The Amstelveen cartoonist Toon van Driel (78) was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau yesterday. “I’m crazy happy with it,” says the artist of, among other things, the long-running series FC Knudde to NH.
When NH calls him to congratulate him, Toon is sitting in his kitchen with the ‘mega cross’ pinned to his chest. “I managed to do it in those fifty years of Knudde,” he says proudly.
The cartoonist was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau yesterday. Unknowingly, Toon came to the Libris-Venstra bookstore in Amstelveen. There was a presentation in the store about Knudde, the biography about the fifty years that Toon has been active as a draftsman.
“I almost collapsed: is this really happening?”
Although there was ‘a guy with a chain’ walking through the bookstore, Toon didn’t ring a bell. That changed when Mayor Tjapko Poppens stood before him. “The mayor started picking at my blouse and hung a very large cross on it,” says Toon. “I almost collapsed: is this really happening?”
Text continues below the image of the book: Knudde to the World Cup.
Football icons Louis van Gaal and Guus Hiddink supported the request to appoint the cartoonist as a knight. “They are fans,” says Toon. “I have a lame current comic strip in the newspaper. I tease them about it, they can get it from me.”
Drawing started as an emergency measure, because everything Toon did before that time failed. The biography, written by Alexander Brandenburg and Jaap van de Venis, explains how Toon ended up in the comics world through a short career as a footballer, musician and KLM steward.
Text continues below NH’s 2018 video about how he started drawing.
Video
Fifty years ago, Toon drove to the head office of Algemeen Dagblad to show five comics called Knudde. “I thought: I’ll never hear about that again,” says Toon. “But then I got a call anyway.” He was allowed on probation for three months to demonstrate his skills.
Bumbling football club
With success: fifty years later he is still signing for FC Knudde. The comics are about the bizarre experiences of a bumbling football club. The slogan ‘tikkie trug’ has now become national heritage.
In 1988 Van Driel won the Stripschap Prize, the highest Dutch award for cartoonists, for his entire oeuvre. Another well-known series by the artist is De Stamgasten, in which animals end up in strange situations. Toon recently signed 23 comics about Max Verstappen.
Text continues below Toon’s drawing of Max Verstappen.
“I’ve had such a crazy busy life,” says Toon. That realization hit him even harder after he read his own biography. “All in all, I think I deserved one of those,” he says of the award. “Yes, it does make you laugh.”
“Now I am finally being taken seriously as a cartoonist,” he says. “I am very proud, I am a knight, no one in our family is. Or in the newspaper. It is the highest honor a cartoonist can receive.”