When Celebrities Get Inked (or Viz Y'Know Killed The Radio Star)

As hard as I try I can't imagine Pat Roach being young.

Born this day in 1937, the much missed Roach was best known probably as Bomber in "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" although being in all three Indiana Jones movies is an equally fantastic claim to fame, not to mention his roles in Willow, Red Sonja, Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves, A Clockwork Orange and of course, Jack and Jeremy's Police 4. But when I think of him being born, like seeing ancient yellowing photos of your grandparents doing the dance moves of the time (examples include 'the spruce waiter', 'the groovy Rivron' and 'the rivers of blood') I just picture him being birthed with a full beard asking if its chips for tea.

As well as all these achievements, Roach was also in another exclusive club although not necessarily one he'd understand, or even known about. For Pat was the frontman for a cartoon strip all about...well, have a see...

Informative and informal there I'm sure you'll agree but you wouldn't be completely wrong for assuming it didn't actually contain any jokes - the discordant combining of a Look In magazine style factual strip with an actor unassociated with the sea in any capacity is the entire gag - and it works magnificently. For all its success, Viz Comic is very rarely commended for just how well it dismantled and parodied the entire history of British comics, from the 1930's Film Fun style antics of murderers Shipman and West ("Harold and Fred - they make ladies dead")  to the infamous DC Thomson take downs such as "Desperately Unfunny Dan", "Little Plumber" and "The Three Chairs". Some strips in early issues wouldn't look out of place in the underground comix scene which was still puttering along by the time the comic appeared in December 1979, but Viz was a product born of Newcastle not New York and this was reflected in its targets. In the above Pat Roach strip (issue 46 February / March 1991), the joke is simply to recreate the sort of boring factual filler magazines like Look In and its myriad knock-offs would print. Two years earlier in February 1989, issue 34 presented the following public service...

Simple but effective and given that extra twist by its use of a minor celebrity. Famous folk have been featured in Viz's humour from the very start but it wouldn't be until the early nineties that the official looking spin-off comic strip featuring an unlikely - and nearly always very British - star would become the regular go-to gag readers love still to the present day. As I write this the current issue contains "Fire Chief Bozza", a take on The Beano's General Jumbo and his miniature remote-controlled army with "52-year old Boris Johnson" as "the lucky owner of his very own mechanical remote control fire brigade". The previous issue had Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet fronting a "True Crime" strip, the latest in a long run of petty scams perpetuated by Elton John with his partner David Furnish and heavily Scots-accented Royal fun in "The Broon Windsors". On the subject of the latter, The Sunday Post strips originated in the 1930's by comics great Dudley D Watkins - "The Broons" and "Oor Wullie" - were clearly a source of huge inspiration to the Viz team cropping up in various guises, starting with this from issue 41, the first proper celebrity strip featuring Oor...Jimmy?!

I mean, its just an Oor Wullie strip with bucket to match (later use of the bucket would put in a copyright infringement-free slot to suggest it wasn't a bucket but Ned Kelly's hat.) With that little bit of history in place, here are my top ten celebrity-starring strips from the first two decades of Viz (1979-1999)...

10. Paul Daniels' Jet-Ski Journey To The Centre Of Elvis (Issue 85 - August / September 1997)

Two celebrities for the price of one here as Simon Donald draws this fantastic voyage of a miniaturised Paul Daniels sent in to remove a "peanut-butter log jam" from the King (who only communicates with variants on the phrase "Lord Have Mercy") after surgery is risked impossible to the singer's big belt. At the peak of his career, Daniels did actually headline in Vegas several times so it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility that, had he lived, Elvis might have seen him perform. Although probably not coming out of his bottom on a wave of excretia. FUN FACT: Paul saw this strip and contacted Viz to buy the original artwork.

9. The Undersink Cupboard Of Jacques Cousteau (Issue 70 - February / March 1995)

A fantastically stupid quickie featuring the 85 year old (and two years from death) famous French marine explorer whose programme "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" had been a Sunday afternoon staple filler on BBC One throughout the 1970s.

