'As dangerous as possible — the best way to be’: Political satirist Ralph Steadman on cartoons and working with Hunter S. Thompson

We might be mere mortals, but mischief is eternal. And so it is that when I ask Ralph Steadman, aged 90, how he’s keeping busy these days, he laments, without missing a beat, that he ‘can only run five acres a day’ and his face spreads into a devilish smile.

Ralph has made a life out of mischief. A career in cartoons began with training in technical drawing with the Royal Air Force, and a correspondence course at the Percy Bradshaw Press Art School. His first cartoon was published in the Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1956, followed by commissions for Private Eye and Punch.

The inflection point, however, occurred in Louisville in 1970. It was Ralph’s first visit to the USA, and he was to make drawings for a journalist by the name of Hunter S. Thompson. ‘Back at the motel we talked for a while about America, the South, England, just relaxing a bit before dinner,’ Thompson wrote of their first encounter. ‘There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces.'

That vicious, drunken nightmare became history in the form of an article, titled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, which was the birth of ‘Gonzo’ journalism, for which Ralph is so fondly remembered. Well maybe not fondly by those he drew. ‘I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it,’ Thompson wrote. ‘Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who’d seen or even heard about his work.’

‘Foul renderings’ they may be, but Ralph is among the most celebrated illustrators that this island has ever produced. They are also the subject of a new selling exhibition curated by Tin Man Art and Ralph’s daughter Sadie Williams at 31, George Street, London, which opens tomorrow. It will feature 27 drawings spanning a 70-year career and is the first exhibition of this type in 30 years.

When I ask Ralph what he’d like people to take away from his drawings, his answer is simple: ‘That I noticed something, and recorded it in a certain way.’ He emphasises that the job of a cartoonist is to hold people to account for their actions. ‘It’s a pictorial way of showing up naughty people, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘It’s nice to be a critic. Although I could be a bit self-righteous. Once I was being a bit sour about people you know.’

‘Well only if they deserved it,’ Sadie adds. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever criticised or lambasted anybody who wasn’t behaving in a disreputable way. I don’t think you ever drew Mother Teresa. She was a bit too good for you.’

Choosing 27 images from a collection of thousands to explain an entire career was no easy feat. ‘We went through various drawers and pulled out ones that we thought had a sort of power,’ Sadie says. ‘We also wanted to span the collection a bit. It has some very early works, the pre-Gonzo stuff. And then post 1970, and that’s when you can see his work becomes bigger and a bit less constrained, and the splats come in, the lack of fear of making a mess.’

Making a mess became a signature style of Ralph’s work; ugly splats and ghoulish caricatures of ugly places and ghoulish people. His work would appear in The Times (until then editor William Rees-Mogg had him sacked), the New Statesman, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Observer. As well as his withering portraits of politicians, police and whatever else, he illustrated everything from album artwork to Animal Farm, and everything in between. On Sundays in the summer, when I play for a cricket team called Not The MCC, his work takes pride of place as the club badge.

But perhaps his best known drawings draw on that aforementioned ‘fear and loathing’ that his pen could produce. In 1971, Thompson’s iconic novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was brought to life by Ralph, and the pair collaborated further with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 and The Curse of Lono. ‘I went with [Ralph] and mum to Hawaii when dad and Hunter were asked to cover the marathon for Running magazine,’ Sadie remembers. ‘I was about seven or eight, and we had six weeks out there with Hunter, and, we witnessed his, should we just say, eccentricities. He nearly trod on my head at one point, trying to sneak the TV out of the lounge.’

‘I recently went to Gonzo Fest and I did a talk, and I used some excerpts from my mother’s diaries, and usually the excerpts end in Hunter pulling some sort of dynamite out of a bag and throwing it willy-nilly in some direction.’ ‘I’m actually quite impressed he didn’t kill you, to be honest,’ Ralph interjects.

When I ask if adventures with Thompson ever went too far, the answer is an unequivocal no. ‘When we were doing whatever we were doing, I think it was important that we did it to the best of our abilities, being as dangerous as possible. The best way to be.’

For a man who has seen and experienced so much, it felt foolish to ask if there’s anything left for him to be getting on with. ‘Climb Everest,’ was the instant response. ‘I’m off to Everest next week.’ I hope he’s joking. Not because a 90-year-old man shouldn’t be on top of the world. But because if Ralph is on top of the world, then he can see all of us, and God knows what he would draw.

'Ralph Steadman: Out of Line (Original Works 1961–2016)' runs from October 2–11 at 31 George Street, London.