NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Viz (comic)

Viz is a popular British adult comic magazine that has been running since 1979. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (714x1000, 146 KB) Summary Cover of Viz (comic), a UK adult humour comic. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (714x1000, 146 KB) Summary Cover of Viz (comic), a UK adult humour comic. ... A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ... For the Smashing Pumpkins song, see 1979 (song). ...

At its best, the comic's style parodies the strait-laced British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with incongruous language, crude toilet humour and either sexual or violent story lines. It also sends up tabloid newspapers, with mockeries of articles and letters pages. It features competitions and advertisements for overpriced 'limited edition' tat, as well as obsessions with half-forgotten celebrities from the 1970s and 1980s such as Shakin' Stevens and Rodney Bewes. Occasionally it satirises current events and politicians, but has no particular political standpoint. Its success has led to the appearance of numerous rivals crudely copying the format Viz pioneered; none of them has managed seriously to challenge its popularity. It once enjoyed being the third most popular magazine in the UK, but circulation has since dropped to just over 300,000 (from 1.2 million). This is mainly because its comic remit has become broader and its identity less unique, but also partly due to the fact that price has increased sharply to £2.60 and it is now published 'monthly' ten times a year. This article is about the comic. ... The Dandy is a British childrens comic published by D. C. Thomson & Co. ... Toilet humour or potty humour (humor in American English) is a type of humour dealing with defecation, urination and other bodily functions. ... // WorldSex Daily Updated Free Links to Hardcore Sex Pictures, Movies, Free Porn Videos and XXX Live Sex Cams. ... Violence is any act of aggression and abuse which causes or intends to cause injury, in some cases criminal, or harm to persons, and (by some definitions) animals or property. ... Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ... Competition is the act of striving against another force for the purpose of achieving dominance or attaining a reward or goal, or out of a biological imperative such as survival. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing Billboards and street advertising in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, (2005) Advertising is paid communication through a non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. ... Shakin Stevens (born Michael Barrett, 4 March 1948) is a Welsh rock and roll singer born in Cardiff, who has the distinction of being the top selling UK singles artist of the 1980s. ... Rodney Bewes (born 27 November 1938 born in Bingley, West Yorkshire) is a British TV actor probably best known for playing the lovable Bob Ferris in the classic BBC sitcoms The Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Bewes was RADA trained and got his break in the... Highlights The so-called iTunes Law, which Apple has called state-sponsored piracy, is approved by the French Parliament (coat of arms pictured). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Some of its comedic devices, for example, generating the illusion of an entire comic-strip "universe" with a "one off" strip, often based on a surrealistic pun, were widely employed in the earlier and now-defunct American humor magazine National Lampoon, which was itself more or less a sophisticated version of Mad Magazine. It has been suggested that dajare be merged into this article or section. ... National Lampoon is a humor magazine that began in 1970 as an offshoot of the Harvard Lampoon. ... Harvey Kurtzmans cover for the first issue of the comic book Mad Mad is an American humor magazine founded by publisher William Gaines and editor Harvey Kurtzman in 1952. ...

In a recently released coffee table book celebrating 25 years of Viz, cartoonist Graham Dury is quoted as saying: "We pride ourselves on the fact that you're no cleverer when you've read Viz. You might have had a few laughs, but you've not learnt anything". A coffee table book is a style of hardcover book designed to rest on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. ... Graham Dury (born in Clifton, Nottingham) is a British cartoonist. ...

