BARRY FANTONI
1940 - 2025
Barry Fantoni at Private Eye
BARRY FANTONI got to Private Eye late – it had already been going for just over a year – but very quickly made himself an integral part of the magazine, and remained so for more than five decades.
It was an exhibition of his art at the Woodstock gallery in early 1963 that first brought Barry into the Eye orbit. It included his satirical painting of Prince Philip as a dress-up doll, complete with choice of military uniforms, kilt and polo kit, entitled Portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh in His Underpants. This caused chuntering in the royalist press and chuckles at the magazine’s Soho offices when Barry brought a set of photographs of it and other works in to show Richard Ingrams, then billed as contributions editor.
“He liked them, and he said, ‘Would you do something like this for us?’” Fantoni recalled many years later. “We agreed between us that we would do something called the Hall of Fame – we would discuss between us what the essence of the drawing would be, and I would then add my own particular detail.”