A selection of postcards showing Pilot Officer Prune cartoons by Bill Hooper.
Pilot Officer Prune, Patron of the Most Highly Derogatory Order of the Irremovable Finger, was famous throughout the Allied Air Forces, not for achievement, but for non-achievement. He was the fool, the mutt, the butt, the clot - doyen of all flying fools. He permeated the pages of the RAF’s official and “restricted” training manual, “TEE EMM”, in cartoons by Bill (‘Raff’) Hooper.
William John (Bill) Hooper (21 August 1916 – 14 October 1996) was a British cartoonist. At the start of World War II he enrolled as an air gunner, but was soon transferred to ground staff. During the war he met Anthony Armstrong, editor of the training manual, "Tee Emm", and together they created the character of PO Prune as a way of instructing wartime pilots what not to do if they wanted to save their lives and their aircraft.
In the post-war years, Hooper and Armstrong produced a number of successful books. Hooper worked as political cartoonist for the Sunday Chronicle, and later for the BBC as presenter of the series ‘Willy the Pup’. He also formed a studio of artists to create animations for BBC programmes. He produced a strip cartoon for The Star newspaper before returning to television as, first, an artist and later a presenter. He was also worked for several years as a columnist for the Sunday Pictorial.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Hooper (accessed December 2022)
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