History

The comic was started in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1979 by Chris Donald who produced the comic from his bedroom in his parents' Jesmond home, with help from his brother Simon and friend Jim Brownlow. It came about at around the time, and in the spirit of, the punk fanzines, and used alternative methods of distribution such as the prominent DIY record label and shop Falling A Records which was an early champion of the comic. The first 12-page issue went on sale for 20p (30p to students) in a local pub that hosted punk gigs, and within hours the run of 150 copies had sold out. What had begun as a few pages, photocopied and sold to friends, became a publishing phenomenon. To meet the demand, and to make up for Brownlow's diminishing interest in contributing, freelance artist Graham Dury was hired and worked alongside Chris Donald. This article is about a city in the United Kingdom. ... Chris Donald (born 25 April 1960 in Newcastle, England) is the founder of, and one of the principal contributors to, the British comic magazine Viz. ... Jesmond is a residential suburb just north of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. ... Simon Donald is a co-founder and co-editor of the British comic magazine Viz. ... A punk zine (or punkzine) is a fanzine devoted to punk rock music, bands, or the DIY punk philosophy. ... A fanzine (also called a zine) is an amateur publication created by fans of a particular cultural phenomena (such as a literary genre or type of music) to address or correspond with others who share their interest. ... Falling A Records was a very important Essex, England based Independent record label formed in the late 1970`s, and heavily involved with the D.I.Y cassette movement of the early 1980s. ... A thatched pub (The Williams Arms) at Wrafton, near Braunton, North Devon, England The Kings Arms Pub in Sandford-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. ... A small, much-used Xerox copier in a high school library. ... A freelancer or (freelance worker) is a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. ...

After a few years of steady sales, mostly in the North East of England, circulation had grown to around 5,000. As the magazine's popularity grew, the bedroom became too small and production moved to a nearby Jesmond office. Donald also hired another freelance artist, Simon Thorp, whose work had impressed him. For over a decade, these four would be the nucleus of Viz. In 1985 a deal was signed with Virgin Books to publish the comic nationally every two months. In 1987 the Virgin director responsible for Viz, John Brown, set up his own publishing company, John Brown Publishing, to handle Viz. Sales exploded, and at the end of 1989 passed one million, making Viz for a time the biggest-selling magazine in the country. Inevitably a number of imitations of Viz were launched but these never matched the original in popularity, and rarely in quality. North-east England is one of the nine official regions of England and comprises the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear and a small part of North Yorkshire. ... Jesmond is a residential suburb just north of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. ... ... Virgin Books is the book publishing arm of Virgin Enterprises, the company originally set up by Richard Branson as a record company. ... John Brown Publishing is a British magazine publisher with a stable including Viz and Fortean Times. ...

Sales steadily declined from the mid-1990s to around 200,000 in 2001, by which time Chris Donald had resigned as editor and passed control to an "editorial cabinet" comprising his brother, Simon, Dury, Thorp and new recruits Davey Jones and Alex Collier. In June 2001 the comic was acquired as part of a £6.4 million deal by I Feel Good (IFG), a company belonging to ex-Loaded editor James Brown, and increased in frequency to ten times a year. In 2003 it changed hands again when IFG were bought out by Dennis Publishing. Editing is the process of preparing language, images, or sound for presentation through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications. ... Categories: Magazines stubs | Mens magazines ... Dennis Logo Dennis Publishing Ltd. ...

Soon after, Simon Donald quit his role as co-editor, in an attempt to develop a career in television.

Much of the non-cartoon material such as the newspaper spoofs are now written by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris and Alex Morris, the authors of The Framley Examiner. The Framley Examiner (Framleys traditional favourite since 1978) is a parody of a newspaper in a small provincial English town. ...

Notable strips

For a complete list, see List of Viz comic strips Following is a list of recurring or notable one-off strips from the British adult spoof comic magazine Viz: Acker Bilk â€“ (See Jimmy Hill). ...

Many Viz characters have featured in long-running strips, becoming well-known in their own right, including spinoff cartoons. Characters often have rhyming or humorous taglines, such as Roger Mellie, the Man on the Telly, or Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres. Others are based on stereotypes of British culture, mostly via working class characters. In addition to this, the comic also contains plenty of 'in jokes' that refer to people and places in and around Newcastle upon Tyne. A cartoon is any of several forms of illustrations, with varied meanings that evolved from one to another. ... Roger Mellie (The Man on the Telly) is a fictional character featured in Viz magazine. ... Finbarr Saunders is a comic strip in the British comic book VIZ. It is about a boy (Finbarr) who is always listening in on conversations (often between his divorced mother and their neighbour, Mr. ... For the term used in its original printing sense, see etymology below. ... Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... An in joke is a joke whose humour is clear only to those people who are in a group that has some prior knowledge (not known by the whole population) that makes the joke humorous. ... This article is about a city in the United Kingdom. ...

