Jack Kirkbride (31 March 1923 – 1 October 2006) was an English

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

, and father to Anne Kirkbride, the actress who played Deirdre Barlow in the ITV soap opera ''

Coronation Street ''Coronation Street'' (colloquially referred to as ''Corrie'') is a British television soap opera created by ITV Granada, Granada Television and shown on ITV (TV network), ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres on a cobbled, terraced ...

'' from 1972 to 2014. Kirkbride left school at the age of fourteen to become an apprentice painter and decorator but was called up for the Army at age eighteen, when he began to draw cartoons. He served from 1942 as a transport driver with the Royal Army Service Corps. He fought in the Normandy Campaign in 1944 and was demobbed in 1946. He sold his first cartoon to a national paper in 1953 (a Mothers' Day gag for the '' Sunday Dispatch'') and later sold to most national papers and magazines, including '' Punch'' and '' The Oldie''. His work also appeared in the German press under the name of ''Jacki''. He became the '' Oldham Evening Chronicles regular cartoonist in 1958 and went full-time in the 1970s. He was a founder member of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain and his work was published across

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. Kirkbride won first prize at the Waddington's International Cartoon Festival (Margate 1989). His hobbies included listening to classical music, renovating his 18th century farmhouse on the edge of Saddleworth Moor and playing the pianola. He died of an aneurysm at his home in Oldham, at the age of 83.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirkbride, Jack 1923 births 2006 deaths British Army personnel of World War II English cartoonists People from Oldham Deaths from aneurysm Royal Army Service Corps soldiers Military personnel from the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham