Flake

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The shortlist was selected over a lively online judges’ meeting, with the usual glasses of Bollinger champagne. The judging panel includes musical comedian and improviser, Pippa Evans and comedian Sindhu Vee, in their second and third years as judges respectively; and long- standing judges, broadcaster and author James Naughtie; Everyman’s Library publisher, David Campbell; and a Vice President of the Hay Festival and Director of National Trust Wales, Justin Albert. Dooley, who spends his weekends playing lawn bowls at Wimbledon Park bowls club, doesn’t deny that there’s something of himself in these anachronistic creations. “I like people or characters – and I see this in myself as well – who are obsessed by something that other people don’t care about,” he says. “Now, I like ice-cream, and I would not want to say ice-cream is mundane, because it isn’t. It’s wonderful. But the inherent naffness of an ice-cream van, the way it’s painted, it’s the mix of the absurd and the mundane.” Set in the fictional small seaside town of Dobbiston, Flake follows the life of ice-cream man Howard, who realises that the downturn in his business is a consequence of his half-brothers’s efforts to build his own ice-cream empire across the north-west. MATTHEW DOOLEY: This came as a huge surprise… particularly as I found out via a WhatsApp group I’m in with some other comic creators! Obviously when making Flake I didn’t set out with the intention of being nominated for any awards but it is enormously gratifying to have your work recognised in that way.

The idea of ice-cream turf wars being led by some sort of Mr Whippy Don is absolutely absurd and yet I was enraptured! Howard meandering his way through life, happy to do his crosswords, run his van on his patch and go home to his wife every day built up this really gentle, relatable character who you couldn't help but root for as his little van struggled to compete as the turf wars heated up. The supporting characters were just lovely, so humourous but with a real bond across them, and I thought this book brought Lancashire to life in such a wonderfully vivid way. Matthew Dooley has an off-centre, idiosyncratic, and often bleakly humorous view of the world; something that has been a constant on the UK indie scene since his work first started appearing in such influential anthologies as Dirty Rotten Comics and Off Life. His short strips have been seen in collections like Meanderings. The Practical Implications of Immortality and Catastrophising, and in 2016 he won the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’. Flake, Matthew Dooley’s debut graphic novel, tells of how this epic battle turns out, and how Howard – helped by the Dobbiston Mountain Rescue team – overcomes every obstacle and triumphs in the end. AO: Despite all its more eccentric trappings there’s a very human story at the heart of Flake. Do you think that in its own strange way that juxtaposition of the absurd and the pedestrian in your work can draw out the inherent humanity of your stories all the more for its contrast? But Howard’s rivalry with Tony has a more personal element. Because this predatory purveyor of frozen taste sensations, who is determined to put him out of business and claim Howard’s father’s patch for his own, is also secretly his half-brother…Everyman’s Library and Champagne Bollinger today, 1 July, announce Flake by Matthew Dooley (Vintage, Jonathan Cape) as the winner of the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. AO: Throwaway Press published your original solo collections of work in Meanderings and The Practical Implications of Immortality, and you’ve also self-published Catastrophising. The absurdist slice-of-life humour of those collections where the incongruous is embedded into the everyday gives them a very distinctive flavour. What most appeals to you about that kind of fantasy autobio approach? And is there something almost cathartic about the self-deprecating way you present yourself in your strips? FLAKE is as smart as it is delicious, as it is very, very British. Raymond Briggs and Alan Bennett are both reflected in the cast, their environment and their quotidian observations about their parochial environment: pride in local history, the surprising complexities buried within family history, and the absurdities which can come to dominate any life; the traps therein.

