IT'S always handy to be able to take a bit of credit for something, because the brickbats come readily enough. So hats off to a former editor of the Worcester Evening News, Bernard Webster, for spotting the talent in cartoonist Jonathan Pugh and giving him his first chance.

Looking down from his cloud now, Bernard would be pleased as punch to know the schoolboy who tentatively submitted his drawings to him for publication in the early 1970s, has gone on to become Pocket Cartoonist of the Year three times and British Press Awards Cartoonist of the Year once. The first book of his best cartoons has just been published too.

Not bad for a lad who started off studying to be a lawyer. He would have been following in the family tradition, for father John had a practice in Bromsgrove, but things didn't work out that way.

"I realised I hadn't got the brains for the law," said Jonathan. "I spent too much time staring out of the window."

However, his law course at Oxford Poly wasn't entirely wasted, because lectures provided him with hours of doodling practice and that led to arguably greater things.

Born in Ronkswood Hospital, Worcester, on February 17, 1962, young Pugh grew up an ardent fan of Giles, the legendary Daily Express cartoonist.

"From as early as I can remember I was fascinated by his drawings," he said. "Half the time I didn't get the joke, but I found the pictures absorbing and I began trying to copy him. Not on his scale, of course, but little sketches of my own. Captions didn't come into it then."

At the age of seven he had his first commission, from the local pub at Wychbold, near the family home.

"The landlord asked for a few pub scenes to hang up behind the bar. That was really encouraging."

However, during his schooldays at the Dragon School in Oxford and Downside, near Bath, other activities took over.

"Like most boys, I had my sights set on playing cricket or football for England."

Sadly, as with his law career, that didn't happen, so for two years Jonathan taught art and games at a prep school in Newbury.

But all the time he was doodling and drawing for his own amusement, encouraged by the knowledge that a decade before the Worcester Evening News and its sister weekly the Bromsgrove Messenger had both thought his efforts worthy of publication.

Unfortunately, what editor Webster saw in his work was not shared by the applications board of an art college - which will remain nameless, for it should be suitably embarrassed now - because when he tried to join a course, he was rejected. Undeterred, Jonathan quit his teaching job in 1986, moved to London and, although he had no formal training, decided to try to make a living as a cartoonist.

"At that time I wasn't doing topical material, I was producing general cartoons I thought might interest people. But I wasn't doing very well. I got used to having them sent back. The Literary Review used one, but it wasn't until Punch took two that I really had a breakthrough.

"Gradually I came to realise the key was having a response to a topical news story. If I could produce a topical cartoon with a jokey caption, there was a greater chance of having it published."

Private Eye and The Spectator then began using him.

"I got into newspapers by sending samples of my work to various art editors," Jonathan explained. "One called back and said he would like to use my work at some stage and several months later he did."

In 1995 he began drawing The Times' Diary cartoon and in the following year he became the paper's front-page pocket cartoonist. In 1997 he also became The Times business cartoonist.

He feels at home with the small format of the pocket cartoon and admits that "anything much bigger and I'm drowning at sea".

Thanks to modern technology, Jonathan now works from home and it's usually an after-lunch phone call to the night editor that starts a cartoon for The Times.

"We chat through a few subjects and it's invariably a front page story that defines what I'm going to work on that afternoon. I give them a choice of seven or eight ideas. I'll do rough drawings - which will be barely legible, but he's used to my rough scribblings - with a caption underneath, which will give him an idea of what the cartoon might look like. I have a deadline of about four hours and it can take between 10 minutes and four hours.

"The time-consuming bit is generally getting the caption right. The drawing I can get done quite quickly, in about half an hour generally, unless I keep making mistakes and have to do it again and again.

"The challenge is the joke. I've come to realise that to some extent you can get away with a good joke but a poor drawing, but not a poor joke and a good drawing."

Two of his more recent favourites have included the couple looking out of their bedroom window during the summer floods and the wife observing: "Do you realise dear, next door's goldfish are on our lawn again."

Or the two prostitutes leaning against a lamp-post with one saying: "Do you ever worry your children might drift into politics?"

"I'm not a biting satirical cartoonist," Jonathan explained. "My sole aim is to make people smile and, on a good day, laugh."

From the pages of the Evening News, he's gone on to become a household name and his book The Best of Jonathan Pugh (Virgin Paperback £5.99) is a masterclass in the topical cartoon.

One's on the way up, Bernard.