Fat Slags get the elbow...

[sandeano]

Man, this film must REEK....

From THE GUARDIAN

Viz gives Fat Slags the elbow

John Plunkett
Tuesday October 19, 2004

The publishers of Viz magazine have axed the Fat Slags, one of its most infamous cartoon strips, after their big screen adaptation was branded the worst British film ever made.
Sandra and Tracey, two sex-mad north country factory workers from 69 ******** Street, Fulchester, will make their last appearance in the magazine's 25th anniversary issue, which is out next week.

"I'm sorry to say that the Fat Slags are no more," said Graham Dury, the editor of Viz. "After seeing this crass and ill-conceived film I just don't feel like drawing them again. It was crap from start to end, there are no laughs to be had and it bears no relation to the comic strip on which we have worked so hard to make a success."

The Fat Slags first appeared in Viz 15 years ago. The big screen version, which stars Sophie Thompson and Smack the Pony's Fiona Allen, follows them on a trip to London where they help an American media tycoon, who is brain damaged after insulting the Dalai Lama.

The movie was universally panned by critics in tabloids and broadsheets alike. "Crass, demeaning and thoroughly depressing, I would sooner recommend you scoop out your eyes with teaspoons than watch this," said Wendy Ide in the Times.

"There may still be some diehard Viz aficionados who'll love every second of this film - but I'm one and I didn't," said Johnny Vaughan in the Sun, while the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw concluded: "It has plenty of gross-out stuff, but chucked in with an eerie lack of enjoyment or conviction. Depression seeps out of the screen like carbon monoxide."

"First they said that Mad Cows was the worst British film ever made. Then they said Sex Lives of the Potato Men was. Now the hot topic among connoisseurs of bad films will be: is Fat Slags worse than Cows and Potato Men combined?" asked Cosmo Landesman in the Sunday Times.

The film adaptation also starred Geri Halliwell, Naomi Campbell, Angus Deayton and former EastEnder Michael Greco. The Dalai Lama was played by Pink Panther star Bert Kwouk.

Privately Viz executives are furious that the film has been made at all - when the magazine was sold to Dennis Publishing the film rights were retained by the magazine's former owner, John Brown Publishing.

As a result, the Viz editorial team had no control over the film and were "appalled" by the end result. The Fat Slags' creator and former Viz editor Simon Donald said it was "embarrassing".

"Even the most idiotic, misguided teenage moron will not get a laugh out of this truly irredeemable crock of horse********," he said.

They believe that it will damage the reputation of the magazine and decided the only option was to distance themselves by killing the two ladies off.

Mr Dury said: "As far as we are concerned the Fat Slags has already been made by Alan Clarke. His [1986] film Rita, Sue and Bob Too is the best film you could hope to make of the Fat Slags. This version was crap from start to end."

Within weeks of their debut in 1989, the Fat Slags were recruited in an advertising campaign for Tennent's lager. At the time, a Guardian column said they "stood out [in Viz] as the most appalling and the funniest strip, perhaps because they contain a hint of truth and tragedy. They're gluttonous and amoral and they'll shag anyone who's good for a bag of chips."

Viz will celebrate its 25th birthday at a party hosted by digital channel UKTV G2 at London's Cafe de Paris later this month. Featuring wrestlers and a ukulele orchestra, it will be hosted by Nicholas Parsons.

Fat Slags was directed by Ed Bye, who also directed Kevin and Perry Go Large. The big screen version of Harry Enfield's comic creation, Kevin the Teenager, was a hit at the box office and took £9m in the UK in its first three weeks on release.

 

[Mog]

Doesn't sound half bad.

 

[MightyFighting]

Fat Slags was directed by Ed Bye, who also directed Kevin and Perry Go Large.

Says it all.

 

[Captain Sensible]

Geez Viz has gone downhill in the last couple of years. Fat Slags was one of the only things worth getting it for, wonder if they will get killed of? Now its only Sid, Roger, Finbarr Saunders, Eight Ace and Drunk Bakers to look forward to. The Two Ronaldos are the only characters added in the last year that are even vaguely funny.

