John Watts

Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe looks at that most English of things - the folly.

Poppy is a celebration of Victorian values and exposes the hypocrisy, racism, drug dealing, money worship and sexual repression of the time through its favourite entertainment form, pantomime. Dick Whittington, his man Jack, Sally the Principal Girl, the Dame, two pantomime horses, a flying ballet, a transformation scene and even the traditional song-sheet are all brought on to tell the serious and finally devasting story of the single most profitable crop of the British East India Company.

A waiter hurrying from table to table in a crowded Italian restaurant picks up titbits of conversation from the varied clientele.