Private Eye writer and cartoonist Fantoni bids farewell, now

So. Farewell then. Barry Fantoni – Private Eye writer and cartoonist. After 47 years at the satirical magazine, the creator of some of its most famous characters, including obituary poet EJ Thribb, is retiring.

Fantoni is one of the last links to Private Eye's 1960s roots, having been there for all but 31 of its 1,278 issues.

The intros to EJ Thribb's rhyming obituaries: "So. Farewell then. ..." has become journalistic shorthand for anybody moving on, in this world or the next.

Fantoni also co-created one of Private Eye's longest-running regulars, royal correspondent Sylvie Krin, in the 1970s with former editor Richard Ingrams and more recently, came up with his popular Scenes You Seldom See cartoon.

He is moving to France today to write detective novels and his memoirs. Speaking to the Guardian, the day after attending the magazine's Christmas drinks, 70-year-old Fantoni said he had always wanted to live abroad and joked: "I'm going to drink myself to death in Calais."

He added: "The decision to leave was not easy – people usually leave Private Eye when they die – but when you feel you've made your last joke, that's really it."

When asked if his departure would mean the end of EJ Thribb's Poetry Corner, Fantoni said he had discussed the issue with Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and believed the matter was as yet undecided.

"The ones that are templates others might be able to take up. If someone's got a sense of humour you might have a stab at it," he added.

"More realistically, in my discussions with Ian I suggested you don't try and do that, you might see who comes forward once it's known I'm not there – all sorts of people might come forward.

"I've been there for all but 31 issues. There's not really an obvious replacement. Nick Newman will probably do more."

Fantoni added: "When I started at Private Eye, writing used to be done through a committee of three or four writers, now it might be done through people working on their own and sending things down the line. It's had 50 years of one kind of writing, with me going they'll have to find a new path and way of being funny."

Alongside his Private Eye work, he was the diary cartoonist for the Times between 1983 and 1991, and drew cartoons for the Listener and Radio Times. He also had stints as the Times' art critic and reviewed records for Punch magazine in the 1970s.

Fantoni attended the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art and was a figure in the 1960s pop art movement, along with contemporaries such as Sir Peter Blake and David Hockney. He is also an accomplished jazz musician, playwright and poet.

He wrote scripts for That Was The Week That Was, acted on film and TV and appeared in commercials, and in 1966 presented BBC music and fashion series A Whole Scene Going, which drew 16 million viewers, and which won him TV Personality of the Year.

The 70-year-old said he is planning to write two volumes of memoirs, the first about his time studying art and living in London in the 1950s, "when you could just bump into Dylan Thomas in Soho" and the second about his Private Eye years.

Fantoni, who wrote detective novels in the 1980s, said he is writing another about an 87-year-old sleuth. "It's about the world's oldest detective who is old and useless and talks about his illnesses."

The Christmas issue of Private Eye, Fantoni's last, does not contain a direct tribute: "You have to die for that to happen!", said Fantoni, but there are some "well-intentioned and warm footnotes" in the magazine.

They include a note under Fantoni's final Poetry Corner – about Monty Sunshine, the jazz clarinettist who died recently – which says: "EJ Thribb has retired to France where he will be performing a translation of his selected works Adieu, Alors in the Mairie at Calais between 6 and 7pm on Christmas Eve."

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