Michael Heath

I see that the papers have finally given a name — ‘chavs’ — to the new working class. They are the type of people I have been drawing for years: trailer trash covered in bling bling, wearing Burberry baseball hats, white tracksuit bottoms and white trainers. They couldn’t be more different from the docile ‘pint-of-mild-please’ working class of the 1930s. I remember Mass Observation and the films by Humphrey Jennings, which collated their behaviour as if they were animals in a wildlife documentary. Try doing that now: ‘Wot you looking at?’ ‘Er ...nothing. I was just observing you drinking a large Jack Daniel’s and Coke so as to understand the sociological dynamic of the prole ...Ow! For God’s sake, don’t hit me!

Did you have a nice holiday? I know I did. Did you find yourself in a hotel bedroom in Naples looking after four children between the ages of two and six? Two girls and two boys, while everyone else went sightseeing. (‘Look! There’s a boy stealing that lady’s Prada handbag!’) The two girls have me as a father, the other two belonged to friends. They all wanted to watch something on television. After about three hours, they all agreed that they wanted to watch an animation they knew by heart called Ice Age. I fell asleep, only to be woken by four children screaming and pointing at the television set. Out of the screen came noises that sounded like someone being garrotted. In fact, it was two lesbians chewing away at each other and making orgasmic groans in Italian.

This is the first Christmas in recent years that I haven't spent in traction or immobilised by glandular fever. You may imagine that I spend my days drawing and whistling in a carefree manner, but there are tears behind the laughter. Two Christmases ago I was invited to the Erotic Review party in a club in London's Soho. I had worked for the magazine doing dodgy drawings at fifty quid a pop, so they owed me a drink. Besides, I was eager to meet the Erotic staff who, I felt sure, writhed around all day on their laptops sans knickers and headaches. I found the club, walked in and was unable to see anything except a bar, far off in the distance, full of decadent, half-naked women and helpless men being used as sex objects.