And so to the 101 Talbot restaurant, where they were unveiling "101 cartoons: An awful lot of awful little drawings by the awful Tom Mathews". At 50 quid a throw for an original painting, the miniature jokes were virtually walking out the door on the night - or more likely they were staggering out the door holding their sides. The exhibition is the result of six months' work, says Tom Mathews, who works late into the night - "people think I'm a bon viveur, but I think I'm more of a mal viveur" (See his work in Weekend 7).
Many fellow artists were there on the night - Bernadette Madden, Eamon O'Doherty, James Hanley, Stephen Dee, Maggie Deignan, Alwyn Gillespie, Adrienne Geoghegan, Phelim Connolly, Johnny Devlin and Gwen O'Dowd, who is getting ready for her London exhibition opening in January. The place was full of old friends - one person commented, "almost everyone here worked in Captain America's at some stage", including Barry Doyle, who is even writing a book about the the history of the well known Grafton Street restaurant and meeting place (Jim Fitzpatrick is doing the cover and Tom is illustrating).