One day, a multimillion selling cartoonist, the next, in hospital fighting for his life. Editor Melissa Holmes caught up with Rupert Fawcett, creator of Fred and Off the Leash, to chat about life after a stroke
As a child, Rupert Fawcett would draw for hours. “I used to disappear into my own private world and draw cartoon characters,” he explains. “I was always good at drawing, and I enjoyed it.” But a regular route into an artistic career didn’t suit Rupert, who tried three different art schools, none of which ‘felt right’.
The next stop was, of course, rock and roll. “I formed a band with my brother… We got nowhere fast,” Rupert chuckles. Dreaming of the big time as a rock star, working his way through succession of menial jobs, and going “off the rails” due to drinking too much… In his early twenties, Rupert’s artistic dreams seemed a million miles away.
It wasn’t until he went through a 12- step recovery program to sobriety and became a counsellor himself that he returned to his first love: drawing. “I got a job as a trainee in a clinic in Chelsea,” he recalls. “When I was working there, in our tea breaks and at lunchtime, I had a little book in my pocket and I used to take it out and doodle.” Rupert found this helped him to relax and switch off from his stressful role.
“I drew this little bald man with a cat and decided to call him Fred,” remembers Rupert. “The next day I thought I could do some more drawings of Fred and maybe put in little captions.”
SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES
That was the beginning of everything for Rupert. After photocopying his work and offering it to different publications, he received some 80 “very positive” knockbacks. Finally, the cartoon was picked up by a magazine called Midweek. It ran for two years. Rupert got himself an agent, soon bagged a book deal, and a greetings card company who’d previously turned him down decided to publish his work. “Once the cards went into the shops in around 1990, they started selling like hotcakes,” says Rupert. “Since then, I’ve been a professional cartoonist full-time.”
As well as creating Fred, Rupert devised the popular series Off the Leash and On the Prowl, leading to sales of ten million greetings cards and several hundred thousand books. With more than one million followers across his social media platforms and having had work published in numerous newspapers, Rupert is every inch the accomplished creative cartoonist.
But his life changed in an instant in January 2024. A few weeks after experiencing what doctors described as “the smallest bleed on the brain they’d ever seen,” Rupert collapsed at home. Experiencing a much larger stroke this time, he ended up in hospital for five months. “I was constantly visited by my family and friends, so I got lots of support and lots of love,” he recalls. “But being in hospital for a long period of time is not fun. I was in the right place though – it was where I needed to be to get well.” The Fawcett family is eternally grateful to the NHS for the incredible care Rupert received at Charing Cross and Queen Mary’s Hospitals.
ON MY FEET
He still has physiotherapy at home, which is being privately funded by generous donations from friends, fans and family (justgiving.com/ crowdfunding/fawcett-family). “Stroke affects the whole family, so having that support has been invaluable,” says Rupert.
Now 67, Rupert was very fit and healthy prior to his stroke – cycling his daughter to school everyday, running and doing yoga a few times a week. He had to learn to walk again, and feels mobility is his biggest hurdle. He misses how things used to be.
“I feel depressed quite a lot of the time. Life has changed: I can’t drive, my walking is restricted, and it’s quite easy for me to feel overwhelmed and get in a muddle with appointments and things.” Rupert has the support of his wife and children with both practical and emotional aspects.
“The good thing is,” smiles Rupert, “I can still work. My drawing hand is not affected. Which is very lucky.” He didn’t realise how much he used both hands for work – steadying and moving paper, using a ruler, sharpening pencils – until he lost the use of his left arm. He’s devised workarounds so he can continue drawing, and was even signing prints and sketching while in hospital.
DAY BY DAY
Rupert is taking things day by day, although in the future he’d like to come up with a new project. “I enjoy the work that I do. But it would be nice to come up with an idea that came from the stroke. Or find a way of helping people, especially people who’ve had strokes,” Rupert ponders. To those people, he says: “Don’t isolate yourself, accept help, and believe you can get better.”
Emotionally, returning to drawing has been a help. “It gives me purpose,” he reveals. “Because I feel so impaired after the stroke. Drawing is the one thing that I can do which makes me feel good. I’m trying to accept my life has changed,” Rupert reflects.
“I’m in a different chapter – I don’t like it, but it is what it is, so I’ve got to get on with it and make the best of it.”