Many strips appear only once. These very often have extremely surreal or bizarre storylines, and often feature celebrities. For example: "Paul Daniels's Jet-Ski Journey to the Centre of Elvis", and "Arse Farm – Young Pete and Jenny Nostradamus were spending the holidays with their Uncle Jed, who farmed arses deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside...". The latter type often follows the style of Enid Blyton and other popular children's adventure stories of the 1950s. Surreal humour is a form of humour, stylistically related to the artistic ambitions of the surrealists, based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations, and nonsense logic. ... Paul Daniels (born Newton Edward Daniels 6 April 1938 in South Bank, Middlesbrough) is a television magician from England. ... Jet ski is the brand name of Kawasaki Heavy Industries personal water craft. ... Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known as The King of Rock and Roll, or as just simply The King, was an American singer who had an immeasurable effect on world culture. ... Look up arse in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Sussex is a traditional county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. ... The Mystery of the Vanished Prince (1951) Enid Mary Blyton (August 11, 1897â€“November 28, 1968) was a British childrens author. ...

Most of the stories take place in the fictitious town of Fulchester. Fulchester was originally the setting of the British TV programme Crown Court before the name was adopted by the Viz team. Billy the Fish plays for Fulchester United F.C. There is an innuendo in the name. The Internet domain fuck.co.uk was at one time held by fans of Viz who claimed to be promoting the Fulchester Underwater Canoeing Klubb.[1] Fulchester is a fictitious town where most of the comic strips in the humorous Viz comic are based. ... Crown Court was an ITV afternoon television drama that ran from 1972 to 1985. ...

One of the most pun based strips was "George Bestial", which centered around famous footballer George Best commiting bestiality. The strip was discontinued after the death of Best.

Viz also lampoons political ideas - both left-wing ideals, in strips such as The Modern Parents (and to an extent in Student Grant), and right-wing ones such as Victorian Dad and numerous strips involving tabloid columnists Garry Bushell ("Garry Bushell the Bear") and Richard Littlejohn ("Richard Littlecock" and "Robin Hood and Richard Littlejohn"), portraying them as obsessed with homosexuality, political correctness and non-existent left-wing conspiracies to the exclusion of all else. In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Student Grant is a cartoon strip in the British comic Viz featuring a University student named Grant Wankshaft. ... In politics, right-wing, the political right, or simply the right, are terms which refer, with no particular precision, to the segment of the political spectrum in opposition to left-wing politics. ... Victorian Dad is a character in the British comic Viz. ... Garry Bushell Garry Bushell (born May 13, 1955 in South East London) is an English television critic, television presenter, and newspaper columnist. ... Richard Littlejohn Richard Littlejohn (born 18 January 1954 in Ilford, Essex) is a right-wing British newspaper columnist, radio personality and television presenter. ... Homosexuality refers to sexual and romantic attraction between two individuals of the same sex. ... Political correctness is the alteration of language to redress real or alleged injustices and discrimination or to avoid offense. ... Left-wing conspiracy refers to a purported cohesive network of political liberals who seek to discredit, smear and politically ruin conservatives in a more insidious and illegal way than is common in modern mainstream politics. ...

In keeping with the comic's irreverent and deliberately non-conformist style, The Duke Of Edinburgh was once parodied as a culturally insensitive, dim-witted xenophobe in a one off strip "HRH The Duke Of Edinburgh and His Jocular Larks" which centred on the Duke making outrageously ill-informed comments to a young earthquake victim in China. The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, (Philip Mountbatten; born Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark, 10 June 1921) is the second cousin once removed, husband and consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Originally a Prince of Greece and Denmark, Prince Philip abandoned those titles to serve in the Royal Navy of...