Vale San, Tray and Baz.


Didnt Ed Bye direct Red Dwarf?

 

[Docker_Brat]

Bollocks.

 

[Rusty Brookes]

Geez Viz has gone downhill in the last couple of years. Fat Slags was one of the only things worth getting it for, wonder if they will get killed of? Now its only Sid, Roger, Finbarr Saunders, Eight Ace and Drunk Bakers to look forward to. The Two Ronaldos are the only characters added in the last year that are even vaguely funny.

Vale San, Tray and Baz.


Didnt Ed Bye direct Red Dwarf?

It's sad isn't it? I'll add Victorian Dad to the good list but some of my faves (Morris Day - Sexual Pervert, Paul Whicker the Vicar, Cockney ********) hardly get a look in these days.

 

[Dogwatcher]

What abotu that lad with the big balls? wat was is name?

 

[Lidge]

Buster Gonads and his unfeasibly large testicles.

 

[Dogwatcher]

gold gold gold

 

[Contra Mundum]

gold gold gold

What about "lazy disinterested shop girl" and Roger Melly

 

[Eyes Front]

The comic itself has been rooted for about the last 10 yrs so I don't see what the fuss about a dud film is all about.

 

[Captain Sensible]

The comic itself has been rooted for about the last 10 yrs so I don't see what the fuss about a dud film is all about.

While its not as good as it once was it still has its moments. Top Tips and Letterbocks is still good quality toilet humour and some of the cartoons are very readable.

 

[Fritz_the_Cat]

I enjoy all the usual suspects mentioned but probably my favourite was the lager guzzling superhero "The Brown Bottle" only ever saw about 3 strips of him but they were all hilarious. Oh & "peter & his pocket grandpa" was another favourite that was only an occasional.(or was it 'Mickey & his Miniature Grandpa'... the one who thought a gypsy curse had shrunk him to be only 4" tall)

 

[Lidge]

Roger Mellie, the man on Telly.

Here's a classic Roger source of laughs:

Roger's Profanisaurus

And a bit of Sid The Sexist (Oot on the Tap)..

Oot on the Tap

 

[wedesweiler]

I haven't bough a copy of Viz for ages .... The Modern Parents used to be hilarious as well as Roger Irrelevant. Are they still in the magazine?

Cheers - Pete

 

[jim boy]

When the magazine got sold, it went downhill rapidly. It used to a kind of irony-based humour. For example, Syd the sexist for example was a pathetic and unlikeable figure whose pursuit of being a lad and misogynist attitude always ended in his untimely and often funny demise. After the sale instead of celebrating the glorious failuires of laddish culture, that culture was put on a pedestal. It became just another gross-out magazine and lost it's comic edge.

 

[RogerMellie]

For shame. No more "naaa-aa-aa". Bring back Student Grant to compensate.

 

[Adrian Shelton]

Can you still get 'ZIT' magazine anywhere? Lamb Brusco, Drugs Den and Captain Dog Toffee were pretty cool, can't forget Physco Derek either! I'll miss the Slags too for what it's worth.

 

[skylark18]

As Roger would say.......FNAR FNAR!!!

 

[Captain Sensible]

Can you still get 'ZIT' magazine anywhere? Lamb Brusco, Drugs Den and Captain Dog Toffee were pretty cool, can't forget Physco Derek either! I'll miss the Slags too for what it's worth.

Noel and Liam, The Vice Girls, and Jeenus Storkton.

 

[crudbucket]

Johnny F@rtpants used to rock.

And it's years since I've seen Mr Rudewords, or Tubby Johnson.

 

[Shinboners]

Billy the Fish!

 

[jim boy]

Viz is now 25 years old.


From the Guardian......



