Gren

Rugby, tightly-packed terraced streets, and local politicians all supplemented popular recurring characters, including: Nigel and Neville the message-bearing sheep; Ponty and Pop; and Bromide Lil, the tattooed barmaid of the Golden Dap.

[3] He was also a fast and professional worker: after a morning discussion with the paper's editor, his cartoons were drawn and ready to go by 9.50am – always topical and funny, they were never offensive.

His local popularity gave him other opportunities, including drawing the cover for the Max Boyce album We All Had Doctors' Papers, and resultantly became the first cartoonist to receive a gold disc from the record company EMI.

He was honoured by the Variety Club for his charity work;[6] given an honorary degree by the University of Glamorgan in 2004;[7] and was made an MBE for services to newspapers in 1989.

Gren, who lived in the Llandaff area of Cardiff, died at the city's University Hospital of Wales on Thursday 4 January 2007.

He raised a large amount of money for charity, he was crazy on rugby and was the only Welshman I'd ever met who sang out of tune deliberately.

Gren continued to work to the end, with his constant friend and pal at his side: Charlie Friday of Llandaff – a Cocker Spaniel.