This has been a very sad week for those of us at the Herald and, from your touching reaction, many readers, too.

It was the week we lost the long-time cartoonist for this column, Johnny Shakespeare. After taking redundancy last year following a 39-year career at this paper, Johnny was diagnosed with tongue cancer, and succumbed to it on Monday evening – at home, with his wife, Anna-Lisa Backlund and son Lukas, by his side.

His art was wonderful, distinguished by the fact that, as was noted in the Herald obituary, he somehow managed to draw caricatures of public figures that could be all of hilarious, lightly mocking and insightful, without ever being hurtful, personal or mean.

Part of it was Johnny’s own ever-sunny disposition and generosity of spirit. He just couldn’t bring himself to focus only on someone’s flaws and always saw his own humanity reflected in them, if that makes sense. I chronicled the sheer warmth of the man in farewelling him from this column, in August last year, and I run those words again now, to farewell from this world, so that his art and his spirit can lift us one more time for the road in these pages:

“As great an artist that he is, he is a better man and has always stood out as a gentle, selfless soul, always with a quiet smile, an endlessly cheery presence in whatever room he entered.

“So here is my request to you, John. How about a self-portrait on your last day at the mighty Herald? I’ll back-announce, and you come out from behind the curtain to give us your farewell, image. Friends, please give it up for ... JOHN SHAKESPEARE!

“Onya, Johnny. You will be missed.”

We weep.

Shakespeare’s farewell cartoon for this column.Credit: John Shakespeare

Which brings me to last week’s rant about “hate-bait” and the regular unleashing of murderous media mayhem on those who have no ability to defend themselves, in this case – STOP THE PRESSES, and SOUND THE ALARMS! ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! – a 13-year-old transgender student competing in a school carnival in Adelaide, sometime last year. Inevitably, and you could set your watch by it, I became the target of a little hate-bait myself – like I care – which at least meant they were picking on someone their own size for a nice change.

I honestly couldn’t be bothered to do more than glance at it, but the guts of it, I gather, is the notion that I am indeed all in favour of male truck-drivers in tutus, swarming and storming their way through girls dressing-rooms and back fields across our brown and pleasant land.

Yeah, nah. I am actually in favour of not monstering a 13-year-old kid who wants to be included in the activities of her school........

© The Sydney Morning Herald