“I’m 65 now and have been a published cartoonist since I was 32 – I have done the Cluff cartoon in the Echo for about 25 years now and Private Eye longer than that. Prior to that I worked in a council planning department in Middlesbrough for five years and did bits and pieces before that.

“I was drawing cartoons since I could hold a pencil, but it did not occur to me that I could make a living from it. I paint as well. I must have had more than 15,000 cartoons published, but one day I will sit down and work it out exactly.

“What has happened in Paris [at the magazine Charlie Hebdo] is shocking. You expect cartoonists to be almost invisible. There is always a level of self-censorship regardless, but in future I worry that this may be affected by what has happened, out of fear almost. I’d hate to think ‘I’m not doing this because of those events’, but you just don’t know.

“With something like Private Eye I just send in whatever I think and they say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. With The Northern Echo I ring up and see what’s going to be in the paper the next day.

“In the past I have been quite pleased if there has been complaints about my cartoons, as it means you are provoking people, but this [the shootings] is something else. With religion I feel comfortable satirising the Church of England because you don’t perceive a threat, but with Islam you are now on dodgier ground. I would still attempt a cartoon, but would try and find a way that would not be overtly offensive.

“Being a cartoonist is quite isolating and I very rarely meet other cartoonists from one year to the other. There is a community, but it just exists online really. Since what happened I have had a few emails and people have already been sending cartoons around condemning these killings. There is outrage and anger at what is an attempt to cause division and fear.

“I have heard of [Charlie Hebdo] and I know some of the cartoonists’ work by sight as I go to France each summer to visit my wife’s brother. They have got quite a strong satirical tradition.

“They will go to places that Private Eye wouldn’t. They have challenged everything, politics, the church, all religions and are very left wing. It is a good thing that some of the people who have expressed outrage and condemnation have been some of the prime targets of the magazine.

“My cartoons are a bit of a mixture. Occasionally they are to provoke or make a few people angry. Until I started with the Echo I didn’t do topical news, it was more surrealist and historical kind of stuff.

“There was a cartoon years ago I did in the Echo about seals being poisoned by pollution in the North Sea which led to letters from people complaining about cruelty to animals, but this was a cartoon.

“I had a couple of seals covered by rubbish, looking very sick, and one of them saying to the other ‘Would you not rather have your head battered by a baseball bat?’ It was nothing against seals, but there were complaints that it was in poor taste.

“My sense of humour used to be fairly black, but has got a bit lighter over the years. That’s because I know what’s more likely to be printed. I still do quite a number of cartoons about death, but have come to realise what is acceptable and who the audience is.

“The cartoons for Private Eye can be fairly brutal, but most importantly it has to be funny.

“I am perpetually in a state whereby I think I have run out of ideas. I draw everyday and always have a sketch book with me so I can scribble something. It is just second nature and helps me translate what I might be thinking.

“A cartoon enables you to get across an idea as simply as you can and as quickly as possible.

“I like Steve Bell [Guardian cartoonist] as he doesn’t make any bones about who he hates. He said you can’t let them [the terrorists] get away with it, and I would hope the same thing.

“These people want to create divisions and you are giving them another victory if you go down that road.”