8. Harry Enfield strips (Issue 62 - October / November 1993)

And in the same issue later on...

I chose these not for the lame puns or the incongruity of those characters having strips - indeed they had already appeared in comic form thanks to Charlie Higson's cartoons in Enfield's 1988 comedy cash in book "Wad And Peeps" (much more on that here) - but the fact that both of these comics appeared in late 1993, four years after Enfield had stopped performing either character. The Viz team were long acquainted with Harry by this point after he got in contact in regards to collaboration (also needing Geordie voice tips for his new character Buggerallmoney) and later provided the voices for the Billy The Fish and Roger Mellie animations. So they could have run these as "Look at us, friends with the hippest trend in comedy!" kudos five or six years earlier but didn't, thus making the appearance in the mid nineties even more ridiculous. And therefore brilliant. 

7. Noddy Holder (Issue 48 - June / July 1991)

In 1991, Holder was in a bit of an odd place as far as the public conscience was concerned - not quite the Grimleys-starring national treasure he would become but also not really relevant for his work with soon-to-split Slade (their final Top 40 hit "Radio Wall Of Sound" being released that October) anymore. This strip pitches him as a mischievous young lad who finds his granddad's old magic set in the attic and has absolutely nothing to do with his band, Glam or music in general. Its just a very daft premise and perfect for this list.

6. The Adventures Of Rolf Harris The Cat (Issue 46 - February / March 1991)

Look, I know, I know. BBC knew. We all knew. Whatever. Its a funny strip.

5. Fry's Turkish Delight (Issue 58 - February / March 1993)

Long in those dark days before endless QI repeats on Dave, Fry was still very much the go-to figure for someone extremely wordy and mildly pretentious. Although he'd left Cambridge over a decade previously, Stephen was still clearly the brainiest boy and so received this gift of a big pile of Turkish Delight with the proviso that it had to be gone from the premises within one hour or he'll be suspended. Numerous ruses fail and so it falls on him to eat the lot there and then and wouldn't you know it...

4. Donald Sinden In "There Goes My Knighthood" (Issue 86 - October / November 1997)

(open image in new window to enlarge)  

I knew Ald Sinden before he was made a Don you know... The definitive Viz farce appeared a lot later in the run than most people remember it and is almost certainly inspired by a similar knighthood running gag in Spitting Image some years previous.

3. The 2 Ronnies And Their Gangs (Issue 58 - February / March 1993)

Just perfect. There's something inherently ridiculous to me about The Two Ronnies when divorced from the material anyway so recasting them as heads of rival gangs seems the most gloriously appropriate fate and something that could easily have appeared in "Cor!" or perhaps "Beeb".

2. Spot The Clue (various)

Still occasionally making an appearance in the comic, Davey Jones' flights of fancy have been a crucial part of Viz since he joined as a contributor in 1986 with his regular strips such as Roger Irrelevant, Gilbert Rachet and "Spot The Clue" always contains a genuine but utterly banal red herring that readers can use to work out the perpetrator of a terrible crime. 

And taking the top spot...

1. The Human League In Outer Space (Issue 45 - December 1990)

Perfection. "Look In" magazine throughout its run from 1971 to 1994 would regular serialise "fun" stories featuring bands of the time such as Madness, Bucks Fizz, Five Star and, of course, Flintlock. The Human League amazingly weren't included into this pantheon of greats and so it was left to Viz to provide exactly the same sort of story that would appear in the pages of the "Junior TV Times". The fact that it came from a year when Phil and "The Girls" were at their absolute lowest career point just made the whole thing even more surreal, silly and the best celebrity based cartoon strip Viz ever produced.

What do you think? Anything major missing? Feel like The Simon Salad Cream Story or Gary Bushell The Bear deserved a place? Perhaps Jarvis Cocker's His Quest For Knockers was cruelly overlooked? Or Bernie Winters' Circus Of Horrors? Yes, they all existed! Thanks for reading and sorry about all that Rolf Harris business earlier...

...piss.

