A look at the rudest comic ever to hit Britain’s newsstands: Viz. Started in 1979 from a bedroom in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the magazine’s particular brand of British toilet humour soon became a nationwide hit, selling over a million copies by 1989.
It’s been in decline ever since…
TateShots boarded a train to Newcastle and filmed editors Simon Thorp, Graham Dury and Davey Jones as they finished off some specially made strips for Tate Britain’s exhibition. Featuring Viz stalwarts the Fat Slags (“nice big curves”), Mrs Brady Old Lady (“she’s obsessed with her bowels”), and new characters Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray (“trying to impress a girl”), the cartoons are as childish and crude as they are pointless and purile.
The Viz team also discuss what makes the magazine so British, why they gave up trying to be topical, and how “nothing comes out of the comic looking good, least of all ourselves”.
‘Rude Britannia’: Tate Britain, 2010
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/britishcomicart/default.shtm
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