Warren Brown’s touching tribute to mate Bill Leak

A HEARTFELT tribute to one of our greatest artists Bill Leak, who died yesterday aged 61, written in tears by his friend and fellow cartoonist, the Saturday Telegraph’s Warren Brown.

Samuel Wade’s portrait of The Australian's cartoonist Bill Leak

• Cartoonist Bill Leak dies aged 61
• Tim Blair’s tribute to Bill Leak

Icannot tell you how difficult this is to write. I don’t really have my head together after receiving that phone call from Jack Hoysted — a mutual mate of Bill Leak’s and mine. I was amazed at just how instantaneous the grief swelled up inside me to erupt in uncontrollable sobbing.

While driving along a country road on Sunday, my 10-year-old son read out a text message just received from a frustrated Bill Leak who’d been trying to contact me about his upcoming book launch — “where are you, you useless bastard?”

I’d long since stop worrying about my son reading out messages from Bill after, “Dad, what does this spell — F …” You get the picture.

Leak at the 2016 News Awards in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson

Bill with his portratit of Sir Les Patterson. Pic Alan Pryke

Ordinarily these are the kind of missives which would result in someone headbutted in a Woolloomooloo pub, but this was the way Bill and I would affectionately interact with each other — a form of high abuse cranked up to 11.

That Bill and I became mates was a most unlikely consequence, as we had collided in the cartooning world some 30 years ago from diametrically opposed art backgrounds: Bill arrived from the fine art end having studied in Europe to become one of Australia’s most revered portrait painters, and I had slogged my way up through newspapers beginning as a copy boy, scooping up hot Daily Mirrors from the press beneath News Corp’s Holt St building.

Bill and Les Patterson at the launch of Leak's book Trigger Warning on Tuesday

It was perhaps this difference that made our unorthodox friendship work; in all the years we knew each other we each marvelled at the dissimilarity in how our cartoons were created.

For Bill, the editorial cartoon was a somewhat tortured process, he would worry and labour over the cartoon, sometimes from 4am through to his deadline that evening.

But, for me, having worked during the heady days of Sydney tabloid rivalry during the 1980s, speed, and recovering a situation when a story crashed, was everything.

Our friendship was a crazy one. It had its highs and lows but it was never dull.

There were things we’d talk about over a beer that only cartoonists could possibly understand. I remember Bill remarking just after the introduction of the GST, John Howard’s eyebrows were now drawn 10 per cent bigger, and of how, as cartoonists, our job was to be equally unfair to everyone.

And at times, Bill and I were more than equally unfair to each other — the cartoonist on The Australian and the cartoonist on The Daily Telegraph embarked on a practical joke war that lasted more than 10 years.

This conflict erupted innocently enough when during a long lunch I returned from the men’s room to find our table-load of revellers uncharacteristically quiet.

Part of Bill’s response to accusations of racism

My radar told me something no doubt was up, when I had swallowed a mouthful of what I thought was chilled white wine only to discover — to my horror — the wine was hot, at least at body temperature anyway. Put it this way, he wasn’t called Leak for nothing. The table, of course, thought this was hilarious. Bill, bright red, looked nervously around, “who, me?”

The gloves were off and the range of tit-for-tat practical jokes ranged from the most puerile to the sort of evil genius only Vladimir Putin could aspire to.

Bill, the indefatigable raconteur, was an easy target as he would always hold court at lunch. I finessed a sleight-of-hand technique that could remove every cigarette from his packet and have it packed with mashed potato or old cigarette butts or anything that would fit.

The pay-off when he’d offer someone a cigarette was always a hoot — Bill furious with himself he’d fallen for the trick for the 70th time.

One night in Bill’s Redfern apartment he was regaling me with a story from another room while I surreptitiously raided his fridge, secreting a dozen eggs through his house.

After I left, he discovered one in the washing machine, one in the dryer — even waking up in the middle of the night to find the one I’d hidden in his bed had somehow nestled up to his buttocks. “I thought I’d laid it,” Bill recalled.

Leak’s own cartoons brought him into conflict with 18C

By morning he had only located 11 of the 12 when a taxi pulled up honking the horn to take him to the airport. He hurriedly slid on his boot only to find the last egg. “It was in my boot all the way to Melbourne and was an omelet by the time I got there.”

The jokes would operate in a passive way too — Bill, like all cartoonists, dreaded the inevitable approach from someone to “knock up a quick caricature”, to the point where the recorded message on his answering machine would inform the inquirer: “Hello this is Bill Leak. If you are requesting a caricature drawn of someone, please ring Warren Brown at The Daily Telegraph. He’d love to do it. Otherwise, leave a message.”

But there was much more to Bill than editorial cartoons and practical jokes.

Nick Cater in his book The Lucky Culture defined Bill as a “closet intellectual”, which described him to a tee.

I was always flabbergasted by Bill’s ability to strike up a conversation with a down-and-out bloke propping up a bar or with a prime minister.

Bill was one of the most genuine, generous and loving people I know

And this was so much a part of what made Bill, Bill. He was a great thinker and when put on the spot could flip from knockout larrikin to one of the nation’s leading intelligentsia — never more apparent than when the idiocy of the 18C fiasco fell into his lap.

Certainly Bill’s cartoon was divisive but the torch-carrying hunting party sent out to string him up was nothing short of disgraceful. But mercifully, it didn’t take long for Australia to figure out who the smartest person in the room was.

For those of us who knew Bill, it seemed more than a surprise when he eventually morphed from a rusted-on leftie ratbag to a champion of the right but, as always, Bill was ahead of the game, feeling the temperature of public sentiment.

He would fight for those whom he had perceived had lost their voice, in this case a silent majority who’d become disenfranchised due to a steamroller of bonkers political correctness in a world gone mad.

Bill’s take on Trump

But aside from his reputation as a fighter, Bill was one of the most genuine, generous and loving people I know — he’d be there for you no matter what.

He came close to death in 2008 when he fell from a balcony resulting in extensive brain surgery. He once commented to me during his slow recovery: “You know a man’s got to realise he’ll have to live with a headache for the rest of his life.”

Yet a photo of Bill at his book launch last Wednesday night shows him looking better and cheekier than ever.

My heart goes out to the entire Leak family. He was one of the best dads I know — his boys Johannes and Jasper are testament to that — and his marriage to Goong in recent years has seen him more contented than I’ve ever thought possible.

I couldn’t make it to his book launch last Wednesday, but that evening I sent him a long text telling him to break a leg and the usual shenanigans. He rang me from the launch where I could hear he was having a marvellous time and then sent me a message I’ll never, ever delete.

“Shit I wish you were there mate. Talk about a top night.”

It was always a top night when you were there, Bill.