This is our couple, George and Alice - they've been occasional stars of the cartoon since it started. In fact, at one point when we were developing the strip it was going to be them every week. Here are some pics of them from the development process, and a sample cartoon. . . JB
This Saturday's food cartoon, where Joe demonstrates the art of writing in a scary way …
It's one of those ones where some people don't get it, but others really totally don't get it. PW
It is conceivable that the subset of a) people who know a reference to Poe when they see it and b) people who appreciate that grapes might find raisins terrifying is smaller than we thought . . . JB
Saturday's food cartoon, from Weekend Guardian . . .
We're happy enough if we can come up with a joke; but just sometimes, we're able to tackle the bigger questions in life, such as '"Do peanuts have lawyers?" JB
From the Guardian Weekend. I am a terrible sucker for any piece of equipment that claims to be "professional", and will happily pay four times over the odds for any product that carries this mythical badge. PW
Yes. A friend who suffers this same affliction invested in a pro sandwich griller for those spontaneous 'hey, who fancies a quick panini?' moments with friends; only to discover that, being designed for all day café use, it took several hours to reach optimum temperature. JB
Saturday's food cartoon, from Weekend Guardian …
Apparently, the latest research indicates that if you throw away five pieces of fruit a day it can really give you a healthy glow. PW
This week's food cartoon from Guardian Weekend. Enough talking sprouts: we thought it was high time we tackled some of the big issues. PW
Happy new year folks. Here's this week's food cartoon, from the Guardian Weekend … It started out as a drunk olive being helped through the door by two other pieces of cocktail fruit while he pretends, to his olive wife, that he is not off his face. Can't remember why we changed it. Maybe we couldn't agree on how, exactly, a lemon would help an olive through a door. PW
Here's a rough sketch of the original idea. Once we have an idea that works on some level for both of us, we boil it down to the simplest possible expression of that idea. Sometimes we boil it down further still and it sticks to the pan, but that's a topic for another blog entry. I think this one benefited from the reduction, like a good demi-glace — I'll stop it with the boiling down analogy now. JB
So, after seven years of plying their trade with tireless optimism, The Pitchers are retiring from The Guardian. Today's strip, in the Film and Music section, is the final episode, newspaper budget cuts having taken their toll. Taking them elsewhere, doing a book … We're not sure what we'll do with them in the future. I wasn't prepared for how hard it is to kill off cartoon characters, but after living with them in my head for so long, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise. So I'm glad to say we decided not to drop a piano on them, or lose them in the Creative Vacuum – but to end just as things began: with a good (ie awful) idea for a movie. Thanks for sticking with them through thick and thin. We'll let you know when they finally hit Tinseltown heights. PW
They have always seemed to me to have a life beyond what we wrote and drew, corny as that may sound. I mentioned this at the time, but when we were in LA in 2007 I kept expecting to see Chet and Foley come walking round a corner, or sitting in Greenblats Deli discussing a script. Maybe they're better off without us. Maybe we were holding them back. I'll look out for their screen credits. JB
Here's the food cartoon that ran in October 2007. 
When we are debating the finer points of wording in a cartoon, Pascal will sometimes find it necessary to explain, some might say almost pedantically, why the joke is funny. He finds it really helpful if I reword the cartoon with his thoughts and email it back to him. JB
We liked the old one (which is why we've linked to it from this site, as an archive), but the problem was it was too bafflingly technical to update, so we never did, which kind of defeats the object. I think the "news" bit stopped dead a few years ago when we were nominated for an Emmy … Which we didn't get, hence the image on the front of this new site. This new place makes blogging and things very easy, so stand by for anaesthetisingly dull observations (from Joe) and more … PW