TOM SCOTT | "I'm just me. My humour is not a craft, like Rowan Atkinson or John Cleese. I come from an Irish family. They were all bloody funny." |
Considered one of New Zealand’s best cartoonists, Tom Scott is also a celebrated political columnist, non-fiction author and film maker. Born in the UK, Tom moved with his family to New Zealand as a toddler and grew up in Feilding.
Screen Talk interview with Tom Scott.
He came to Palmerston North to attend Massey University and graduated with a BSc in physiology, but it was his involvement with the university’s student magazine Chaff and its capping magazine Masskerade where he developed the talents that would become a career. In those magazines – in particular the 1969 issue of Masskerade – Tom learned the power of the pen and discovered his love of journalism. For five days, Tom was a cartoonist at the Manawatu Evening Standard.
Tom became a regular contributor to the New Zealand Listener and the Evening Post (and its successor the Dominion Post). As a political journalist in the 1970s, Tom illustrated his words with cartoons; his run-ins with Sir Robert Muldoon became legendary.
His film production credits include Rage, a drama about the 1981 Springbok Tour, and his own feature release Separation City (2009). He has won multiple screenwriting awards for Fallout and for View from the Top, a documentary (renamed Hilary on Everest) about Sir Edmund Hilary. In 1996, Tom co-authored The Great Brain Robbery with Trevor Grice. He wrote his semi-autobiographical stage play The Daylight Atheist in 2001.
In a very much Manawatu production, Tom co-wrote the screenplay for the animated feature Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale with Murray Ball; fellow Creative Giant John Clarke provided the voice.
Through his company Direct Hit, Tom has produced Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, Reluctant Revolutionary and Separation City. Mr Gormsby was the first New Zealand comedy to play on free-to-air television in Australia.
Holder of a ONZM, in 2002, Massey University awarded Tom an honorary doctorate. He was presented the inaugural Arts Foundation Award for Patronage in 2006.
"It was at Massey University that I began my real education as a cartoonist and a writer...I have an honourary doctorate from Massey. I don't practice."
