For most of Exeter City's amateur and Southern League days Phil Barnes - 'Rover' of the Football Express - drew the cartoons that accompanied his Exeter City match reports and stories. When he left to join the Bristol Evening News in 1919, the reporters' baton passed to Cyril Payne ('The Chiel') with R C Letts taking over the cartoonist role. In time Mr Letts stepped aside for George Stillings - the renowned 'Stil' - who drew for the Football Express and Express and Echo until the 1960s. 

Richard Carrington Letts was born in London in 1867 and died in Exeter in 1951 aged eighty-three. Contemporary directories show him to have been a designer living in Heavitree.