Occasionally, celebrities get the 'honour' of strips all to themselves. Billy Connolly has had more than one devoted to him trying to ingratiate himself with the Queen; Harold Shipman and Fred West got their own strip as rival neighbours trying to kill the old woman next door and trying to foil each other's plans (Harold and Fred - they make ladies dead! [2]); and Bob Hope had a strip of him trying to think up amusing last words (but ended up with just a load of swearing). The singer Elton John has also appeared frequently in recent issues as a double-dealing Del Boy-like character attempting to pull off small-time criminal scams such as tobacco smuggling, benefit fraud and cheating on fruit machines.Most recently he was seen conning other halfwit music types such as Bono and Lemmy (of Motorhead fame) in a lottery syndicate scam. Other celebs to have been featured in their own strips include Jonathan Ross, Esther Rantzen, Stephen Fry, Noel Edmonds, Jimmy Saville (as the headmaster of "Pop School" and as "Sir Jimmy Saville, the Owl" and in Jimmy Saville's haunted head), Johnny Vaughan, Boy George, Freddie Garrity, Big Daddy and plenty more. William Billy Connolly, CBE, (born 24 November 1942) is a comedian, musician, presenter, and actor. ... Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 â€“ 13 January 2004) was a British general practitioner who was the most prolific known serial killer in British history. ... Frederick Walter Stephen West (September 29, 1941 â€“ January 1, 1995) was a serial killer who, together with his wife Rosemary West murdered at least 12 young women, many at the couples home in Gloucester, England. ... Bob Hope KBE (May 29, 1903 â€“ July 27, 2003), born Leslie Townes Hope, was a British-born American entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, in movies, and in performing tours for U.S. Military personnel. ... Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE[1][2] (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. ... Derek Edward Trotter, or Del Boy, as he is more commonly known, is the lead character in the hugely popular BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. ... Motorhead is a video game published in 1998 by Gremlin Interactive (Europa) and Fox Interactive (USA). ... This article is about the British television presenter. ... Esther Louise Rantzen CBE (born June 22, 1940), is a British journalist and television presenter who is best known for her long stint in Thats Life! and her activities as founder of the charity ChildLine. ... Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. ... Edmonds presenting Top of the Pops Noel Ernest Edmonds (born December 22, 1948 in Ilford) is an English television presenter, DJ and executive who made his name on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. Edmonds also worked closely with Richard L Lewis who produced and wrote various programmes Edmonds worked... Sir Jimmy Savile OBE (born James Wilson Vincent Savile in Leeds on October 30, 1926) is a British DJ and television personality. ... Johnny Randall Vaughan (born July 16, 1966) is a British writer and broadcaster. ... George Alan ODowd, better known as Boy George, (born June 14, 1961 in Eltham, Kent) is an English pop singer-songwriter. ... Album Cover Freddie and the Dreamers were a British musical band who had a number of hit records in 1963 and 1964. ... Big Daddy can refer to: Comic character in Buster (comic) Illustrator and Kustom Kulture pioneer Ed Big Daddy Roth. ...

Other content

Spoof news stories

Sprinkled throughout each issue are spoof news stories, serving to lampoon the tabloid media and obsess over celebrities. Viz invented a fictitious councillor called Hugo Guthrie, representing the real Black Country town of Tipton. Guthrie would be cited in spoof news stories as designing all kind of manic and incompetent schemes for the town, involving such ideas as a Disneyland to be called TiptonDisney. Guthrie may be based on the real inter-war councillor Doughty who infamously told his council clerk to buy just two gondolas for the town park's lake, as opposed to a dozen, on the basis that they could then breed from them and thus save money. He was evidently under the impression that a gondola is some kind of waterfowl. The Black Country is a loosely-defined area of conurbation to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton in the English West Midlands, around the South Staffordshire coalfield. ... The Tipton is also the name of a fictional hotel on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and a term to describe low-grade sportscards. ... Disneyland (since 1998 officially Disneyland Park, to distinguish it from the Disneyland Resort complex of which it is a part), is a theme park in Anaheim, California, USA (28 miles from Downtown Los Angeles). ... A Venetian gondola A railroad gondola A gondola is a small long, narrow boat with a high prow and stern, best known for its use in the canals of Venice. ... Falcated Duck at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands centre, Gloucestershire, England Wildfowl or waterfowl, also waterbirds, is the collective term for the approximately 147 species of swans, geese and ducks, classified in the order Anseriformes, family Anatidae. ...

