Here’s an example of some crude cartooning I attempted back in 2002 for a comic book called Nice that some of my friends put together. The strip was based on an actual overheard conversation by a man in The Crown pub on New Oxford Street. Much of the dialogue was real. I was so amused by this that I rushed back to report to my friends what this stranger at the bar had said, saying
“You’ll never guess what I just heard…” or something like it and before I could continue one of my friends exclaimed
“Did you just say ‘Dirk Venice’!” To which I replied
“No, but that was probably his name”. Some people assumed he was named after Dirk Bogarde from the film Death in Venice, but that had nothing to do with it.

The look of Dirk Venice was partly based on that man himself and also partly based on the actor Trevor Cooper (below) who I’d recently seen in the play the Lieutenant of Innishmore.