Here are edited excerpts from interviews that I have given in recent years.
Tell us a bit about you, your background and how you ended up doing what you do.
I didn't have a tragic childhood, which is a terrible disadvantage for a cartoonist. I lived quietly in Surrey with supportive, middle-class parents and had piano lessons. Where's the drama in that?
I went to university in Brighton and got an English degree, and in the process got involved in partying and protest around the time of the Criminal Justice Bill. (That's 1994. Ancient history now. "What's a free party, mum?") Then I went and lived in a tree in some beautiful woodland on the site of an opencast mine in South Wales, and another on the path of the Newbury bypass, and one on the route of the A30 in Devon. Got very dirty. Had lots of fun. Got arrested a lot. Which was all grist to the cartoon mill. I've written a book about it, "Copse: The cartoon book of Tree Protesting" which confused booksellers, who tended to categorise it under "humour" rather than politics.
I also participated in People's Global Action, journeying to international protests against the World Bank and G8. And I travelled to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement and drew cartoons about the situation of the people there.
Funny Weather started out as a 16 page comic about climate change, back in 1999 when there was very little awareness of the mechanisms of climate change. Once I wrote that, I had a good grasp of the science and collated more information on the subject until in 2006 I had more than enough for a book. Funny Weather could have been twice as long, but I’m glad I had to pare it down to such a slim page count, as I think its brevity helps it pack a punch.
The Food of Love: your formula for successful breastfeeding is my most recent book. I’ve also become involved in work about miscarriage and grief counseling, drugs awareness, conflict resolution, home education – a whole host of ideas about a range of issues. And I’m developing my fine art work. Busy busy busy.
What sparked your interest in art and drawing?
I blame my mother. She sent a note to school to tell the teacher that I was allowed to draw in the back of my exercise books. It all started from there.
I started doing the odd birthday card, and then when I was living in Brighton I had a postcard made – it’s a drawing of a woman with her top up and her belly hanging out and says “Can you pinch more than an inch? Do you give a shit?” In the mid 1990s, I was part of the anti-roads protests when The Guardian phoned me and said “Draw us some cartoons about living in a tree.” So I’d sit around muddy campfires, drawing and saying to people “Don’t put your dirty fingers on it!”
In a way, my work was an embodiment of that feminist phrase “the personal is political” in that I was involved in political activity, and recording personal stories from within it. Cartoons are a great way to make the unfamiliar accessible to people, so it helped the public see that "Environmental activists" are people and that environmental activism can be fun.
These days my work takes a more abstract approach to subjects, but is still as politically charged. As George Orwell said "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art".
What or who inspires you?
I don’t need inspiration; it’s more an inner compulsion. So many of my friends are worried about what they’re doing with their life whereas I’m just sitting in the corner filling up another sheet of paper. I love the freedom in combining art, words and pictures into cartoons. Steve Bell, Jackie Flemming, Len Deighton, Cath Jackson and Posy Simmonds are some major early influences. I’m currently inspired by the work of Alison Bechdel, Seth Tobocman, Lynda Barry, Phoebe Glockner, Joe Sacco, Polyp, Marjane Satrapi and Ellen Forney.
Is your work aimed at children or adults?
People often ask me what my "target audience" is. It's me. I draw cartoons that I like. I hope they are accessible to people of a wide range of ages. It's great that children like my work; I think that's really inspiring. But I don't just want my work to be read by children, I want it to be read by politicians, by world leaders. They are the ones who are meant to be doing something about this situation.
Which bit do you enjoy the most when you put together a book – the research, the writing or drawing the cartoons?
Oooh, that's a good question. I like the research because I like learning new things, and piecing together the form of an argument, and breaking new ground.
The writing always comes first, and it's generally always there in my brain, so it can seem like a release to finally get some ideas that have been crystallising for years down on paper. What I don't like about the writing process is being copy edited. It's incredibly irritating having a sub-editor go through your work with red pen saying "oh, I'm not sure we can say this." It's good though, in the end, as it small subtle changes to the text can help you make the same argument in a better way.
Drawing is very, very satisfying, and I can carry on a conversation at the same time. Now my son is a bit bigger, we've finally got to the stage where he can play or work alongside me while I draw and we can chat away. I love that. Sometimes it does get a bit tiring dashing out a lot of line drawings for an image-heavy part of the text so I like to get out my oil paints from time to time and do some big, colourful artwork instead of fiddly black and white stuff.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
I just want people to find my cartoons inspiring. I certainly don’t want them to feel lectured at. I don’t pretend to have the answers – I just draw cartoons about the questions.
Have you seen an improvement in people’s behaviour about climate change in recent years?
I don't know. To be honest, I haven't seen much of an improvement in my own behaviour, and I've written a book on the subject! I still drive a car.
There is definitely more awareness of the problem, but the danger is that people are confused about what to do next. Low-carbon technologies are not going to save us unless they are accompanied by a binding commitment to reductions in emissions. The debate has become twisted into talk about how global warming is providing exciting new opportunities for business. That's crazy. It's capitalism that got us into this mess. It's not going to get us out of it. The oil companies are the richest and most powerful on the planet, and now we need to tell them to stop getting the stuff out of the ground and selling it. That's a big step to take.
Until I see massive investment in low-carbon infrastructure such as public transport, and binding international agreements on carbon reductions, I'm not going to get optimistic about people's behaviour.
What’s your opinion of Al Gore?
During the 1990's I was living in a tree on the route of a motorway to prevent it being cut down, and to raise awareness of environmental issues. At the same time, Al Gore was Vice President of the United States of America. He had plenty of opportunity to do something meaningful for the Earth when he was in power, but did he do it?
Which of us do you trust to tell you about the environment?
