'People always think that, working on The Telegraph, I'll be told that things aren't right wing enough. But in 37 years, I've never, ever been told that’: The Telegraph’s cartoonist Matt on his consuming passions

The first thing Matt Pritchett does when I meet him is apologise. ‘Sorry to meet so late, I’m a little ball of anxiety until I send my cartoon in,’ he says as he picks me up from reception at The Telegraph’s impressive offices in London Victoria. It is 6pm on a Monday, and he has just submitted his day's work. Matt has been the newspaper’s in-house cartoonist since 1988. He is better known simply as ‘MATT’ — the sign off he chose at the start of his career. Beloved for his daily jokes accompanied by characterful drawings, it is clear, as he walks me through the mostly empty newsroom, that he’s pretty much a part of the furniture.

As he should be. Matt has an MBE for services to journalism and has won the British Press Awards’ ‘Cartoonist of the Year’ numerous times. Press Gazette also inducted him into their Hall of Fame as one of the most influential journalists of the past four decades in 2005. His new book The Best of Matt 2025 is out now and will be celebrated by an exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London from November 10-15.

His office is scattered with pens, pencils and sketchpads and the walls are plastered with newspaper cutouts — all cartoons, none of them his. ‘These are by New Yorker or other magazine cartoonists. I cut out my favourites, just to remind me what a funny cartoon looks like,’ Matt explains. He sits with one booted foot resting on his desk, in worn blue jeans, a navy jumper and a blue shirt. Wide-framed tortoiseshell glasses rest on the bridge of his nose and a smile is never far from his lips. It wouldn’t surprise me if Matt had been born in this office, and raised on a diet of newspaper clippings and crossword clues, he looks so at home.

A Londoner through and through, Matt grew up in Borough and creativity, it seems, runs in his family. His grandfather was the short story writer V. S. Pritchett and his father is the Telegraph columnist Oliver Pritchett. ‘He’s my hero,’ Matt says. His sister, Georgia Pritchett, is a screenwriter, best known for her work on Succession and his eldest daughter, Edith Pritchett, is a cartoonist for The Guardian. ‘We talk about cartoons all week,’ he says, ‘and her stuff is so different from mine, and so brilliant. I’m just very proud.’ What did he feel when she got the job? ‘My first thought was she saw my life and just thought, “This looks like money for old rope”.’ He has three other children: two girls and a boy. ‘It’s my wife’s fault, she’s from an enormous family and all of her siblings had children. They’re sort of like rabbits, or something.’ Another daughter is a jewelry designer who lives in Brussels, he also has a son who works in IT in Yorkshire and his youngest has just finished a degree in Edinburgh.

As a little boy his career ambition was not to be a cartoonist, but a bus driver. ‘I would only answer my parents if they address me as ‘“bus driver”. So if they said “Matthew” at supper obviously it was a no-go until they addressed me as “bus driver”.’ He remembers newspapers being plentiful around the house, courtesy of his father’s work, and recalls reading lots of comic books. ‘I definitely read Snoopy and was given Snoopy annuals and Snoopy books which I loved, and the first time I saw New Yorker cartoons I remember thinking they were pretty special.’ The magazine Punch was also a big influence.

After giving up his dreams of becoming a bus driver, Matt studied three separate courses at Central Saint Martins in London. ‘I started off sort of convinced that I wanted to be a graphic designer,’ he says. ‘It was a three year course, and at the end of the first year, I went to the principal and said: “Look, I've made a terrible mistake. I don't want to do this, I want to be an illustrator.” Then, I went to the principal at the end of the second year and said: “I don’t want to be an illustrator, but I’m convinced I want to do film.”’ After a final year studying film, Matt took on work experience at the BBC as a fourth camera assistant ‘which really is just carrying boxes’. He absolutely loved it, but when full-time positions came up he could never land a job, and it left him disheartened. He was, at the time, moonlighting as a pizza waiter, not out of any great passion for pepperoni but ‘because I had to pay to live’. That’s when he heard that the magazine the New Statesman was accepting cartoons. This changed everything.

