LJ Sylva, Bronzo & Bling Well, if you didn't guess it already, yes, this is a nod in the direction of RL Stevenson's Long John Silver. And you may also have noticed the suggestion that he has only one eye - the other 
one being glass, hence the lop-sided stare Pablo refers to.
So as he is Silver, I decided to make his sidekicks represent Gold (Bling) and Bronze (Bronzo) - appropriate, since they are obsessed with riches.
Donald and Cornelius Pablo isn't the only one in this story to have an awful lot to live up to. Donald and Cornelius' father, being American, named them after two American tycoons: Donald Trump and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Another parent who has set himself up for disappointment!
I've never seen the Richie Roach cartoon show [Toonhead]. Is it real?
No, I made it up!
Did you do the drawings yourself?
Yes. It made sense, since I can draw and knew exactly what I wanted; it would have been hard to convey to an illustrator, and there would have been no point anyway.
What gave you the idea to write Toonhead?
I actually wrote it quite a long time ago (2003!), so it's not easy for me to reconstruct now how the various elements came together.
Thinking about the life of Picasso, which I had read about in the first, and later second volume of John Richardson's wonderfully detailed and authoritative biography, was one part of the inspiration. Spain in general was another.
Also, at the time my kids were in the habit of watching Cartoon Network , and I was usually around making supper for them at the time. Some of the cartoons were wonderfully surreal; one of my favourites was Mo Willems' Sheep in the Big City , which had General Specific and Private Public strenuously trying to rid the city of Sheep (singular). Every now and then we'd come across a machine called the Plot Device. Mad. And Really Out There.
Then there were other factors such as uptight middle-class parents and my general feeling of jadedness whenever I contemplated most of what current artists (particularly in Britain) were producing. The kidnap plot developed later.
Are any of the characters based on real people?
As usual, the answer is yes, and no. Pablo's parents are completely made up, but they are composites of certain types I have come across. There are elements of someone I used to know in Aunt Dot; the pipe smoking, the brown teeth and the green clothes all came from this lady. Also LJ Sylva is somewhat inspired by someone I had the misfortune to be acquainted with.