Why Cant I Be You?: Teletubbies

Twenty years ago, television was visited by four strange beings from another place and something something a joke about Captain Butler when I'm clearly talking about the Teletubbies, whose brightly coloured repetitive adventures began on BBC2 this day is 1997, just between a black and white Robert Mitchum film from 1954 and deaf magazine programme "See Hear!" Well it WAS the Easter bank holiday, when all the funnest programmes are on. From those humble beginnings lay a monster though and soon everyone was in on the act...

British viewers quick off the mark (or with a wailing child desperate for distraction) may have been introduced to Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po with the following advert...



Quite what anyone made of that promo featuring these freaky faced colourful...things is lost to time but it didn't take long for the show to become a phenomenon and between March and Princess Diana doing a dead, Teletubbies quickly became the biggest kids show in the UK. And eventually the planet. (PLEASE NOTE: I do not believe the Teletubbies were responsible for Diana's death. Only Dipsy's movements are still unaccounted for.) But it wasn't just kids watching as this mildly concerning Channel 5 (which appeared barely hours before the Tubbies on March 30th 1997 at 6pm) news report reveals.



I read in the men's periodicals of the time it was great to smoke the marijuana drug during an episode but other than seeing it with a hangover, I never partook in riding the "Laa Laa Smokey Steam Train to monged town". I was a student though and whilst I don't think I liked it ironically, there was definitely a bemusing humour to it all that clearly only made sense if you were two years old and / or a drug addict. And playing into that, one of the earliest parodies of the series came from a second season episode of "South Park" in May 1998 showing a stoned Mr Garrison watching something distinctly Teletubby-like.

Finding the definitive first parody of the programme is tough in a sea of terrible Flash animations and unfunny mods on YouTube that invariably make the show needlessly dark, sweary or both, but noted television pioneer Brian Conley was in there quick with a much promoted sketch on his ITV "Crazy Christmas" special on December 23rd 1997. Amazingly no footage of this is online due to it being "Brian Conley's Crazy Christmas" so lets move on to one of my favourite subjects Viz Comic who got in on the act with issue 88 from February 1998 when they realised "Telly" sounds a bit like something else...

Every sketch show with more than 8p in the budget (thanks Tony Blairs!) seemed to have a crack at a Tubby spoof in the late 90s although there's was rarely much of a joke other than they don't 'alf talk funny! BBC One's "Harry Enfield's Yule Log Chums" special from 28th December 1998 roughed the kiddies favourites up to become Lovely Jubbly, Geeza, Beergut and Boff. Yes, its the "Telecockneys". Like most of Enfield's sketches at this point in his career the joke goes on about two minutes longer (Big hugs becomes "big jugs", Noo Noo is "Loo Loo" a moving lavatory and so on) than it needs to but the appearances of Matt Lucas, Phill Jupitus and Jessica Stevenson (as was) are very welcome.



Strangely the piece makes no comment on something a number of people have pointed out over the decades and that is Teletubbies' surface similarity to a very memorable "Harry Enfield's Television Programme" sketch from 1992 called "English For Aliens" in which an off-screen (and still much missed) Geoffrey Perkins tried to teach some rotund creatures with odd but uniquely shaped antennas basic phrases such as "tree", "car" and, of course, "Baby Jesus".



BBC Two's "Goodness Gracious Me" also got some knock-off costumes made in 2000 with "Delhi Tubbies" which were Teletubbies but - in a twist you wouldn't see coming from "Goodness Gracious Me", except for all the times you would - Asian. The joke didn't seem to stretch much beyond that and ends with a comedy kicking not long in. Oddly, over a decade later, a real party of blokes using the same name decided to travel across India dressed as Teletubbies in a noble attempt to raise money for a women's refuge in Bangladesh.

Funny vicar comedy "The Vicar Of Dibley" featured two children dressed as Laa Laa and Po at Alice's wedding to Hugo (because she is mentally sub-normal!!!!) but that's not a sketch show so it can get stuffed.

