The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids. Chris Donald

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СКАЧАТЬ on one of my brief visits to the kitchen. ‘Can I see one of these comics of yours?’ she asked. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Actually . . . I’ve not got any at the moment. They’re all sold out. But I’ll get one for you as soon as I can.’ I kept stalling her for days and then weeks, but the pressure to produce a comic became unbearable once the Something Else programme had been broadcast. To make matters worse my streetwise Auntie Thea had heard about Viz by now and had started mentioning it to Mum. Ashamed to show her the real thing I took an old back issue and used Tippex to obscure every swear word in the comic. I seem to recall making twenty-seven alterations before I had the nerve to show it to her. I went into the living room, handed it over unceremoniously then darted back upstairs before she’d found her reading glasses.

      Despite our big break on TV I didn’t see Viz as anything other than a slightly shameful hobby. In the year since I’d left the Ministry I’d been supplementing my dole money by dabbling in design work. I’d started off doing a few posters for Anti-Pop, but one job led to another and before long I was producing designs for all sorts of people. I was totally untrained but I particularly enjoyed the design side of the comic and I’d managed to glean the basics of typography by hanging around the Free Press’s design studio and looking over people’s shoulders. I enjoyed the whole creative process of graphic design – from ripping off someone else’s idea, all the way through to cobbling together some makeshift artwork and forging a union stamp on the back. This seemed to be the direction my career was heading in so I decided it was time I went to college and trained to become a proper, professional graphic designer. One that charges £30 an hour instead of just a couple of quid.

      No art qualifications were necessary to enrol on the Art Foundation course at Bath Lane College in Newcastle. I found this a little bit disturbing but as I didn’t have a single art qualification myself I couldn’t really grumble. The one-year course was designed to give would-be art students a basic grounding in graphics, ceramics, sculpture, fine art, fashion and eccentric behaviour. For my interview I packed together a few of my early works: a pencil portrait of my late grandfather on my mum’s side, a caricature of Jimmy Hill and my line drawings of castles tailored towards the drunken Norwegian market. I’d been warned by my brother Steve, an art college veteran, that conventional pictures with discernible subject matter – like castles and grandparents – were frowned upon in the academic art world. And a couple of years earlier a friend of Steve’s, an artist called John Boyd, had warned me specifically about drawings of Jimmy Hill. ‘It might look like Jimmy Hill,’ he said, ‘but is there a market for that type of thing?’ John Boyd’s paintings would later sell for tens of thousands of pounds, and sure enough none of them would be of Jimmy Hill. But I left Jimmy in. The only concession I made was to leave my watercolours of diesel trains in the drawer at home. I also decided not to include any copies of Viz in case the bad language counted against me.

      The interviewer, who wore suede shoes, whipped through my portfolio like a customs officer searching for duty-free cigarettes. He didn’t seem interested in anything he found, tugging the corner of each drawing then quickly pushing it back into place. Jimmy Hill got nothing more than a cursory glance, as did Granddad and Bamburgh Castle. He seemed so unenthusiastic about my work it came as quite a surprise when he told me I’d been accepted.

      The moment I arrived at art college I knew I’d made a mistake. In my first week one of the lecturers, a man called Charlie, was suspended for dancing naked around his studio and trying to stab female pupils in the bottom with a compass point. I sensed I wasn’t going to fit in. I was old, twenty-one by now, and the rest of the students were young, kids of eighteen who all dreamed of being either Vivienne Westwood or David Hockney when they grew up. As the course progressed their dress sense became more extravagant and their hair dye more colourful. Free at last from the social restrictions of their comprehensives and surrounded by like-minded, creative spirits, one by one they were coming out of the closet and declaring themselves Marc Almond fans. All I wanted was for some fucker to teach me how to draw hands properly and explain typography and print, but I’d arrived at art college thirty years too late for that. We rotated subjects every couple of weeks. All I learnt from my brief spell in Graphics was not to call the lecturer ‘Sir’. Everyone laughed when I did that. The correct form of address was ‘Les’. The Photography module was probably the most useful. They didn’t teach you anything about composition or lighting or how to take a decent picture, but they couldn’t avoid showing you how to develop and print a film. What I dreaded most was my two weeks in Fashion and I got through it by keeping my head down and making a 15-inch-high, soft-toy version of a Pathetic Shark. The worst experience turned out to be Fine Art. That did my fucking head in.

      At Heaton school my Woodwork teacher, Mr Venmore, spent his spare time working in a small room at the top of the class making himself a beautiful solid ash dining table and a set of matching chairs. At art college the Fine Art lecturer, Brian Ord, spent his spare time in an almost identical room at the top of the class, sawing up tables and chairs and sticking them back together in ridiculous, silly shapes. This was sculpture, apparently.

      Over a year the Foundation course sorted the wheat from the chaff. By the end of it the wankers had become hardened art students, destined to have failed pop careers and eventually work in advertising, while dismayed and disillusioned individuals like myself, who were happy with their natural hair colour and preferred Gloria Jones’s version of ‘Tainted Love’, found ourselves back at square one. My parting advice from the senior graphics lecturer, Dave, was that I should get away from this dirty old town, quit Newcastle and head for the bright lights and the big opportunities. He said I should go to Exeter. Apparently Exeter University had an illustration course where I could hone my cartooning talents and qualify to become a greetings card illustrator. If there was one thing I hated it was ‘humorous’ greetings cards. If anyone ever sent me one it went straight in the fucking bin. So I ignored Dave’s advice and decided that my next career move would be to sign on the dole again. Throughout my spell at college I’d continued to publish Viz, but my graphic design work had really started to take off. I’d had one major job to do, designing a clothing catalogue, and this meant working late at night, often all night, trying to cram in other jobs for my regular customers too, then going to college the next day feeling like shit. One morning I actually went to bed for ten minutes thinking it would make me feel a bit brighter when I got up, but it didn’t. Viz No. 6 came out just before I started college, in July 1981, and featured my new creation, Roger Mellie the Man on the Telly. I based his director Tom, the straight man, on my recollection of Something Else producer Gavin Dutton. But a far more popular character launched in the same issue was Billy Britain, a patriotic, right-wing racist who had the catchphrase, ‘What a glorious nation’. The sort of person I’d imagine subscribes to This England magazine. Initially Billy Britain was a much bigger hit with readers than Roger Mellie, but a fatal design flaw would limit his long-term potential. His face was too complicated. I just got lucky the first time I drew it, in the title frame, but subsequent attempts to reproduce the same face weren’t so good. I could only draw him from one angle and with one facial expression, which drastically limited the scope for character development. Roger Mellie, on the other hand, and Norman the Doorman who also made his debut in issue No. 6, were much better thought out. Their simple designs took into account the fact that I was, at very best, a rather mediocre cartoonist. Norman the Doorman was based on the gorillas whose job it was to uphold the ridiculous dress codes imposed by licensees in Newcastle city centre. No white socks, for example. It was also one of those strips where the name came first. You’d think of a name and it sounded so good you simply had to follow it through and come up with a cartoon to match.

       Billy Britain

      When issue No. 7 appeared in December 1981 it featured the first appearance of Biffa Bacon. Biffa’s name, kneecaps and elbows were undeniably inspired by the Dandy’s Bully Beef, but his character and relationship with his parents, Mutha and Fatha Bacon, were inspired by an incident I witnessed on a Metro train in Newcastle. Two young kids, СКАЧАТЬ