The imminent end of Steve Bell’s If… (27 April) will cause widespread lamentation among all who have followed his strip through four decades, from the Borgias running British Leyland in the 1980s to Bumface et al today. Bell’s unflinching and, at times, gross iconoclasm, in contrast to Gary Trudeau’s tame Doonesbury, was delightfully demonstrated at the height of the Aids scare, when Doonesbury stopped just short of printing the word “condom”, while in the adjacent If…, Willie Whitelaw, in the guise of Captain Condom, squelched his way through the strip covered in the things. Well done, Mr Bell.
John Dent
Lilliesleaf, Roxburghshire
• If only… that’s what a nation will say in years to come. If only Monsieur L’Artiste were here to wield his mighty brush and skewer the various bar stewards lording it over us. Day after day for decades, If… and the comment page masterpieces have precisely identified and pilloried the parade of pathetic strutting individuals who have caused so much grief to an immiserated nation. But every morning Steve Bell has allowed one cathartic whoop of derision and the opportunity to say phonetically what we would all love to say to their faces: “Feurque oeuf.”
Kevin Donovan
Birkenhead, Merseyside
• It is good to see that Monsieur L’Artiste still has a magnificent beard after all these years. It’s a reminder that, from criticism of the clean-shaven New Labour years to the more recent Llandudno goats, Steve Bell has always been on the side of the hirsute. Indeed, he drew the original logo for the Beard Liberation Front in the mid-1990s.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
• If this really is the end of If…, I would like to say a huge thank you to Steve Bell for decades of artistic ridicule of our politicians. From Thatcher’s scrawny neck and Major’s pants on his head to the contemporary and terrifying Bumface. What a talent.
Elizabeth Bell Langford
Bristol
• If this Thursday’s If… is the last, we demand that Steve Bell is invited to the palace for his knighthood. Arise, Sir Steven! If only…
Jean Lavers and Nick Hall
Osbaldwick, North Yorkshire
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