oldie in a 60-year career

The cartoons of Ed McLachlan, who has died aged 84, were at once as deliciously dark and twisted as Charles Addams, as imaginative as William Heath Robinson, as surreal as John Glashan and as quintessentially British as the Punch cartoonist Pont.

Ed’s immediately recognisable pen line, and cast of buck-toothed, big-nosed protagonists, entertained, shocked and outraged from the pages of Punch, Private Eye, the Oldie and Spectator, among many others. Often set in traditional gag cartoon settings, from date nights and office boardrooms to middle-class front rooms and Stannah stairlifts, his cartoons took the mundane and delivered the hilariously absurd.