Rex Audley, 1927-2005

Rex sadly passed away in March 2005. Many of our members may not have met Rex in person, but we have all enjoyed Rex's cartoons which have brightened up Potters Monthly since he joined our club in early 1993. SCSSC formally recognised Rex's contribution to our club by a presentation at our 35th anniversary dinner in April 2003 (left, made by Sotke City Director Phil Rawlins).

Unfortunately Rex suffered a stroke a few years ago and never quite made a full recovery, although he continued to contribute to PM right up until his death.

SCSSC were represented at Rex's funeral by Monica Hartland, Norman Croucher and longtime friend Roger Martin who presented a wonderful Eulogy, which is reproduced below.

Rex will be sadly missed, but fondly remembered. I have illustrated this tribute with some of Rex's cartoons from Potter Monthly, including his very first contribution and some of my personal favourites (I'm sure that you will all have your own favourites!).

Rex Audley - by Roger Martin

Those of us who are born in the Potteries never fully leave there. It is totally geographically isolated and completely engulfed by wonderful countryside. This breeds a dependency on friends and family, and an introspection which builds a real sense of community. The people are largely very friendly and wonderfully warm. It’s the sort of place that bestows two gifts; roots and wings. Or put another way, the love of home, but, commensurately, the ability to move away confident of one’s emotional and spiritual hinterland. Especially if you can return to watch your favourite football team – Stoke City.

Understand the nature of the place and you begin to understand the facets of the man. Rex was both adventurous and rooted.

	Rex's first cartoon for Potters Monthly (Feb 1993)

Home

Rex was born in Cobridge in 1927 half way between Burslem (where I was born) and Hanley (where more importantly, Stanley Matthews was born). He lived and grew up at Ivy House in Stockton Brook with brother Bernard, and sister Claudia.

It was here that his early friendships blossomed, and set a pattern for later years with the strength, depth and longevity of the bonds he made. Clive Mould, Joe Emery, the late Geoff Adams and Rex became a band of Musketeers; one of those almost Masonic gangs that boys seem to be able to create. For most of their formative years they were inseparable, running or cycling off to have adventures at the drop of a hat. Rex would draw cartoons of their exploits, especially a familiar sight during the war-years, ‘The Pub with No Beer.’ They called themselves ‘The Original Four’, and such was Rex’s commitment to the team, he had ties made for them all. Maroon with a gold circle crossed with four stripes; one stripe for each member. Clive Mould still has his.

Clive tells me he has also kept the letters Rex sent when he was on National Service in India, full of the humour we all came to know and love, with little cartoons on the envelope of the postman pushing the letters uphill to Stockton Brook. Letters from the man Clive calls his “…loyal and super friend.”

School

The friends at home were complimented by the friends at school and in 1938, Rex went off to Wolstanton County Grammar School where Arnold Bennett had been.

His great friend there was Brian Pointon, who soon discovered that in addition to his linguistic skills, Rex possessed a great gift as an artist as well as a sharp and impish wit. He frequently drew blackboard cartoons of members of staff that were accurate and affectionate, and were left on the board for the masters to see. Rumour has it that rather than getting young Audley into trouble, members of staff were indignant if they weren’t treated to a caricature of themselves at least once a term.

.... and his first front cover (April 1993)

Oxford

Clearly you can’t have enough of a good thing, and Brian went up together with Rex, his “…special friend,” to Corpus Christi College at Oxford

Wolstanton had been a Rugby playing school, so it was a great delight to Rex that he could play soccer at university. Rex was an excellent goalkeeper and became a stalwart of the Corpus Christi team. He played regularly for The Centaurs (the Oxford Second XI) and probably only lost out on the opportunity to win a blue because he had the misfortune to be at university at the same time as his good friend Scotty Cheshire, another excellent goalkeeper.

It was here at Oxford that another life-long bunch of Musketeers grew up around football and the college scene, and Brian Pointon, Derek Costain, Peter Newey, Gordon Douglas, Jon van Praagh, Tony Henning and Michael Sheepshanks have remained firm friends since those halcyon days; and when Scotty Cheshire and Ernie Tweddle were re-discovered many years later, they were naturally drawn back into the fold.

Unsurprisingly, Rex became a cartoonist and later Arts’ Editor for the Oxford University magazine ‘The Isis’, featuring regularly in each edition. With his self-confessed bridgeless nose, Derek Costain became the unwitting model for Rex’s ‘funny character’, and would often open the magazine to find his doppel-ganger in yet another uncomfortable position.

Two particular cartoons that both he and Brian remember concern college parties.

The first related to their own pecuniary situation when their particular crowd – presumably from a modest income group – treated cheap Cyprus Sherry as their champagne. The cartoon showed the penniless student arriving at a party and handing his glamorous hostess a bottle of the sherry. The caption read, “I brought this because I knew everyone else would bring brandy’.

The second, from a different edition, showed our hero, much the worse for wear, saying goodbye to his hostess, girlfriend slung in a fireman’s lift over his shoulder, saying, “Jennifer thinks it’s time we went.”