Other stories include ludicrous "kiss and tells" and similar stories by people who are portrayed as mentally disturbed, often with highly bizarre elements; examples include allegations by a man who claimed that, on holiday touring in his caravan, he found a campsite run by Elvis Presley who, when plied with drink, admitted to the Kennedy assassination; another from a retired toilet attendant who described the nature of feces from various little-known celebrities and an exposé on the sex life of a 'mental hospital outpatient' who claimed to be having affairs with TV puppets such as Basil Brush, the Thunderbirds and Thomas the Tank Engine ("I'd never seen a train's cock before and it was huge.") These stories appear to be inspired by Elton John's libel case against The Sun when it repeated unfounded allegations against him verbatim without any fact checking. A travel trailer or caravan is a small trailer in which people can live and travel simultaneously. ... Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 â€“ August 16, 1977), often known simply as Elvis and also called The King of Rock n Roll or simply The King, was an American singer, musician and actor. ... John F. Kennedy The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, USA at 12:30 PM Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC). ... Feces (also spelled faeces or fæces) are the waste products from the digestive tract expelled through the anus during defecation. ... For other uses, see Celebrity (disambiguation). ... Basil Brush in the 1970s Basil Brush is a reddish-brown fox glove puppet character who has appeared in British childrens (and later adult) television programmes from the 1960s to the present day. ... Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of puppetry dubbed Supermarionation. The series followed the adventures of International Rescue, an organisation created to help those in grave danger using technically advanced machinery. ... Thomas the Tank Engine. ... Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE[1][2] (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. ... In English and American law, and systems based on them, libel and slander are two forms of defamation (or defamation of character), which is the tort or delict of making a false statement of fact that injures someones reputation. ... This article is about a British tabloid. ...

Letterbocks

This section features letters both written by the editors and sent in by readers often with ridiculous names, usually in the form of obviously fictitious anecdotes or various observations, such as the "children say the funniest things" type. Many make observations about celebrities (especially those who have recently died) or current events (a 2000 issue remarked "The Government spent £850 million on the Millennium Bug, and the only thing that crashes is Q [Desmond Llewelyn] out of the Bond films). Most employ deliberate misunderstandings for comic effect (e.g. "The speed bumps that have been built down my street don't work at all. If anything they slow you down!") The year 2000 problem (also known as the Y2K problem and the millennium bug) was a flaw in computer program design that caused some date-related processing to operate incorrectly for dates and times on and after January 1, 2000. ... Q is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. ... Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn (September 12, 1913 â€“ December 19, 1999) was a Welsh actor, famous for playing the fictional character of Q in the James Bond series of films. ... Speed bump made of asphalt A speed bump (British English a speed or road hump, sometimes colloquially a sleeping policeman) is a traffic calming tool designed to slow traffic or reduce through traffic. ...

A bizarre series of letters from a J Cursiter of Bristol recounted his hobby of watching passers-by from 'a series of cunningly-disguised hides'. It is unclear whether Cursiter is a reader of the comic or a creation of the editors. Bristol (IPA: ) is a city, unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England, 115 miles (185 km) west of London and between the cities of Bath, Gloucester and the borough of Swindon. ...

Often letters are printed that criticize Viz, accusing it of "not being as funny as it used to be", condemning it as being offensive or of complaining about the frequent price rises. These are often published and sometimes even framed in a small section titled "Why I Love My Viz!", blatantly mocking The Sun newspaper's habit of printing (positive) comments in little frames titled "Why I Love My Sun!" This article is about a British tabloid. ...

There are often invitations for readers to submit pictures, such as the request for examples of "Insincere Smiles", whereby people sent in pictures cut from newspapers and brochures of celebrities and politicians caught smiling in a manner that looks utterly insincere and forced (Tony Blair featured at least twice.) A similar series was of men who were wearing absurdly ill-fitting wigs. There's also "Up The Arse Corner", where photographs are submitted of people whose pose, and/or facial expression, could be misconstrued as being in the midst of an act of buggery. For other people of the same name, see Tony Blair (disambiguation) Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953)[1] is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, Leader of the UK Labour Party, and Member of the UK Parliament... This article needs cleanup. ... Anal sex or anal intercourse is a form of human sexual behavior. ...

