Cartoonist Peter Bromhead at an exhibition of his work in 2014. Photo \/ Richard Robinson<\/p>\n
Bromhead led a self-described \u201cunashamedly colourful\u201d life, which might have been one of the few understatements in it.<\/p>\n
It could be slightly chaotic at times, both professionally and personally. A renowned charmer and raconteur, he married four times \u2013 finding love again in his 80s. His wife, Jereza, was at his side when he died.<\/p>\n
He has 10 children \u2013 the oldest and youngest children are more than 50 years apart.<\/p>\n
Born in Portsmouth, England, in May 1933, Bromhead endured a childhood in which he survived German air raids and an awful parent. He had a terrible relationship with his mother, Hilda, and knew little about his biological father, Charles.<\/p>\n
In his 2016 autobiography Scratching a Living, he describes Hilda as \u201cghastly\u201d and says he struggled to look at pictures of her. <\/p>\n
A Bromhead cartoon from April 2020. Illustration \/ Peter Bromhead<\/p>\n
When he was 2, his mother allegedly pushed him out of the upstairs exit of a double-decker bus in Portsmouth, \u201cwhile undergoing one of her frequent fits of uncontrollable rage\u201d, Bromhead wrote in the book.<\/p>\n
He ended up on the road, and in hospital with serious head injuries. Bromhead always insisted his mother opened the exit door and pushed him; she told authorities that her own son had done it and fallen.<\/p>\n
Bromhead also wrote about visiting Hilda on her deathbed in Tauranga. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I entered her room, she just glared at me and muttered bitterly, \u2018Charlie [Bromhead\u2019s father] always said he\u2019d come back to haunt me. For Christ\u2019s sake get out of my sight, I never want to see you again!\u2019 She died later that same night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bromhead \u2013 who immigrated to New Zealand in the 1950s with his mother, stepfather and first wife – once described cartooning as like \u201ctaking your brain on an exercycle\u201d. <\/p>\n
He was a renowned quick-draw, often providing pocket cartoons \u2013 single-column illustrations to lighten the load of a heavy story \u2013 within an hour of an editor\u2019s request. <\/p>\n
He continued to draw until late in life.<\/p>\n
A Peter Bromhead ‘pocket’ cartoon from November 2020. <\/p>\n
His political cartoons for the Star were especially memorable, particularly those of Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon. <\/p>\n
They were not flattering caricatures. Muldoon supposedly hated them. Other politicians felt the same about Bromhead\u2019s drawings of them.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Muldoon] told me he hated my cartoons – but actually had a portrait in his home office,\u201d Bromhead said in a recently published Star-Times interview.<\/p>\n
Despite regular run-ins with Muldoon, Bromhead told the Star-Times he was amusing company. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t look back at him as a sinister person \u2026 I almost look back to him with fondness.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything today (especially with the Government) is controlled by PR and a team of ex-journalists who are in the strange world of soft-creaming everything. Today Muldoon seems a bit more real than our present PM, Chris Luxon, who doesn\u2019t seem to be emotionally involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Peter Bromhead’s many thousands of cartoons. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
His cartoons transcended publishing-company boundaries and rivalries; he worked for most of the big New Zealand newspaper firms (in their various guises) at some stage. <\/p>\n
He estimated he\u2019d worked for about 40 different editors over his career. Each one, he said, had displayed a different attitude towards cartoons.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome believed that cartoons should be retained only as necessary evils, shrunk down so they didn\u2019t occupy too much space; while other, more enlightened editors have seen the value and impact of graphic work on a page,\u201d Bromhead wrote in his book.<\/p>\n
He was sometimes asked what made a great cartoon. \u201cMy cynical response is invariably \u2018one the editor accepts\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cartoonist and author Peter Bromhead died in Rotorua last week, aged 93. Photo \/ Stephen Parker<\/p>\n
Bromhead often joked wryly that his 11 national media awards matched his 11 redundancies.<\/p>\n