Keep calm and carrion

One of those special cartoons where we had to hope that no one's entire family was tragically eaten by lions in the three weeks between us filing the cartoon and it appearing in print. They were? Oh . . . JB

Tanned tomatoes

I just want to say that I did all the words in this one. Those books the tomatoes are reading – they are real, and I wrote them both. Otherwise it just looks fake. It's like method cartooning. Anyway, yet again, I marvel at Joe's ability to make something that doesn't have hands look perfectly natural holding on to something PW

Heston services

Was lucky enough to eat at the Fat Duck once. I was so excited at how much I was enjoying it I think I was metabolising the tasting menu at roughly the speed the dishes were coming out of the kitchen, so I could happily have sat there for a week or so while they invented new ways of injecting, spraying and wafting nice things in to my body. That was a while ago: there's probably an iPad course now where you eat off a touch screen and get sent food through a Twitter feed  PW

Scream and sugar

We wanted to do something on coffee for a long time, but just couldn't crack it – one of those cartoons that sulked around for ages as a provisional memo: "Something weird or funny drawn in to the froth of a coffee, like they do with cappuccinos or Guiness." We've got a pile of those, ideas that, you know, are great and so nearly there, but just need that little extra icing on the cake ie the joke, for God's sake. All part of the delusional process – like thinking going to bed in your tracksuit will make you fit. PW

Club sandwiches

I am definitely guilty of purchasing kitchen gadgetry in the hope that by buying it I might start to need it, rather than buying it because I actually do need it, or even have the faintest idea what it does. Same with very exotic produce from Chinese supermarkets. PW

Chicken run

Happy Easter. Don't know if this one entirely hit the spot, but the idea of marketers/scientists trying to persuade a room full of angry chickens to start producing creme eggs makes me smile. JB

Blow my cork

I can't really remember how we got to discussing the sexual self-sufficiency of the Champagne bottle, but there were earnest debates about just how erect the corcscrew needed to be in this image. I think I was arguing that it should be up in the air a bit, but yes, perhaps that would look a bit unnatural. The fact that we were discussing the verisimilitude of that aspect of the scene while happily accepting that this corkscrew was a) talking and b) trying to get a shag is a bit ironic, and probably means we need to get fresh air and meet some people. PW

Witty title to go here

It's always satisfying when you can think up a joke that isn't a straight pun — all the more so when you can't really say where the idea came from, just that it appeared when it was needed. That said, if the conception was mysterious, the labour was excrutiating. Here for comparison is the original rough.

Having established between us that it was a good enough gag, I started drawing the final. Hours later, I was surrounded by pieces of paper with drawings of foxes on them and no nearer a final drawing that I was happy with. With the deadline looming I just went with the best of a bad lot, scanned it in and got colouring:


But I couldn't escape the feeling that it wasn't quite right; something about the character of the fox in the rough had got lost. Testing Pascal's patience with me as the tortured artist to the limit, I scrapped it and started again. And ended up with what was finally published. Much happier. Much funnier? Probably not.  JB

A date with destiny

I'd love to have been at the marketing meeting when someone came up with this label. Also reminds me of the The Receipt, a cracking theatre show by Will Adamsdale and Chris Branch, which had a whole routine about someone from the future being bewildered by the way, in the beginning years of the 21st century, things had to be labelled to tell you what to do with them: Eat, Tear'n'Share, Stand'n'Stuff … PW

Salad dressing room

I wonder what foodstuff is used to describe really good acting? A peach? Beefy? How about: "A truly anchovy performance from Kevin Spacey as the lead in this lamby new play." PW