Letterbocks also frequently features correspondence from, and has brought fame to Abdul Latif, Lord of Harpole, proprietor of the (real) Curry Capital restaurant (formerly the Rupali), Bigg Market. His Lordship often promotes his restaurant with spoof competitions and offers. In December 2006 he appeared in a seasonal broadcast to rival the Queen's very own Christmas message. [3] Harpole is a small village located some six miles to the west of the county town of Northampton in the English county of Northamptonshire. ...

Lame to Fame

A semi-regular feature in Letterbocks is the "Lame to Fame" column, where readers can send in "claims to fame" where they explain how they are related to well-known celebrities. However, the relations are purposefully so distant or commonplace that the claim does not make the reader any more notable than any other bloke off the street. for example: "I once had a drink with a bloke who had caught [ Duran Duran's] Simon Le Bon's dog after it had escaped from his big house." Duran Duran are an English New Wave band notable for a long series of catchy, synthesizer-driven hit singles and vivid music videos. ... Simon John Charles Le Bon (born October 27, 1958) is the lead singer and lyricist of the pop band Duran Duran. ...

Top Tips

A long-running segment has been the Top Tips, reader-submitted suggestions which are a parody of similar sections found in women's magazines that offer domestic and everyday tips to make life easier. In Viz, naturally, they are usually impractical or ludicrous. Some tips are for ridiculous motives, such as how to convince neighbours that your house has dry rot, whilst others are for possibly sensible motives but with ridiculous and impractical suggestions of how to go about it, such as "convince friends that you have a high powered job in the City by leaving for work at 6 am every morning, arriving home at 10 at night, never keeping social appointments and dropping down dead at the age of 36." and "Save money on sex-lines by phoning up the Samaritans and threatening to kill yourself unless they talk dirty." Some are totally inexplicable: "To make your husband's trousers heavier, hang onions from the belt loops". Some inspire volleys of running jokes: "Fun-sized Mars Bars make ideal normal sized Mars Bars for dwarves." -- "Normal-sized Mars bars make ideal fun-sized Mars Bars for giants." -- "King-size Mars Bars make ideal normal size Mars Bars for giants." -- "Normal-sized Mars Bars make ideal king-sized Mars Bars for dwarves." Dry rot is a disease of trees, often caused by the fungal species Merulis lacrymans, Poria incrassata, and/or Serpula lacrymans. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

A more recent trend is for extremely sarcastic tips to be offered that are observations by the readers regarding other people's behaviour, such as someone (obviously a barmaid) who suggested male pub customers who are "trying to get into a barmaid's knickers" should "pull back your tenner just as she reaches to take it when paying for a round. It really turns us on." Sarcasm is the making of remarks intended to mock the person referred to (who is normally the person addressed), a situation or thing. ... A bartender is the person behind a bar in a pub, tavern, inn, bar, or restaurant that serves alcoholic beverages. ... An amusingly named pub (the Old New Inn) at Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswold Hills of South West England A pub in the Haymarket area of Edinburgh, Scotland A public house, usually known as a pub, is a drinking establishment found mainly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada...

McDonalds was accused of plagiarising a number of Viz Top Tips in an advertising campaign they ran in 1996. Some of the similarities are almost word-for-word: McDonalds Corporation (NYSE: MCD) is the worlds largest chain of fast-food restaurants [1]. Although McDonalds did not invent the hamburger or fast food, its name has become nearly synonymous with both. ...

The case was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum (donated to Comic Relief), however many Viz readers had believed that the comic had given permission for their use, leading to Top Tips submissions such as: "Geordie magazine editors. Continue paying your mortgage and buying expensive train sets ... by simply licensing the Top Tips concept to a multinational burger corporation." Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character or scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension. ...