Jasper had mixed experiences with quizzes and game shows. This included a catastrophic appearance on Countdown. Jasper boldly opened with a nine letter word... iliterate”. DOOLEY: Alongside the Cape competition, anthologies were the other thing to get me going. I need a deadline otherwise I won’t do anything, so having a date by which to submit something is a useful motivator. I’d been scratching around doing bits and pieces, not really getting anywhere, wondering if there was much point to bothering with comics. I then saw that Dirty Rotten Comics were taking submissions for a new book and took a punt sending them a silly comic about someone with a balloon for a head. They took it and that was the first of a number of comics they published in subsequent DRCs. MacDowell, James, Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema, Cliché, Convention and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 2013.DOOLEY: It is very straightforward. I pencil and ink on paper, then scan and add colour, word balloons and letters on Photoshop. AO: Let’s return to warring ice cream men and your Eisner-nominated graphic novel Flake. For those yet to read it how would you pitch the premise to them? AO: One of the things I loved about Flake were a couple of throwaway moments that nevertheless implied a kind of wider Dooleyverse. Do you see your stories all fitting together in the same shared universe? Howard’s life as an ice cream van owner is a quietly unambitious one. The highlight of his day is doing the crosswords for a couple of hours before work begins or chatting with local museum worker Jasper, a failed TV quiz show contestant and ardent campaigner to have the local downgraded hill reclassified as a mountain. This sedentary lifestyle is about to be disrupted however when rogue ice cream vendor Tony Augustus re-enters his life. The mercenary Augustus has swept through the North West of England, dispatching such industry legends as Professor Scrumptious and Dr. Frisbee’s Ice Creams of Distinction in his wake, and subsuming then into his icy empire.

They are the first two parts of the dairy trilogy,” says Dooley, before clarifying that he’s joking and he has no immediate plans to return to milk or its by-products as a subject any time soon. AO: How much of a game-changer for you was winning the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’ (above)? Seeing your work in print for the first time is a massive thrill and DRC were amazing at finding new people on the small press scene and giving them that opportunity. Perhaps more importantly, I became good mates with Gary and Kirk, the guys who edited DRC. Comics is a solitary pursuit for the most part but the small press community is a very friendly and supportive one. I don’t think I’d have persisted with making comics if had been just me sending them out into the void. Feeling part of the community is a big reason I make comics. When a book opens with a man standing on top of an ice cream van slowly being submerged into the sea, the man seemingly accepting his fate, you're probably not expecting a book that is so absolutely brimming with the warmth and humour that this book absolutely was. Thematically, it gels together well too: Howard and Tony’s rivalry is fueled in no small part by the fact Tony only exists because Howard’s father was bored by his life. The book seems to be telling us, when you live in a town where there’s barely anything to do, it can feel like you have nothing to lose, and be easy to overlook who you have in your life. The shadow of Howard’s dad, and everything wrong he represented with working class fathers of that era, looms large in the protagonist’s life.

Dooley first gained recognition when he won the Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story prize in 2016, with another dairy related tale of a man Colin Turnball and his ambition to win Lancashire’s Tallest Milkman competition. When he’s not busy crafting comic tales, Dooley works at the House of Commons in education. This graphic novel is so darn inspiring and exactly the feel-good read I needed. I went in blind and had no idea it would be about ice cream, but enjoyed seeing all the creative business names and cool flavours. Not only is the artwork cute, I also loved both the layout and storytelling. David Campbell, judge and publisher of Everyman’s Library, comments: ‘This year’s shortlist was especially strong with a number of very credible potential winners. We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake.’

Victoria Carfantan, director of Champagne Bollinger - UK, says: ‘We are very proud of our long-standing relationship supporting the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It is such an important award celebrating some of the most talented names in the genre and I am delighted to extend my congratulations to Matthew Dooley and his novel, Flake, as this year’s winner.’

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Jasper’s overriding priorities, however, are his pet peeves, each as irrelevant to any sane human being as they are uncompromisingly and passionately pursued. For example, he spent six months in a French prison for trying to convert continental road signs from metric to imperial then painting his results on their signposts. So he’s averse neither to direct confrontation nor overt vandalism, which may well come in handy during the imminent North-West English Ice Cream Wars.(It doesn’t.) Despite his protests, Dooley, who fits his drawing around working in the House of Commons in the education department, does share a sensibility with Ware, Bennett and also Tom Gauld. “My partner said she struggles to tell the difference in my work between something that is funny and something that is sad,” says Dooley. “And that’s true; there are lots of bits that could be taken as either. But no, it is ultimately meant to be funny … I hope.” But it’s in the quieter moments of Flake where Dooley reminds us of how nuanced a storyteller he is. Here it is what is left unsaid that ironically speaks the most eloquently about Howard and his struggles; in these gaps in between exposition and dialogue the core emotional truths of his situation hit home. Dooley communicates so much in these interludes about Howard’s existence and his relationship with his immediate environment through a sublime sense of pacing, character expression and body language.