By 1999, the cult of the custard-slurping chums had spread across the American pond of America stateside and suddenly (minus nine months in a Korean animation cellar) they were cropping up in The Simpsons with surprising regularity starting with "Wild Barts Cant Be Broken" midway through the tenth season. Three references followed the next year with perhaps the best featuring Homer attempting to dress as a Teletubby to entertain Maggie, despite the slightly dubious line relating to Tinky Winky's sexuality.

Handily, someone has compiled all these references in this handy to watch video which saves me needing to describe them and buys me some time to think of a good excuse to explain to my family why I've spent a day writing and researching an article about the Teletubbies...



The fuzzy foursome also made appearances as "Tele-Chubbies" in needless "Pinky and the Brain" reboot "Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain". Needless to say Pinky is quite a fan but Brain...not so much!!!!!

Elsewhere, Adult Swim's largely dreadful "Robot Chicken" had the Teletubbies in place of the Power Rangers in lieu of any actual jokes (other than "they speak slowly"...which they don't) and a first season Family Guy had Stewie transfixed by their programme when he was still going "Yis! Kill the mother! Etc!" and Peter said "heheheh I am humourous and fat". Which is true, he was fat.



And then Kenan made a face.



I have no idea what this is.



Next up was...what, we're done? Oh thank you sun baby. All of these sketches and clips are fun in their own way but its testament to the easy going charm and quirky nature of the original programme that lead to it being not only a worldwide hit but a household name that could be easily referenced for a quick chuckle. Yes, it was repetitive and maybe the Christmas no.1 single was a spin-off too far but kids saw something positive and loving in those colourful little buggers so we should always be thankful for that. Time for Tubby bye-bye!

NEXT WEEK: A 50,000 word social polemic on why Charlie Chalk is better than Breaking Bad and how Stoppit and Tidyup could deffo twat everyone in Game of Thrones easy.

Happy twentieth anniversary everybody! 

Letters Back In: Five Post-Pull Out Pick Me Ups

"Dear Sir Steven "Schofield's" Europe,

We the British people (all of us so don't even ask, alright?) are writing you this letter to say we are doing one, sunshine. Don't try and stick your straight bananas and ethnic sweets (an Irn Bru BAR????) down our throats any longer because we int havin' it ok? And as for Eurovision and the currency and funding support for training in thousands of different industries...erm...oh god, what have we done?

I wonder if I can get the letter back before old man Burns sees it...

Yours,

Theresa May,
A Sort Of Beige Gas"

Regardless of your opinions of in vs out vs shaking it all about, its a weird day for Britain as we wave Au revoir...sorry I mean "DO A PISS OFF, GEEZER"...to the EU thanks to the votes of people who are already looking for the next thing to blame absolutely everything wrong on. (SPOILER: It is non-white people.) But lets not have our day be defined by THAT missive! Here's five more much better letters...

The Box Tops - The Letter

An obvious one to start with and an always welcome radio hit, this is under two minutes of shuffling perfect pop with occasional stabs of brass made famous by Alex Chilton's world-weary growl of a voice - all the more impressive for him being just sixteen when they recorded it in 1967. The band are in such command they don't even need the last thirty seconds which are given over to a sound effect of a aeroplane taking off over some strings, keys and drums. As in production wise, not physically taking off. That would be hideously cost ineffective. Think about what you're saying please.



"The Letter" - Seinfeld

AKA the one with the painting of Kramer that people have started buying facsimiles of for their own homes now to show how telly-literate they are and also because presumably you can't buy the one of the tennis player scratching her arse anymore. Written by Larry David 'imself and coming from the end of season three in 1992 when the sitcom was reaching its creative sweet spot, the letter in question is here is addressed to Jerry Seinfeld from his girlfriend of that episode (an early role for the brilliant Catherine Keener) which is poetic, powerful...and totally ripped off from a Neil Simon play. Laughs, as you'd expect, ensue.