France

I’m assured they did some studying, and as language undergraduates, one university summer holiday Rex and Derek attended a short French course in the South of France. The students were billeted in a school attached to the University of Marseille, and had the use of the glorious sandy beach alongside The Carlton Hotel in Cannes where they would sneak over the barrier and watch Maurice Chevalier entertaining the guests.

Rex was already in love with the language, and took no time at all to fall in love with the country. So it was no surprise when on a later return visit that he also fell in love with one of its inhabitants, Claudie Fetcherin. I suspect Rex and Claudie’s father hit it off quite well as he was a naval man who, like Rex, told a good story. He was sufficiently indiscreet to reveal that he had first hand knowledge that the Duke of Windsor had been pulled out of the harbour on more than one occasion after falling into the water from his yacht. You must judge for yourself whether alcohol was involved.

Work

Work was suddenly about to interrupt this seemingly blissful existence, and shortly after graduating in 1951 Rex accepted a job as a cartoonist on the Daily Mail. The Sunday Telegraph followed in 1960, and so began the appointment which was to lead to his career as a freelance writer and cartoonist in advertising and journalism that sustained him until his retirement.

One of his more permanent engagements was working for David Bernstein at his groundbreaking ‘Creative Business’. This was described as the first creative ‘hot-shop’ in the advertising industry. It was where my wife, Sarah, was working as a producer, and to her horror, she discovered in Rex another boring old git who droned on about Stoke City, so she thought she ought to introduce us. We got on instantly. We had been born a mile apart, went to the same school, both revered Stanley Matthews, and had both been goalkeepers in our football playing days.

I was not the only friend that Rex made during that time, and along with David Bernstein - Sarah, Peter Townsend, Paul Walton, John Hubbard, Tim Fitz, Tim John, and Mike and Helen Bell will all morn the passing of an exceptional creative talent and much loved man.

Family

It was during this period of stable work that Rex and Claudie married and had their family, Alex and Marie-Lise.

They became ageless parents; full of life and energy, and Alex and Marie-Lise confirm that which we all suspected; it was only when Rex had his stroke that they realised that their parents were actually no longer ‘40something’, but had somehow managed to drift into their 70’s unnoticed. In their eyes they had never changed, never got more serious, never got more sensible. That’s a quote from Marie-Lise. What a wonderful testament.

Car journeys through France and up to Stockton Brook were games. Bed times were fun times; the mornings were ‘four-in-a-bed’ quizzes, with Alex and Marie-Lise desperately trying to remember how many funnels the Queen Mary had; …and did Rex read them bed-time stories? No. He’d frighten the life out of them by telling them gruesome details of the films he used to watch at the Milton Bug-Hut, and leave them to go to sleep with the tale of ‘The Beast with Five Fingers’ fresh in their minds. They’d be taken into care these days.

Rex always created happiness for them; always looked for the original take, taught them to think for themselves, and encouraged them not to be superficial. He was never cynical, and would always be there to address and answer a question. He made the effort, and gave the girls the impression that he knew everything. Which wasn’t far from the truth.

SCSSC

After his retirement, I introduced him to the Stoke City Southern Supporters Club. A club of 500+ Stoke City nutcases who had either become Stoke fans because of their love for players like Stanley Matthews, Gordon Banks and Alan Hudson all of whom played their best football in Stoke’s colours, or because they were exiled Stokies; ex-pats, or ex-Pots as I like to call them. The club’s magazine, POTTERS MONTHLY, lovingly edited by Norman Croucher, has benefited enormously over the years from a legion of cartoons all about our beloved football club which have flowed from Rex’s seemingly inexhaustible pencil. His contribution has been immeasurable; but there is a downside. Because of a particularly incisive cartoon in a recent issue highlighting our inability to score goals, there will be a whole generation of Stoke City fans who think we have changed the name of the club to Rex’s suggestion of ‘Stoke City Nil’. We might never forgive him if it weren’t painfully true.

Summary

So, let me try to summarise the life of our friend Rex........

Linguist; cartoonist; memory man; Stoke City fan; defender and champion of the English language; and the apostrophe’s greatest supporter. (He did get cross.)

A lovely, easy going person with a delicious sense of humour.

A man who made deep friendships rather than superficial acquaintances.

A man who once celebrated the end of term exams by punting up the river in the early hours with a portable gramophone blaring out jazz.

Conversely - A quiet and modest man who never advertised himself loudly or claimed stardom.

A man who would bide his time in a discussion before making his usual telling, and often witty contribution.

The man who won a bottle of champagne at a Gaudi (an Oxford re-union) for being the guest nominated by his colleagues as the person most people wanted to sit next to.

But most importantly, the man who had the good sense to marry the extraordinary Claudie, his wonderful, loving, life-long partner. Those of you who know her will know that Claudie would not thank me for embarrassing her. So let me say only this. Since Rex’s stroke she discovered from somewhere a physical strength which matched her love. Over the past two and a half years we have all greatly admired her courage, commitment, caring and devotion. She could not have done more.

Roger Martin

Published to SCSSC website by Neil Chadwick, 10 April 2005

Cartoons not to be reproduced without permission