'Maurice and Earl'.
Peter Plant is a Canadian cartoonist and writer of advertisements, jingles and novelty songs, active in the UK. His comic strip about the feisty feline 'Bogart' (1986-2001), a continuation of his previous creation 'Roz' (1981-1986), ran for many years in several UK newspapers. In addition, he has created comic strips and cartoons for books, magazines and newspapers, including such creations as 'Flash Filstrup' (1983-1984), 'Maurice and Earl' (2004-2006) and 'The Commuters'.
'Maggie'.
Early life and influences
Peter Plant was born into an artistic family in Toronto, Canada. His mother was a dancer, his father an actor, musician and singer. He started cartooning when he was 8 years old, illustrating stories on the classroom blackboard as the teacher read them aloud to the class. In high school, he also played in a seven-piece jazz combo called the Crazy 8, playing school proms and other local gigs around the city. He subsequently spent one year studying Architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, but quickly dropped out. Humor-wise, Plant's main influences were the Warner Brothers animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd. Among his other inspirations were the ultrafast Canadian cartoonist George Feyer, the perfectionism of American jazz musician Artie Shaw and his mentor in the advertising industry, David Ogilvy.
Advertising and musical career
By the time Peter Plant returned from Winnipeg to Toronto, David Ogilvy gave him his first job at the Ogilvy and Mather advertising agency as a copywriter for brochures, leaflets and the occasional TV commercial. During the 1970s, Plant left Toronto and headed for London, England, where he resumed his advertising copywriting career at D'Arcy MacManus and Masius. He eventually joined the Crocodile music production company as a jingle writer for commercials selling all sorts of products, which won him several rewards. In addition, Peter Plant has been a prolific writer of novelty songs which have had much BBC airplay, for instance 'Game Set and Match' by PT and the Plimsolls, a salute to the 1980 Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and 'A Letter To Kate' by Joe Bob Ritter for the British Royal Wedding in 2011.
'Bogart'.
Bogart
While getting his start in the UK advertising industry, Peter Plant used his spare time to draw cartoons about life around him. He also developed the concept for a comic strip called 'Knickers' (also known as 'Maggie and Mole'), starring two flat-sharing working girls and their cat, which he unsuccessfully tried to sell to newspapers in London. Eventually, 'Knickers' was picked up by the Scottish Daily Record, which ran it under the title 'Roz' (1980-1986), after one of the two girls. In 1986, Plant managed to transfer his comic to Today, a new daily newspaper distributed nationally across the UK. Reaching a wider audience, the strip was renamed again, this time after the wayward neighbourhood cat 'Bogart', who quickly took the center stage. After Today, the strip ran in The Daily Mail (1996-2001), as well as the Funday Times section of the Sunday Times (1999-2001), but was eventually replaced by the American import cat 'Garlfield' by Jim Davis.
'Flash Filstrup'.
Other comics
While 'Bogart' has remained his best-known creation, Peter Plant created several other comic strips for newspapers and magazines, and also for cartoon books published in Australia, UK and throughout Europe. In 1983 and 1984, he released two cartoon books of 'Flash Filstrup: the Fastest Overcoat in Town', about a dedicated "artist-exposeur", whose adventures were also translated into Dutch. Between 3 May 2004 and 1 June 2006, he created 'Maurice and Earl' (1 May 2004-1 June 2006), a newspaper strip about an over-the-hill football goalie and his crime-writer dog. Their adventures were published in the Canadian Globe and Mail, the Scottish Daily Record, Today and the UK Sunday Times. Among his other strip creations has been 'Maggie', about a ditzy girl who works in an advertising agency, and 'The Commuters', about a pair of ornithological commuters who work in the city. Even though the latter strip was requested by the editor of the London Evening Standard, it was never published. Plant's 'The Commuters' should not be confused with the comic feature of the ame name by an artist called Grizelda in Private Eye magazine.
'The Commuters'.