Spoof adverts and competitions

Viz has had many different spoof adverts for various items, such as ornaments, dolls, sheds, china plates and novelty chess sets. These poke fun at the genuine adverts for such items in magazines found in the colour supplements of Sunday newspapers. Naturally, those found in Viz are absurd, such as a breakfast plate that depicts Princess Diana's face in the middle of a fried egg, and "Little Ted West", a teddy bear dressed to look like serial killer Fred West. Recently, Viz actually manufactured some of these items for real and sold them, including a china plate that depicted "The Life Of Christ...In Cats", featuring tacky pictures of a cat in various stages of Jesus's life. A long running gag has been adverts for sheds, or rather surreal types of sheds ("TV Sheds", "Shed Bikes", "Shed Snakes", etc.). Chess is an abstract strategy board game for two players that is played both recreationally and competitively. ... Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor; nÃ©e Spencer; 1 July 1961 â€“ 31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, the Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir apparent of Elizabeth II. Her two sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third, respectively, in line to... A sunny side up fried egg A fried egg is an egg cooked by frying, typically in butter, cooking oil or margarine, for the purpose of eating. ... For other uses, see Teddy bear (disambiguation). ... Frederick Walter Stephen West (September 29, 1941 â€“ January 1, 1995) was a serial killer who, together with his wife Rosemary West murdered at least 12 young women, many at the couples home in Gloucester, England. ... This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... A shed is a small, normally wooden outbuilding, usually found in home gardens. ...

Adverts for loan companies have been parodied frequently since approximately 2000, usually with an absurd twist, such as ones aimed at vagrants, offering loans of between 5 and 10 pence for a cup of tea. Roger Mellie has frequently starred in such spoof advertisements, both in separate sections in Viz and also his own strip. Mellie is portrayed as someone who is willing to endorse any product whatsoever for money or freebies. Vagrancy is a crime in some European countries, but most of these laws have been abandoned. ... Tea leaves in a Chinese gaiwan. ... Roger Mellie (The Man on the Telly) is a fictional character featured in Viz magazine. ...

Genuine competitions have been run by Viz, with proper prizes. One of the earliest was a competition to win 'a ton of money' a pointed satire of tabloid newspapers promising huge cash prizes to boost circulation - the prize was in fact a metric tonne of one and two pence pieces equivalent to a few hundred pounds sterling. Recently they were giving away a plasma screen television provided by the producers of Freddy Vs. Jason. Viz poked fun at the movie, describing it as "shite" in the competition description, and described the runners-up prizes as "frankly worthless", which led to the producers refusing to hand over the prize for insulting their film. A tonne or metric ton (symbol t), sometimes referred to as a metric tonne, is a measurement of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. ... A plasma display is an emissive flat panel display where light is created by phosphors excited by a plasma discharge between two flat panels of glass. ... Freddy vs. ...

Another spinoff was "Roger's Profanisaurus", a thesaurus of (often made up) rude words, phrases and sexual slang submitted by readers. It has been published as a book, complete with a foreword by Terry Jones. This also often features genuine regional slang. A play on Rogets Thesaurus, created by Viz. ... The word thesaurus is derived from 16th century New Latin, in turn from Latin thesaurus, from ancient Greek thesauros, store-house, treasury. Besides its meaning as a treasury or storehouse, it more commonly means a listing of words with similar, related, or opposite meanings (this new meaning of thesaurus dates... Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... Terence Graham Parry Jones (born in Colwyn Bay, Wales, on February 1, 1942) is a British comedian, screenwriter and actor, film director, childrens author, popular historian, political commentator and TV documentary host. ...

Jimmy Carr is one of the latest targets of Viz, being lambasted as a sham of a comedian by having photographs of himself posing with employees who have won mundane awards at meaningless corporate events. In issue 160 a genuine advert appeared promoting his latest DVD with the tag-line "When he's not doing corporate gigs, Jimmy Carr is a stand-up comic." James Anthony Patrick Jimmy Carr (born September 15, 1972) is an Irish comedian known for his deadpan, satirical humour. ...

Photo strips

Occasionally issues feature a photo strip. These parody the format of supernatural and true love British comics such as 'Chiller' and 'Jackie' targeted at young girl readers that were popular in the late 1970s and the 'real life dilemma' photo strips often found in tabloid newspapers. Fumetti or photo novels are a form of comics illustrated with photographs rather than drawings. ... Jackie was a weekly British magazine for girls which was published by D.C. Thomson of Dundee. ...