Letter To Brezhnev

In 1985, Channel Four's film department was making a name for itself with pictures such as "She'll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas", "My Beautiful Laundrette" and this quirky love story about love across the Iron Curtain which introduced the world to Margi Clarke. Featuring the type of honest dialogue (written by her brother and former Brookside scriptwriter Frank) and real housing estates that would be the basis of seemingly every BBC2 and Channel 4 drama commission in the 00's, "Letter To Brezhnev" now doubles up as a time capsule of that strange 'dregs of Cold War' era.



This Letter From Viz

Whilst it would be the edition after that saw Viz celebrate its 10th anniversary and biggest ever monthly sales (1,366,350), issue 38 was notable for a very small “Top Tip” letter which the police felt “might constitute an incitement to commit an offence” - strongly enough to bring in John Brown to Scotland Yard for questioning in December 1989. Obviously it would be terribly remiss and wrong-headed of me to share that tip here.

Naturally Brown did what any publisher worth his salt would do – he denied everything and shopped the Viz editorial staff instead. Chris Donald was eventually questioned by the Anti-Terrorist Branch some days later and thankfully released without charge. All was fine and parodies of the Dandy until two years later when Donald accidentally added the controversial letter for publication in compilation annual “The Sausage Sandwich”. Luckily, the books were caught before they went out to suppliers and replaced with the following sticker…

Wonders In Letterland

The first ever T-Bag and T-Shirt story broadcast by Children's ITV in 1985. Iconic to a generation but not much known outside of it, "Wonders In Letterland" is a bit more pre-school targeted than the stories that followed which invariably involved T-Bag (initially Tallulah played by Elizabeth Estensen, later replaced by Georgina Hale as her sister Tabatha) trying to do something low-level evil but being thwarted by the serial's heroine (Jenny Stallwood and Kellie Bright being the two best known) and her unwilling assistant T-Shirt (John Hasler). It was probably rubbish but it was on so I watched it. Theme tune was good, mind.



So there you go - five much more interesting letters to fill your quietly despairing mind with. For more on this subject try "Strawberry Letter 23", The Henry Root Letters, "We Could Send Letters" by Aztec Camera, Radio 4's "Letter From America", The Proclaimers' "Letter From America", Postman Pat before the helicopter, The Timewaster Letters, endless podcast adverts for Stamps dot com, the Blondie album "Plastic Letters", when they'd pull a postcard out of the bin on "Going Live", Bjork's "Post", Wilfred Owen's "The Letter", not reading the Daily Mail, subscribing to Creamguide, Sesame Street when they did The Beetles' "Letter B", Night Mail (the film, the poem and the song by Public Service Broadcasting), all the Newsreader ones out of the Python bok and your best one - Stevie B's "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)". Which makes you wonder why I didn't write about any of those instead...

Here's hoping today's letter gets stuck down a wino's underpants....

Stonk If You're Corny: Remembering Comic Relief Comic

If you told a typical pop culture nerd that a comic was once released that was written by Neil Gaiman (American Gods, The Sandman, Coraline) Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, 2000AD, Lots of DC Comics) and Richard Curtis (Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley, Four Weddings And A Funeral) with contributions from DC Thomson, Shaky Kane, Garth Ennis, the Viz Comics team, Mark Millar, Jamie Hewlett, Lenny Henry, Hunt Emerson, Simon Bisley, Alan Martin, Dave Gibbons and many more, they'd probably say "Oh yes Comic Relief Comic, 1991, very limited run, printed by Fleetway". Stupid over-knowledgable pop culture nerds.

They would be right though. "Comic Relief Comic" was a full colour coming together of all the great comics talent in the UK, much like the TV show (which was about to launch its third telethon on March 15th 1991)  would bring together the top comedy folk at the time.

 

Much like the programme, its funny with a serious message. But first, the beautiful cover...

Phwoar, eh? And I dont just mean sexy Len! All your comics favourites from kiddies characters up to more adult adventures - Dredd! Dennis! Dare! Donatello! Dark Knight! Dan! erm...Dr Bruce Banner! - all under one roof. And for the very reasonable price of £1.50. As mentioned briefly in my Richard Curtis piece, I was so excited to get my hands on this (equaled only by the Round The Bend TV Special but that's a story for another day) and I proudly have my extremely well-read copy upstairs (with my age and name on so no bugger nicked it at school.) although I hadn't thought about it much until the wonderful comics blog Two Headed Thingies run by my good friend Ryan posted the entire thing from start to finish, reminding me just what an exciting, funny and slightly naughty experience it was.

