The interview that Gary Groth was going to do with Robert Crumb at the Graphic festival in Sydney, has been done by phone and put online instead. Groth was a guest of Graphic the previous year.

GARY GROTH: Do you have any regrets about not going to Australia?

R. CRUMB: Well, I didn’t until you told me that the streets were full of Crumb girls. [Laughter.]

Groth: Which they are.

Crumb: That’s when I started regretting it. [Groth laughs.] That’s about it. Otherwise, I didn’t want to go that badly. I wouldn’t have even thought of going at all if Jordan Verzar had just asked me outright, but when he sent me those photos — that was it.

Jordan showed me those photos on his iphone in Tasmania in January when we took the Neil reading down to the Mona Foma festival. I laughed very hard. He had hired a number of models in the shape of the girls that Crumb likes to draw and did a photo-shoot to persuade the artist to come over. It was all very witty and done just right.

Since I wasn't blogging in January, here's a photo from Mona Foma (more here):