‘I just thought maybe I could send them a joke,’ Matt says, sweetly. ‘I mean, I had heard that a magazine might pay about £60 back then for a cartoon, and I was living in a friend’s room, and my rent was 30 quid, and I thought: “If I just thought of one joke a week I could live”.’ It was a desert island joke — ‘you have to do one if you’re a proper cartoonist’ — and the New Statesman loved it. From then on he was obsessed, all thoughts of being a bus driver, a graphic designer or cameraman four forgotten. ‘I was just completely hooked. I went from newsagent to newsagent checking to see if it was in every copy of the magazine, I was so thrilled. From then on I didn’t want to do anything else.’

He ‘rather prematurely’ gave up his job at the pizza restaurant, aged 23. ‘Then I didn’t get anything in for a couple of weeks.’ Eventually, he started contributing to The Telegraph’s diary column, dropping off a joke a day and occasionally getting to provide a cartoon to go with an article inside, before he was hired by them full-time. ‘I still love doing it, but if it has a drawback it is that everyday you have to think of a new idea… so I am always terrified about thinking about the next one.’

His wife, Pascale Smets, a Belgian former fashion designer who now runs a shop in Norwich, had also attended Central Saint Martins, which is where the pair hit it off. ‘She said, “Oh, I’ve got a fashion show and I know you like photography, so will you come and take photos of my fashion show?” I should have seen the red flag that she would just be getting me to do things for her for the next 41 years — which is pretty much how it’s been,’ says Matt. ‘I stole her from Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen,’ he adds. ‘He’s now a great friend of ours.’ His wife, it seems, is a great asset to Matt’s life. ‘She’s amazing. Everyone who meets her then loses the ability to make any decision for themselves, because she is so decisive, so you ask her about everything. We had an au pair who once asked her: “Am I hungry?” My wife told her: “You want a bowl of soup.” So she had one.’

Matt is a self-described ‘creature of habit’. ‘Before Covid I would get in at the same time every day, and read the papers in the same order each morning,’ he says. Then disaster struck and work from home was necessitated. ‘I thought: “I just can’t do it. It’s going to be a different desk and different everything” — but actually it turns out I can do it.’ Furthermore, Matt discovered all the time he thought he was spending in the office doing vital research by speaking to the journalists in the newsroom was actually just ‘gossiping’. ‘I thought I was working but I was actually just finding out who had a super injunction and which celebrities were up to disgraceful things’. He now comes in just three days a week, splitting his time between London and his home in Suffolk.

He delights in the silly and, despite people’s preconceptions about what it must be like to work for a right-wing newspaper, tends to try and shy away from drawing anything political. ‘People always think that, working on The Telegraph, I'll be told that things aren't right wing enough. But in 37 years, I've never, ever been told that — they just want it to be a good joke. He doesn’t consider himself to be right wing, ‘but I think my wife considers me to be. It sort of depends what subject you’re talking about.’ Matt was a remainer when it came to Brexit, but he used his work to poke fun at both camps.

The hardest thing he’s ever had to draw came when there was a terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly magazine, in response to cartoons they published which depicted Muhammad. A lot of cartoonists were killed. ‘I usually never, ever do slightly serious cartoons, and I wasn't going to do it,’ Matt says. ‘And then I thought it feels a bit like a cop out not to do something about it. And I still don't really like doing serious things, but I did feel I had to do something on that.’ His career was ‘nearly ended’ early on when he drew a sketch of Mary on a donkey during an ambulance strike with the caption “Couldn’t you have got us an ambulance?” For this, he got a lot of backlash in the post — it is worse now with social media as ‘you get a reaction immediately’, yet he still reads the comments under his work every day: ‘I can’t stop myself.’

His favourite thing to draw, especially during this time of the year, is Guy Fawkes. ‘I love drawing Guy Fawkes. I don't know why I love Guy Fawkes but I always look forward to Guy Fawkes because I've just done so many jokes about him,’ Matt says. ‘This year, because of the mansion tax, I did a joke about him blowing up his own house, so there always seems to be an angle you can use. That's one of my best.’ The thing he thinks is the cutest thing to draw is his dog, Reg. ‘I do love drawing talking animals,’ he says. He idolises the New Yorker but would never submit anything because he just wants to look at it for pleasure. ‘If I submitted something and then they turned it down, it would just ruin the fun of looking through it.’