One example is a young woman who is convinced the spirit of her dead husband has possessed the family dog and after some soul searching begins a sexual relationship with the dog. A running joke in these stories is that they often feature a car accident in which one of the characters is run down - in every case, the same man is driving the car, and always responds with the same line: "Sorry mate, I didn't see her!". The locations for the photo stories are recognisably in the suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne where the Viz team are based. On occasion, this is explicitly recognised - the one-off strip Whitley Baywatch, a spoof of the popular American TV show Baywatch, is based in the North East coastal resort of Whitley Bay. However, other stories purporting to be set in London or without a location are often also identifiably near to the Viz editorial offices in Jesmond. In 'He just loved to dance' (no. 103) for example, Komal's Tandoori restaurant in West Jesmond is visible. In 'Four minutes to fall in love' (no. 107), the Gateshead Millennium Bridge provides a backdrop to the denouement. An occasionally recurring actor in these strips is Arthur 2-Stroke, of the band The Chart Commandos. This article is about a city in the United Kingdom. ... Baywatch was a popular American television series about the Los Angeles County Lifeguards who patrol the crowded beaches of Los Angeles County, California. ... Whitley Bay is a town in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England. ... Jesmond is a residential suburb just north of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. ... An Indian chef places bread into a modern tandoor A tandoor is a cylindrical clay oven used in Punjab region, northern India and Pakistan in which food is cooked over a hot charcoal fire. ... The Gateshead Millennium Bridge spans the River Tyne in England between Gateshead on the south bank, and Newcastle upon Tyne on the north bank. ...

In his book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, the comic's creator Chris Donald claimed that the first legal action ever taken against Viz was initiated by a man who objected to the use of a picture of his house (taken from an estate agent's catalogue) in one of these photo strips, and that British tabloid newspaper the Sunday Sport tried to provoke media outrage over another photo strip which, taken out of context, could be misconstrued as making light of the problem of illegal drugs being offered to children. The Sunday Sport is a British newspaper which established itself in 1986 as a tabloid. ...

Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine also threatened to sue the comic after being portrayed as school bullies in a cartoon strip. An official Viz spokesman said “We are too busy laughing to comment.”[4] Trinny and Susannah are Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, British fashion gurus best known for presenting the BBC television series What Not to Wear. ...

Viz in other media

A one-off TV programme "Viz - The Documentary" was shown on Britain's Channel 4 in 1990. It told the story of Viz in a way that spoofed serious investigative TV shows like Panorama or Dispatches. Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937â€“9 January 1995) was an English satirist, writer and comedian who is widely regarded as the leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. ... Harry Enfield Harry Enfield (born May 30, 1961 in Sussex, England) is a comedian educated at Derwent College at the University of York who quickly came to prominence after appearing on Channel 4s Saturday Live in a number of different personae created with Paul Whitehouse. ... Channel 4 is a public-service television broadcaster in the United Kingdom (see British television). ... This article is about the year. ... Panorama is a long-running current affairs documentary series on BBC television, launched on 11 November 1953 and focusing on investigative journalism. ... Dispatches is a British television documentary series on Channel 4. ...

A computer game using many Viz characters was produced in 1991. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ...

The Fat Slags appeared in TV ads for Lucozade, a drink that they hate with a passion. These ads included a mixture of cartoon characters (the slags) and live actors (the men who drink Lucozade). Lucozade logo Lucozade logo Lucozade is an energy drink containing glucose syrup and caffeine, produced by GlaxoSmithKline plc. ...

A movie based on The Fat Slags was produced in 2004 [5], but was disowned by the magazines' editors who threatened to stop running the strip in response.

Trivia

Contents

History

Notable strips

Other content

Spoof news stories

Letterbocks

Lame to Fame

Top Tips

Spoof adverts and competitions

Photo strips

Viz in other media

Trivia

See also

References

External links

Contents

History GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Notable strips

Other content

Spoof news stories

Letterbocks

Lame to Fame

Top Tips

Spoof adverts and competitions

Photo strips

Viz in other media

Trivia

See also

References

External links

History