What drives you mad?
I get very upset by celebrity culture and reality TV. If we spent some time being with each other instead of sitting inside watching boxes and slagging each other off, I think it would make for a much healthier society.
What’s your greatest fear?
That climate change will spiral out of control and that the world will become uninhabitable for humans and that my children are condemned to die horribly with everyone else.
What’s been your best holiday/trip?
Going to Prague for the G8 protest in 1999. Me and 13 other women took two vans full of pink and silver material with us and sewed furiously to make these amazing costumes. I got behind the police lines to talk to the delegates wearing a 5ft pink and silver fantail and a floor length evening gown. The riot police didn’t know what to do with me!
Your previous work has been about climate change, the anti-roads movement, the American occupational of Iraq. On the face of it, a book about breastfeeding seems to be quite a departure. Why the apparent change of direction?
I found myself wondering what had happened to my anarchist credentials when I started writing a book about babies. For about five minutes. Helping people to have a happy start in life has to be the fundamentally most important thing to create a functioning society. It's no accident that oppressive nursery regimes and boarding schools became popular along with the rise of the British Empire and industrialisation. Avoidant attachment would seem to be a prerequisite for an empire builder. If my book can help one mother connect with their baby in an easy and happy way, then that's an act with profound political consequences. Scientific analysis as well as common sense tells us that happy babies grow into happy adults, who might have the confidence to recognise injustice and question the status quo.
As a committed environmental campaigner, was breastfeeding a 'no-brainer' when it came to your own baby?
Yes. And I'm allergic to cow's milk. And so is his dad. And he turned out to be dairy intolerant too. Yep, no-brainer.
Tell us a bit about your own breastfeeding experience.
Except it wasn't exactly straightforward. He was premature, but still suckled, so that was good, and in a way it was nice to devote the first five weeks of his life to doing nothing but carrying and feeding him, because he wasn't even meant to be born yet. Then he got thrush. Then I got thrush – and the only thing that helped that was an ancient bottle of gentian violet that my mum fished out of her medicine cupboard. Then I got mastitis. Then I got it again. Then I got an abscess. Then I cracked the other nipple. Then I met a wonderful lactation consultant who was very pragmatic about breast abscesses. Then it burst, spectacularly, and my little sister took a photo and sent it to rotten.com.
I remember looking at a friend latching on her nine-month-old and thinking "Why can't it be that easy for me?" Of course, a month later it was.
Why was it important for you to produce The Food of Love?
Because breastfeeding can be so lovely! When you see a baby feed until they're full, they're filled with such contentment that it's not hard to argue that that experience is part of a baby's birthright. It's sad that so many babies never get those special cuddles. Because breastfeeding can be really nice for mothers too. It can feel really really nice. The fact that you're feeding your baby a living fluid that provides them with perfect nutrition and protects them from infections is an added bonus.
And because women are isolated, unsupported and misinformed about the realities of childcare. The vast majority of women in the UK give up breastfeeding in those first six weeks, and I believe that is for three reasons.
They never learn how to put the baby onto the breast, because they've never seen it done, and no-one has shown them how to do it. Or they get one of the common breastfeeding complaints, and they can't access information to help them deal with it. And then, people just don't believe in breastfeeding. The baby has a growth spurt and needs to feed a lot, and the reaction of people around that vulnerable mother is to tell her that she's not making enough milk. Start feeding 'top-up' bottles, and bingo, there's a woman with a failing milk supply. It's not a medical problem. It's an attitude problem.
So, simple, I decided to write a book that has clear, step-by-step pictures to help women find the way of latching their little newborn on that works for them. I compiled a really comprehensive chapter on what to do if you run into difficulties. And I tried to help women understand that babies are different. Most of them like to breastfeed a lot, and for a lot of different reasons, so some of them might slot into those baby care routines, but most of them won't. Learning and listening to a baby is the most important skill that parents need to acquire, and breastfeeding can work really well with that. For good measure, I decided to chuck in a chapter with good information and practical suggestions for post-natal depression. It's not surprising that women get post-natal depression in our society. In fact, if you consider the pressures on and unrealistic expectations of modern mothers, it's surprising that more women don't get depressed!
The other reason why I wrote the Food of Love is that I find breastfeeding artistically inspiring. It was great drawing the Mama Sutra, and showing some of the different crazy ways you can end up feeding a baby. It was fun making inspiring artistic representations of lactation. When I drew the co-sleeping cartoon, I discovered that there are no images of co-sleeping anywhere on the Internet, it's an entirely private, secret act, so it's no wonder that when most parents decide where their baby is going to sleep, they think of a cot.
And most baby care books are so dull! It was really fun writing and drawing something with jokes in. If you have to stick cabbage leaves in your bra, then you need to be able to laugh about the situation.
Did you encounter anything surprising in the process of writing the book?
The hardest lesson that I've had to learn while writing The Food of Love is that there is no one right way to parent a child. I'm an activist – I like there to be a right and a wrong. Yet I've moved from being a passionate advocate of breastfeeders, to being a passionate advocate of mothers. New motherhood is such a sensitive, holy time, so I found myself being really careful in the way that I structured my writing in The Food of Love. There's no point getting the reader's back up, and dividing mothers into this camp or the other camp according to this or that mothering technique. The important thing is that babies are happy, have the breastmilk that is their birthright, and that mothers are supported in making that possible.
What advice would you like to share with new parents?
It's normal to worry. You're meant to worry. Babies have, over hundreds of thousands of years, survived because their mothers were really, really worried. Don't worry about worrying.
As well as creating fabulous timely books and drawing great cartoons, what else do you like doing?
Walking, singing and eating porridge. Not all at the same time.