23-05-2025
Barry Fantoni obituary: Private Eye stalwart for half a century
So. Farewell then, Barry, as EJ Thribb might have written. Cartoonist, caricaturist, painter, broadcaster, jazz musician, actor, playwright and crime novelist, Barry Fantoni was all of those but above all he was a vital and indispensable part of the fabric of Private Eye for half a century.
His satirical cartoons wickedly mocked the idiocies of modern life; he wrote the bubble captions for some of the magazine's most memorable covers and created a disproportionate number of its long-running trademark features and characters.
It was Fantoni who, with Richard Ingrams, wrote the spoof Mills and Boon romances by Sylvie Krin, often about the love tangles of the royal family. He was also the devoted chronicler of the Neasden Football Club of the North Circular Relegation League
