Oxfordian through and through, Ivor Roberts joins the Oxford Mail and This is Oxfordshire, after an extraordinary life as a teacher, postman and circus performer. George Frew reports . . .

Ivor Roberts has eyes a shade of blue you might find in a Van Gogh painting, but he cheerily admits that his sense of humour borders on the black.

Ivor RobertsAt 61, he is as lean as a greyhound in training and can look back on a career which has, to date, included stints as a circus act, a cabaret artiste, a theatre performer, a postman and a teacher.

Right now, he is one of Britain's top cartoonists whose work appears in Private Eye, The Spectator, Punch, The New Statesman, The Sun and The Mirror.

Next week sees him begin a daily pocket cartoon on the front page of theOxford Mail.

Ivor's cartoons frequently highlight the absurdities of everyday life, capturing the sense of a world going quietly mad.

When Ivor recently retired from teaching in Blackbird Leys, after 18 years there, he decided he would like to do more than simply feed cartoons to national publications.

As someone born and brought up in Oxford - he went to Southfield Grammar School - Ivor found himself dreaming up cartoons based on local issues, and liked the thought of becoming actively involved in the city.

He prepared a few examples of what he had in mind and sent them, with a covering letter, to the editor of the Oxford Mail, Jim McClure.

Jim, who had drawn Signs of the Times, a front-page pocket cartoon for The Oxford Times for more than two years, gave a whoop of delight when he opened Ivor's neat portfolio.

"Brilliant stuff!" he enthused to his team. "Only somone who really knows Oxford, the county, and what it's really like to live here could possibly have drawn these.

"Plus, Ivor's drawing is first-rate and his wicked sense of humour is bound to cheer up every reader every day of the publishing week."

He works in his Kennington living room at a big, heavy old kitchen table which was constructed from some lumps of wood destined for the bonfire by his wife, Jenny.

Ivor and Jenny met at The Forum Dance Hall, in Oxford, which used to be opposite the Examination Schools on High Street, in the days just before the Sixties started to swing.

The Forum is long gone, of course, but the Roberts' marriage is more solid than Ivor's work table, having survived the tawdry temptations and separations of showbusiness and the raising of three daughters: Helen, Rowena and Lorna.

With their own children grown and gone, the Roberts have become foster parents to children like Joe. There is a sense of inevitability about this. They are that sort of people and their Kennington home is warm, comfortable and clearly made for a family.

As Joe concentrates on increasing his GameBoy score levels, keeping Jenny informed of his progress with a running commentary, Ivor recalls how his dad kindled his interest in acrobatics.

"After leaving school I became a PE teacher but I kept up my interest in acrobatics and appeared at village fetes and stuff during the school holidays."

His talent made him decide to give it a go professionally and Jenny became that showbiz stalwart - The Lovely Assistant.

Spangled and sequinned, she'd look on as Ivor propelled himself up stage stairs on one hand and juggled up a storm.

They took their act from South Africa to Turkey and the Far East to the black-pudding belt of the northern club circuit. Once, they played at what was then Oxford's New Theatre in The Basil Brush Show.

But after ten years, Jenny had had enough and daughter Helen was on the way. For a while, Ivor carried on performing solo, appearing in circuses in Scotland and theatres in England but eventually decided that "this just wasn't for me - not on my own".

So he returned home - and became a postman, a window cleaner and a factory worker. "I couldn't get back into teaching at the time and I actually quite enjoyed being a postman," he recalls.

It was while he was doing this and looking after the trio of chickens the family had acquired that Ivor started cartooning.

The chickens were in no way conducive to his muse, but metaphorically, they were soon coming home to roost, in terms of the acceptance and success of his cartoons.

"You know, it's a lovely feeling when you have an idea that just leaps into your head," he says. "I'm not one for the serious stuff - I prefer a cartoon to be funny.

"When Giles was around at the (then) Daily Express, he was the best there was and I think Mat on The Daily Telegraph is pretty good, too.'

One wall of the Roberts' front room is filled with framed photographs of them in their showbusiness days, black and white, eight by four and 12 by six, a frozen record of a big part of their life.

Their daughters' likenesses also fill the room, along with drawings and pictures of much-loved family pets.

To enable photographer Jon Lewis to get one of the pictures he was after to accompany this piece, Ivor happily agreed to draw a lifesize cartoon of his own head on a sheet of white cardboard.

His first attempt proved too large, so he had another go, getting Jon to help him to get the scale correct.

"I'm not as big-headed as I thought," Ivor says.

But he has a sizeable talent and a big sense of humour which his simple lines commit clearly and easily to paper.

Oxford Mail readers are in for a quirky 5.7cm by 3.2cm treat. Six days a week.