Your aesthetic hero

It would be my wife, because she chooses everything in our house. She tells everyone in our family what to wear, what clothes to have, and she can even, in a restaurant, tell me I don't like a meal. She just makes all the decisions, and they're always right.

The last thing of note you bought for yourself

A snooker cue. I play snooker obsessively. I'm terrible. I've decided it's not my fault, it's the snooker cue. If I get a different, more expensive snooker cue that will sort it out.

Your favourite painting

I am afraid to say I can't think of anything more interesting to say than Monet, because it's the honest answer. I'd probably have a Monet snow scene, because I remember very clearly doing A-level art and one of the subjects being a snowy scene. My art teacher said to me: ‘On no account, Pritchett, attempt this’. I think whenever I see Monet paintings now, I think my art teacher was right. I couldn't have done that.

A book you found inspiring

There's a book called Agent Zigzag, which is by Ben McIntyre, and I think about it all the time. I don't know if it's inspiring, because he was such a rogue this chap, but, from page one it's absolutely gripping, and it's got everything I love in it: it’s got spies and love affairs, and he double crossed everyone in his life. So I think I'd have to say that.

The music you work to

I have a dark secret, which is that I’m a pretty big country music fan. My two favourite singers are sisters: Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne.

A possession you’d never sell

My snooker table, I think. I also inherited a picture from my grandparents, a Matisse print. I don’t think it’s worth coming to burgle my house for, but it’s two women lounging on day beds and it’s an absolutely beautiful picture.

An exhibition that has impressed you

One of my absolute cartoon heroes, a french guy called [Jean-Jacques] Sempé. I was in a little French town one summer and they had an exhibition of his work. I almost had it to myself and I had just chanced upon it. They were just the most beautiful cartoons I’d ever seen.

The last podcast you listened to

I'm a bit of a sucker for The Rest of Politics. It's a classic, like saying Monet. What I should really say is that my favorite painting is by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart and that my favourite podcast was by Monet.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I might take some paints, actually. I haven't done it for ages, but I do quite like doing painting. I do threaten that when I quit work, I'm going to take up painting and just give my children and friends bad art. For every birthday or Christmas they’ll get another landscape that they don’t want.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

The Today Programme. I do wake up thinking: ‘What on earth am I going to draw today?’ so it’s 50% panic and 50% interest.

The items that you collect

I don't think I collect anything. That is one sort of obsession I don't have. I do always, when I see something great that makes me laugh — a cartoon — cut it out and stick it on my wall at work.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

My wife, when she's trying to be nice to me, said that as a young man I looked a tiny bit like John Cusack. Unfortunately you can see me, so you know that isn't true.

A hotel you could go back and back to

Ett Hem in Stockholm. It's designed by someone who actually taught my second daughter at the design academy in Eindhoven, who's never forgotten, and it is absolutely gorgeous. But there are lots. Now our children have grown up we sneak off for city breaks.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

Probably a tasting menu. I’m a sucker for a tasting menu because actually, given a menu, I am very unadventurous, and in fact, I just say to my wife: “What am I going to choose?” and she will tell me what I'm going to choose. But actually, a tasting menu where you get stuff that you wouldn't have picked is the best, and we’ve had some fantastic ones — the best one was probably at Dôme in Antwerp.

The best present you’ve ever received

My wife was driving in London, and they had these width restrictions things, and there was just a big gap in between them, which should have had a gate, but the gate was open. So my wife was driving, and just thought: “Well, it's much easier to go through that great big gap there.” So she went through, and she was photographed by the cameras that they have everywhere, and she was so funny about it. It made me laugh so much that my daughter, Mary, had it framed. I got it for Christmas, it’s by my bed. It always makes me laugh when I see it.

Matt's new book The Best of Matt 2025 is out now and will be celebrated by an exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London from November 10-15.