So, if its so good, why has it never been reprinted with all that talent involved? Well, the boring answer is DC Comics being pricks over copyright which is a huge shame as there's so much going on in these pages that deserves to be seen. So, with the opening proviso that if you read this you'll contribute to Comic Relief in lieu of being able to buy the comic sadly, here's some of my favourite highlights from 1991's "Comic Relief Comic"...

1. Its opened by a mildly tamed Roger Mellie (even though the word "bollocks" appears several places elsewhere in the otherwise child-aimed publication) who was then probably the most famous character from the just past its ridiculous 1 million plus circulation era Viz. Mellie would appear in a segment on the TV Comic Relief that year voiced by Harry Enfield (a later animated adaptation being handled much more impressively by Peter Cook.) No comment on that third panel. Ahem.

Ahem, moving on from that last line, here's a slightly more sweary Roger presenting the suitably filthy "Mellie At Midnight" which if memory serves ran at about 1am because everything was over-running so much. Its missing a joke they did at the start where, as memory serves, it seemed like it was just a still drawing, panicking the hosts before Roger complained the feed wasnt working...

2. This entire page. Edd the Duck! The USS Enterprise! Vyvyan! Hitchock! A sausage! And oh those slanted BBCs! And in case you're confused why Roger is covered in pie, one was slammed in his face by Lenny on the previous page before he could say the word "piss". This is a children's comic after all! 

3. A page of Lenny testing the boundaries of being in a comic book leading to this ever so wonderfully meta bit of business between him and his original co-hosts Griff Rhys-Jones and Jonathan Ross. 

4. The next page is devoted to a pre-show visit to the people responsible for the gunk tank - an essential part of early Comic Relief programmes. Check out that "none more 1991" list of 'celebrity packages'...

5. ...along with the equally time-stamped Canned Carrott, a pre-respect revival Bob Monkhouse photo and the body of Twin Peaks' tragic central murder victim Laura Palmer. Also: BBC tea gags. Always a winner!

6. Also stuck firmly in its own era is this bizarre array of classic 'Madchester' phrases, although I'm not sure if "E" stuck past the radar through luck, guile or sheer ignorance in the pre-Leah Betts era. I'm fairly sure I didn't understand it as a 10 year old anyway (or "DRAW!" for that matter.) We all said "BEZ!" though. Deffo. 

7. So, you pop culture nerd types! What do Judge Dredd, Griff Rhys Jones, Captain Britain, Desperate Dan and Jonathan Ross have in common? Well... 

8. Lenny and Jonathan have the same argument which had happened in many a playground around the time following the BBC's decision to switch the word "Ninja" to "Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles". Obviously, it had such an effect as we all grew up to be murderous assassins. BUT HEROICALLY. 

Excellently the panel beneath was titled "Teenage Mutant SOMETHING Turtles" as a compromise. 

9. One of the strangest bits of an incredibly bonkers comic already was a forced double act between Ben Elton and Dawn French who get a bit too near to the Dangerous Matter Transmutor. No, REALLY.

10. Elton and French then become superhuman based on fairly flimsy character traits. I can't tell if its playful or a savage attack - particularly on Elton's brand of obvious domestic observations. Being as its from Tank Girl creators Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, probably a bit of both...

11. The world is in chaos due to the rampaging duo, the world calls for action, which comes from Lenny as Theophilous P Wildebeeste's hitherto unseen alter ego Love Man who is such a thrusting rush (kids comic...) he doesn't have time to stop and have a bit away with The Queen (then only a MILF-tastic 65) and...erm...Princess Diana. Ah well, its what she would've wanted. *sniff* 

12. Next up is a visit to space with Dan Dare unsuccessfully trying to get the Mekon and several ever familiar monsters to buy a red nose. Luckily help is at hand...

