Two-panel Scherzo cartoon from the 'Natural Break' section in TV Times magazine (24 March 1957).
Scherzo was a British gag cartoonist, mostly active for TV Times and other magazines during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Unknown identity
Little is known about the person behind the pen name Scherzo. The only information comes from a January 1959 article that TV Times ran about its cartoonists. In this profile, the self-taught artist Scherzo was described as "shy, in his thirties and from northern England". Starting with cartooning shortly after World War II, he chose "Scherzo" as his pseudonym, the German word for "joke". One the backside of artwork attributed to him, the Charles Gilbert Artist Agency on Fleet Street was mentioned, so he was probably working through them.
Cartoon by Scherzo.
Cartoons
In the post-war decades, Scherzo's single-panel gag cartoons - on occasion he used two or three sequential images - appeared in magazines like TV Times, Punch and Meccano. His syndicate was the Charles E. Gilbert Artists' Agency, based at 72/78 Fleet Street in London. In TV Times, Scherzo was one of many cartoonists whose work was collected in the 'Natural Break' section. Among the other contributors were Clew (Clifford Lewis), Larry (Terence Parkes), the Canadian-born Zeke (Arthur Penhale) and the magazine's art editor Len Ward. Scherzo's cartoons also appeared in the Daily Sketch newspaper and on the 'The Brighter Side' page in the Sunday Mirror.
Self-portrait (January 1959).