Charlie Mackesy: 'I was hiding in the toilet before I won my Oscar'

Fifteen minutes before Charlie Mackesy won an Oscar earlier this year, he found himself hiding in a toilet.

Worried about the cameras and the crowd, he scrawled on a napkin and posted a photo of it to his 1.8 million Instagram followers.

"I didn't think I could even go on stage. I was quite daunted by it. Sometimes I don't even like to look at the statue, I've just got it at home wrapped in a t-shirt. It hasn't sunk in and I don't think it ever will," he says.

The author and illustrator won the award for best animated short film for The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, which was adapted from his hugely successful book of the same name.

Speaking to an audience of hundreds at Latitude Festival, not far from his home in Suffolk, Mackesy admits he was scared the film might not work.

He was worried about letting down his countless fans who regularly write to him explaining how much the book means to them.

"I wanted it to feel like the characters had walked off the page. I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling and I started to see the characters moving across it," he says.

The 60-year-old worked from a barn in Suffolk, collaborating with 130 animators during 3,000 hours of Zoom calls across two years to create the film, in which every frame was hand drawn.

The 35-minute film, starring Idris Elba and Tom Hollander, was shown on BBC One on Christmas Day last year and went on to win a BAFTA for best British short animation alongside the Oscar.

But Mackesy insists he takes more pleasure from the correspondence he receives from his audience than from the accolades.

"I get emails every single day. On a daily basis someone makes me weep. That is the greatest award for me. They might have watched the film over a cup of tea with their mum or there's a father and son who had a hug after watching it. The small things in life are the big things.

"At the top of each page in the script I wrote why we were making the film - to create something that makes people feel a bit less alone and more themselves."

The self-taught artist attempted university twice but left to travel to the US where he spent three months training under a portrait painter.

He worked as a cartoonist for The Spectator and as a book illustrator for the Oxford University Press and was then taken on by galleries in London, New York and Edinburgh.

A drawing he posted on Instagram was spotted by an editor and it resulted in the famous book of ink drawings and sayings, published in October 2019.

It follows the unlikely friendship of a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse as they journey together in the boy's search for a home.

Mackesy says the boy is loosely based on him, the mole was inspired by his beloved and greedy 14-year-old dog Barney, the fox is Mackesy's anxious part and the horse is a wise soul.

"The boy to me was always quite lonely so I would put him on a tiny landscape with snow falling. I felt like he should just sit down in the snow into his own shadow, almost as a protest about feeling so lost.

"Human beings need connection and along comes the mole, who is the most socially courageous, he always says hello first.

"The fox has the greatest arc in the story, with the line about being loved. When we are vulnerable with each other we are strong. They dared to show their weak side and they bonded and they found their home in each other."

It was during the pandemic when one of his drawings went viral that Mackesy's life really started to change.

He began receiving emails from around the world. The military used the image to help soldiers suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder and NHS workers had it up on the wall in their wards and as their screensavers.

"I was overwhelmed. I would get letters from school children, from prisons and from doctors and nurses who are just so brave and they said the book was helping them through the pandemic. I keep them all in a file. I still look at them at night. Book sales are not important to me, but these letters mean everything."

The stats might not be important to Mackesy, but his book became an instant international hit with more than 8m sales. It was translated into 40 languages and is currently the biggest-selling UK hardback this century.

The biggest personal change for Mackesy, who lives alone with his dog, is that he has experienced so many human connections and interactions over the last few years.

"I had someone come up to me and say, 'I just want you to know that I decided to stay, I'm still here today because of this book'. Someone else told me I have given people licence to be kind. The sheer energy and support has carried me through the last few years.

"When I draw I feel like I am connecting with people. I'm so grateful for everything that has happened. I cry a lot more now. I'm a bit scruffier than I was. I'm very moved by human beings, more than ever before.

"The sharing of humanity has blown my heart apart, it has ripped it open over the last three years."

Mackesy hints that another book is in the pipeline, featuring the same characters and perhaps "some other creatures on this planet who are struggling".

"I'm shocked we even made a book. The first book wasn't meant to be a book, it was just me sharing drawings to cheer people up, so I'm trying to pretend to myself that this is the same. It would be nice if it was a book, but it may not be.

"Every day I wake up wondering what I will draw today. I'm just another human trying to tell the truth.

"Love, kindness and empathy are the answer. And cake."