Joke du jour:

A man walks into an Indian restaurant and sits at a table. The waiter approaches and asks him what he'd like. He orders a chicken tarka masala.

The waiter says, "Excuse me, sir, don't you mean 'Chicken tikka masala?' "

The man replies, "Well, it's similar, except it's a little 'otter."

Here's one of Terence Greer's covers for Penguin. I discovered his work when I was an art student. I used to go to Skoob Books in Holborn to pick up something to read during the evenings, as I was working front of house in the theatres in the West End (this involved lots of sitting around). In the bookshop there were shelves and shelves of second-hand Penguins going back to the 1930s, and I got to know the contents of those shelves pretty well. And these covers by Terence Greer would leap out at me as I browsed. I think they're terrific illustrations. They're simple and effective, drawing attention to the book and giving a sense of the atmosphere of the narrative. Some of Greer's other notable covers are Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Bachelors, Robinson and The Comforters, and Lynne Reid Banks's The L-Shaped Room.

This is an image from a series of illustrations I've been working on for the last year. This all started when I was helping my aunt sort through some clothing she wanted to clear out. As we sorted through handbag after handbag, she mentioned in passing that she'd kept every bag she'd ever owned, her first being the one given to her by her mother just before she went to college, during the Second World War. It's a life in handbags. So last summer I photographed some of these, and have been working on the illustrations since then. This one is called 'Bag of Delights', and it describes my enjoyment of the time I spent with my aunt looking at her bags (in the end she couldn't bear to part with them, and put them all back in the cupboard after I'd gone).

This is one of Berger & Wyse's cartoons. A visit to their website is recommended.

Well, here we all are, on the tip of 2011. My new year's resolution is to see James Thiérrée's performance Raoul. Thiérrée's been described as an acrobat, clown, poet and magician, and his performance places him in a strange universe of objects that come alive with sinister life and sly humour, and which he transforms into a magical visual feast. His mother is Victoria Chaplin, daughter of Charlie, and she ran away to join the circus, which impresses me no end.