CARTOONIST Malky McCormick was “small in stature but larger than life,” a former depute leader of the SNP has said.

The well-known comic artist, whose work spanned four decades, died in an Ayrshire care home on Sunday and is survived by his children Jane, Sean and Dominic.

Yesterday , long-term friend George Leslie, a former SNP depute leader, shared memories of the man who gave Billy Connolly his Big Yin nickname.

McCormick, who covered politics, sport and daily life, was diagnosed with vascular dementia two years ago, but had been a keen hillwalker in earlier days as a member of a four-strong group including Leslie, who said: “Malky was full of vitality – he was almost over-the-top, he was so full of vitality. He was small in stature but larger than life.”

The pair met in the 1960s, before McCormick moved from graphic designer to cartoonist. Leslie said the friendship helped accomplish the career change through a “doodle” for a 1966 council election campaign leaflet. He recalled: “I was looking for somebody to do a wee design picture for a political leaflet and I started on a beer mat, scribbling down as I was talking and it was absolutely perfect.

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“The editor of a newspaper phoned me up and said ‘who did your leaflet?’ I’m not sure if that got him his first big job, but it certainly helped. They were done in old fashioned lead characters and I thought ‘these will be worth money some day’. But my house burned down and they melted with the heat, so I lost them.

He continued: “We used to go hillwalking with another two friends, and very often Malky would be at the tail end. We were climbing a hill on a day when the rain was sheeting down, and it was at a time when licensing closed pubs in the afternoon.

“We were huddling behind a rock and we said ‘if we keep climbing this mountain, we can get it down and go home, but if we go now we can make the pub before it closes’. We ran like hell, and we made it a race.

“The other two were ahead when I saw a green field and I said to Malky we’d take a shortcut and cut them off. We vaulted over the fence and only then realised it was a cess pit. We ended up chest deep and had to go to the pub like that. We had to stay outside, the smell would have knocked you out.”

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As well as penning strips for newspapers and football clubs, McCormick was the resident cartoonist on popular ITV quiz show Win, Lose or Draw for 10 years. He provided cover art for the SNP’s Independence Magazine, but also, Leslie said, “did work for Labour as much as the SNP”. He added: “At election time, he was the first person to have a flag at his front door and he’d be asking why you didn’t have one.”

McCormick’s personal life was marred by an assault on his son Sean, who suffered brain damage in a violent attack outside a Kilmarnock nightclub at the age of 20, for which two men – a father and son – were sentenced to jail time.

McCormick was admonished by a sheriff in 2007 for an assault on his wife Ann. He said the impact of his son’s attack and the sentencing had contributed to his actions, but stated that these had been “unthinkable” and he “had no defence”.

The pair reconciled and Ann died of cancer before McCormick’s move into a residential care facility.