Genius Fan

It finally came to an end: the Prime Ministers on the Pan series of blog posts on Genius Fan. I sketched 14 different men sitting on or hovering over a pot, pan or commode. (Fourteen men over 16 administrations.) That’s gonna leave a mark. Let me tell you about it.

• See all the PM on the Pan posts

The plan for PMs on the Pan

I hatched the PMs on the Pan series back in November 2025. I thought it would be a silly, lightweight series of posts about all the Prime Ministers from the Eighteenth century. People will be amused at the sketches of men sitting on the toilet. They’ll be drawn in by the images then they’ll read the posts to find out who each person was. Britain has a noble tradition of lavatory-related satire and the Eighteenth Century was the golden age. It all seemed to tie up nicely. My favourite century, the lavatory, the satire and an interesting sequence of blokes all with the same mission of running the country.

Sketching the PMs sitting on the Pan

I published each episode on Monday (except for the last one about William Pitt…I was ill, groan). That meant I’d do my research during the week, start writing over the weekend, but in the middle of the week I’d already start doodling the sketch of whichever man was PM and putting him on the pan. There was the likeness, the composition, the accompanying text on the image, and the overall story. And I was surprised to discover there are only so many ways to draw someone sitting on the loo:

1. Sitting, face on (eg. Walpole)
2. Sitting, side ways, facing left or right (eg. Bute)
3. Sitting, three quarters view (eg. Shelburne)
4. Sitting, with their back to the viewer (eg. Pelham)
5. Sitting, leaning (eg. Rockingham)
6. Hovering (eg. Grenville)
7. Standing and peeing (eg. Pitt the Elder)

There may be seven configurations of PM on the Pan, but in reality there’s only sitting on a pot/commode or hovering. I did ’em all.

The sketches, the false starts, the practice compositions, the tracing paper, and the sketchbooks would all be open on the dining room table every morning my wife came down to breakfast. (I do most of my drawing from 10pm to 1am.) Most of the time it was just a mass of sketches, but every once in a while I’d see the papers and pages with fresh eyes, seeing it all fir the first time, sort of, and realise: That looks pretty weird. Men in powdered wigs sitting on a pot or a pan or a commode. All at different angles, penscil sketches and inked in sketches on tracing paper. The silliest one was William Pitt the Elder, because it was instantly clear what he was doing, leaning back and urinating, but missing a small pot 10 feet away.

And often I wouldn’t clear away the artwork, but would leave it there so when I was at work – I work 9 to 5 from home at that very same dining room table – I’d be taking video calls but on my left was a series of sketches of the Duke of Devonshhire sitting on a commode. And like anything that has to be done on a certain date, it starts off as funny, but very quickly becomes work – ie. not funny. I stopped seeing the amusing side and just focused on the angles, the story I was telling in the composition, trying to get a likeness in an image that was going to get reduced in size for the blog post.

I’m working on some proper watercolour head and shoulder portraits of all 14 PMs. It’s a way of ‘cleansing’ my spirit after spending so much time on that subject matter. Talking of which, here’s a PSA about doing your business.

Lessons NOT learned from drawing sixteen PMs on the Pan

I’m sixty years old. Take it from me, these are real, innit:

1. Don’t spend unnecessary time sitting on the pan
2. Don’t strain when you have to go Number 2
3. Get your knees raised up to make p**ping easier
4. Consider using a raised platforms for your feet to align your colon
5. Don’t hold on to it…if you gotta go…find somewhere to go