Charles Addams

After seeing The Addams Family TV show, films and reading the collections of his cartoons you would think that Charles Addams was a black clad ghoul. But the truth is even stranger. Charlie was a chubby little man, not unlike Uncle Fester but with more hair, who was charming, witty, the life and soul of every party. He was also something of a babe-magnet, not a womaniser, women just wanted to be with him. He collected suits of armour, crossbows and other macabre items but he drove a Bugatti car and spent his weekends in a home on Long Island.

Charles did have trouble with one of his wives, Barbara Barb, who seemed to have her talons into him really deep. She had a few of his houses, the rights to many of his popular New Yorker cartoons as well as a percentage of anything bearing The Addams Family name.

Among his unpublished cartoons at home was a rough showing a newspaper office filled with telephones and reporters. There was the city desk, and there was the obituaries desk, at which a man sat taking information over the phone.

He was laughing.