13. Who were you expecting? Batman? With the series off-air for just over a year by this point, Who fans weren't to know the true wait they were about to be in for. Incidentally, the panel after this has McCoy's Doctor answering "no - its a WHO-tenanny". Frobisher to sue. And sick.

14. A bizarre cameo from The Rovers Return - the entire building itself (supposedly there to 'man' the phones) - which judging by this panel is staffed by Larry David, Sharon Stone and Paul Shane's character from You Rang M'Lord. Also: "BET"?!?  

15. Also on the phones are this array of people including an appearance by Harry Enfield's reasonably new character Mr-You-Don't-Wanna-Do-It-Like-That. As for the following frame, I'm not entirely sure who it was aimed at, or for that matter whether Warren Beatty was still the go-to name for 'prominent lady shagger' reference easy laffs for 1991. But hey, they didn't call him 'Penis Tracy' for nothin' you know!!!11 

16. The Dandy and Beano "All Stars" next (although only Desperate Dan appears from the former) with a few celebrity cameos from Esther Rantzen and this more Colin Farrell-esque Noel Tidybeard (yes I'm overlooking the needless apostrophe there) getting their cars washed. So, people who whinge that the comics never used to be obsessed with celebrities in the past can shut their face. Especially Noel. 

17. This entire Viz spread which felt awfully naughty and exciting to have in my possession as a kid, knowing all about the million selling adult comic by that point.  Click here to see it bigger.

18. Two pages (drawn by the wonderful Hunt Emerson) are devoted to the appearance of various comedy characters from TV and film, starting with The Young Ones (the first series of Bottom still over six months away...) Note the plank Viv is picking up in the second frame, you'll never guess what he does with it next. Oh um yeah, he does hit Rick with it actually. Well guessed. 

19. The only real concession to then-new comedy came with this tiny but wonderful Vic Reeves and The Man With The Stick cameo. Vic and Bob would make their first appearance on that year's telethon largely dying on their arse in front of an audience who didn't seem to have a clue who they were. 

And here is that first appearance by the recalcitrant duo...

20. Although not covered here, there are two running storylines throughout the comic - one involves a modern day descendant of Blackadder being taught the true meaning of charity by a disabled girl, which is as miserable as it is unfunny. The second finds Griff Rhys-Jones being kidnapped and replaced by "house-heads" who will take over the world if one single person fails to donate to Comic Relief. And that one remaining person? Blackadder of course. Naturally he ends up obliging and so the real Griff gets to escape only to be asked...

21. Plot all wrapped up, Ross gets bored and after referencing his alright but short-lived teatime series "Tonight With Jonathan Ross" pushes the red button leading to this wonderful but terrifying Shaky Kane (coloured but possibly not drawn - anyone know for definite?) tableau. It scared the crap out of me as a kid and still unnerves me a bit now if I'm honest. 

22.  All hell having broke loose in BBC TV Centre (remember that, kids?), two as yet unsuspecting chaps (looking rather like WC Fields and Buster Keaton) enjoy a quick drink in front of a pinboard featuring Judge Anderson, Alias The Jester, Inspector Gadget and what looks to be Danger Mouse's ears. Slightly random until you realize this entire page is the work of the terrific Arthur Ranson who drew all of those characters at one time or another in 2000AD and Look-In respectively and thus quite a nice little self-tribute. 

23. And finally, these credits. Just look at all those names. Beautiful.

So that was the edited highlights of Comic Relief Comic, a wonderful item sadly lost to time and legal copyright bollocks. Even if you're not watching this year's programme on Friday, do give generously as it helps not just people but charities all over the world do brilliant things in the face of ever-depressing government cutbacks. More Comic Relief stuff later in the week but its time for bed. Good stonk...

 

To see what you can do for Comic Relief click the following address:

https://www.rednoseday.com/

And as a special bonus, the two fabulous original songs made for Comic Relief's 1991 programming. See how many puppets of yesteryear you remember here...

Forever missed. No Kylie, no Jason, no toothpaste round the basin....