Shenton's cartoons are often camp but they're not just camp, and they're not that awful apolitical offensive camp, but a light, knowing, meaningful camp; their first task is to entertain and to make the audience laugh - and often they do much more because the liberation politics that informs his work means that with the laugh there is an acerbic point - a wry observation on how we live or a satirical comment about society and a wider political context, contained in the lives and musings of plausible and likeable characters. Or sometimes it's just a silly joke.

Shenton - I call him David to his face but somehow he's always, affectionately rather than formally, Shenton in the third person - was published regularly in the gay press from 1976, and irregularly in The Guardian over 12 years, where he gave the world the philosophical, and frankly sometimes obscure musings of London pigeons, and his work has been in many other titles such as Solicitor's Journal and Optician, as well as illustrating several books including Oscar Wilde's Salomé.

The central character of many cartoons over four decades is the sweet but hapless Stanley, a moustachioed gay man whose heyday was the 1980s and who has since aged - in tandem with his sweet, moustachioed, and sometimes beardioed creator - as Stanley goes from frame to frame trying to cope with a world that is full of surprises and delights that often leave him baffled, though unhurt. Stanley reached his zenith in Stanley and the Mask of Mystery (Gay Men's Press 1983, still available second hand on Amazon, of course, from 14 quid - a reviewer there says: "I had a copy of this book years ago and it is really good. Unfortunately, I lent it to a friend and didn't get it back ... Laugh out loud humour.") It's a wonderful adventure that Shenton says was "the first UK queer comic book. Probably."

These days Shenton's cartoons can be found on Facebook where Been There, Seen That lets us glimpse scenes observed by the artist at meetings, marches, events, and in everyday life - both in London and the seaside town of Cromer in Norfolk. He and John, his partner of 17 years - who appears in a number of the Facebook cartoons - share their time between the two places. Facebook also has strip cartoons featuring a Stanley character, the pigeons, the perennial leather couple ("Bossy? Bossy? We're sadomasochists - one of us is SUPPOSED to be BOSSY!"), the two nice old ladies - and some new introductions. These Foolish Things at Space Station Sixty-Five showcases some favourite cartoons from Facebook and some of his recent drawings.

Shenton has also been found providing seasonal works bigger than lifesize on the walls of the Joiner's Arms, Hackney Road, E2. In books, newspapers, magazines, art galleries, on Facebook and on pub walls, his work is a remarkable commentary on gay life - and more - over four extraordinary decades.

Shenton himself is cuddly and smiley with a gentle, restrained manner and small round spectacles giving him the air of a kindly Edwardian doctor. He volunteers at London zoo "in the aquarium". I first encountered his cartoons in Gay News, the pioneering newspaper of the 1970’s, and the man himself in the cramped Gay News offices in West Kensington in 1980. I commissioned a weekly strip from him for Capital Gay throughout the 1980’s, and regular illustrations for Positive Nation in the 1990’s. I bought some of the originals for my own walls, and have commissioned him to draw party invitations. Over the years I have spent a fortune on this man. You should too.

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