Final instalment of the Guild of Lert series. For other comics in the lert series see:
A lert assassin (guild of lert #1)
A lert knight – liberator of toilet roll hoards (guild of lert #2)
A lert minister – organizer of castle tours (guild of lert #3)
Evil microbe and the pastor (unfortunately the lert wasn’t here to save the day in this one)
After hearing about Dominic Cumming’s little jaunt up to Durham and visit to Barnard Castle I was dumbfounded. There was I thinking that Lerts fought evil microbes, protected hand sanitizers, modelled facemasks and generally led the fight against coronavirus. But I clearly missed an integral part of their job: organising castle tours. I’m dreadfully sorry, dear readers for this awful oversight.
As part of my apology to you for missing this most important part of their role, I’ve created a new illustration. Here I show the mighty Lert performing perhaps his most important role in the fight against Covid-19 – acting as a tour guide for castle visits. Please accept my sincerest apologies, readers, and, of course, Boris (I have failed you too). I hope this illustration makes up for my oversight.
This is the third in the Guild of Lert series. If you’re a lert yourself (or know someone else who is) then I recommend you check out the rest of the Lert series. Watch this space – Superlert and more coming soon.
Why on earth would someone create a map of UK place names, naughty or otherwise, I hear you asking. Well, the story begins 10 years ago or so when I was staying in the North of England. One day my best friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go for a drive. Of course, I agreed, being young, carefree and childless.
It was only once I’d got into her car that I thought to ask where we were going. ‘I thought we’d start at Ramsbottom’ she replied. She then went on to inform me that because Ramsbottom, Upperthong and (the crowning jewel of our quest), Penistone, were all pretty close together we could do a fairly efficient, cheek loop around all three. We grew up in Guildford where every teenager at one point or another has giggled about walking up Jeffries Passage. So we embarked on our hunt for Ramsbottom.
After we’d returned with photos, which I will not be sharing here, I began to research. I discovered that far from being unique to Sheffield and the surrounding area, funny place names abound throughout the UK. Wet Wang! Yes – that’s actually a real place and it’s on the map. Dicks mount, Twatt, Windy Nook (heh heh), Shitterton – all real places. There are bottoms, passages, ends, nooks and more all over our moist Isle. It’s rammed full of naughty, rude, dirty, funny and silly place names.
At that moment I decided they had to be immortalised. And not on some basic, PowerPoint mockup either. Oh no. They deserved to be a work of art. I was going to do a map of the UK’s silliest place names. Or possible the UK’s funniest place names. I hadn’t really got that far. Trouble was, I was pretty rubbish at drawing. So I didn’t do anything.
It’s taken 10 years, but one day I realised I‘d built up enough skills to execute my vision. But there was just one problem – there were just too many silly place names. My map was so full you couldn’t actually read any of the place names. Apparently there were more funny place names in the UK than I thought. I had to reassess.
And that’s when I decided I could actually do a series of maps. My idle daydream had morphed into something awesome. And here it is. The first in the series: I give you, the UK’s naughtiest place names map. Enjoy.
Just been reading the news and today it was a triple whammy:
What’s an illustrator to do except express her ire, disgust and annoyance in a satirical comic.
I wish it goes without saying, but apparently it still has to said – please, please, please stay home. And when you have to go out, wear a mask.
If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend Tomas Pueyo’s articles on medium – this one is specifically about how wearing masks helps. Stay safe.
Frustrated at the hoarders of toilet rolls out there? Then this one’s for you. The mighty Lert Knight slays the dragon, liberating the stash of toilet rolls from beneath the dragon’s claws. Merch now available – show your appreciation for the mighty toilet roll liberator with a t shirt or mug:
Introducing my latest project – a series of illustrations dedicated to the guild of the lert. No one knows quite how they do it, but somehow they are extremely successful at fighting their first nemesis – the evil microbe. The first In the series is the Lert Assassin. Enjoy.
Need more lerts in your life? The lert returns in ‘Toilet Roll Hoard’.
Unfortunately the evil microbe has also returned to wreak more havoc – this time in a church. See it’s latest dastardly scheme in ‘evil microbe and the pastor’.
T shirts and mugs now available – show your allegiance now:
Terrible twos. Pah. I laugh in the face of the terrible twos. Threes though? This is what I think of threes:
Threes scare me. Where did my well dressed little angel go? And who is this cross between a super hero and dinosaur that’s replaced him?
This series is about all things stereotype. It was born from my irritation at American characters in movies using ‘American’ or ‘Americans’ instead of people.
When I came up with the idea of having my alter-ego ‘correct’ one of these ridiculous comments I realised that this was definitely a comic series in the making.
I intend to do more of these, so if you want to see a particular obnoxious comment or phrase corrected by Gel Mel then let me know in the comments!
This one wasn’t intended, but the comment irritated me so much I just had to correct it. And it goes very well with the ‘America-centric’ theme of this post.
See Gel Mel correct gender stereotyping comments here: people, people! Gender stereotyping
And here Gel Mel corrects the clichéd statement ‘Life’s too short’ (I’ve always hated that one!)
This actually happened.