[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]All in the worst possible taste[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]From tiny beginnings, Viz went on to sell a million copies - and made characters such as the Fat Slags, Spoilt Bastard and Roger Mellie household names. William Cook looks at the Geordie comic, 25 years old this month.[/font]

[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Thursday November 18, 2004 [/font]

[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The Fat Slags, and (bottom) Roger Mellie, the man on telly.[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Twenty-five years ago, three Geordie teenagers published 150 copies of a brand new comic. Priced 20p (30p for students), The Bumper Monster Christmas Special - all 12 pages of it - went on sale in a suburban pub in Newcastle upon Tyne. Within a few hours, they'd sold every copy. A decade later, Viz was selling more than a million copies per issue, outselling every magazine in Britain apart from The Radio Times, The TV Times and Reader's Digest. How did this tiny organ - as Viz stalwart Finbarr Saunders, famous for his double entendres, might put it - grow so big? And what's happened to it since?

Viz, a brilliant hybrid of punk fanzine and kids' comic, owes much of its success to a civil servant clerk called Chris Donald. When he, his 15-year-old brother Simon and schoolfriend Jim Brownlow published the first issue in November 1979, Chris was working as a wage mule for the DHSS. But even then it was clear that his talents weren't confined to administering National Insurance contributions. The comic strips he'd drawn at school had been a big hit in the playground (and the staff room); it was that behind-the-bike-sheds cheek that made Viz unique. It was full of the sort of stupid, crass and insensitive jokes you told at school, but until Chris Donald came along, nobody had dared to put them into print. Like all the best editors, Chris also had a flair for spotting talent. His brother Simon drew many of the comic's funniest characters, including Johnny Fartpants and Sid the Sexist, while Jim Brownlow's Paul Whicker The Tall Vicar was the original man behaving badly. Chris subsequently recruited Graham Dury (Spoilt Bastard), Simon Thorp (Student Grant) and Davey Jones (Roger Irrelevant) who draw most of the comic to this day. Like Chris, these three cartoonists are more trainspotters than hellraisers. Drawing comics is hard graft, and despite the outrageous content (or maybe even because of it) the atmosphere in the Viz office is and always has been almost monastically studious.





Throughout the 1980s, Viz bucked every media trend. Unlike most other magazines, it wasn't produced in London, yet it never tried to tone down its Geordie accent or hide its north east roots. And unlike virtually every other magazine, it didn't take itself remotely seriously. It didn't talk down to its readers, or try to cuddle up to them. In fact it treated them with unconcealed contempt. "The page you write and it's always shîte," read the slogan on the letters page, but that didn't stop people writing in, and its idiotic Top Tips (supplied by readers and staff alike) became one of the highlights of the comic.

Until 1985, Viz was produced on an ad hoc basis, and during its first five years only 12 issues were published. It became a local phenomenon, selling thousands per issue in Newcastle alone. Copies started cropping up in record shops around the country, and after Chris wrote a speculative letter to Richard Branson, Virgin started publishing Viz nationwide. Produced bi-monthly, and placed in regular newsagents, circulation soon reached five figures, and when Virgin employee John Brown set up his own publishing company, and persuaded Viz to go with him, sales went through the roof.

Since the early 90s, readership has been in slow but steady decline, and although by any other standards the current six-figure circulation is still healthy, it's a fraction of what it was at its dizzy seven-figure peak. Yet Viz was never going to sell a million forever. "In the early days, it was probably the shock value that sold it as much as anything, but you can't shock people forever," says Graham Dury, who draws Viz favourites like the Fat Slags and Cockney ********er. "You've got to make them laugh."

Possibly the comic's best known creation, the Fat Slags may seem like archetypal Geordies, but Graham Dury, who draws them, reckons they're from Nottingham. But the reason Sandra and Tracey are so popular is because their boozy, libidinous sisters can be found in every British city. The Guardian wasn't alone in criticising the strip, but not all Guardian readers agreed. "Viz shows women in a critical light, but it exposes its male characters in equally critical ways," wrote Ivy Garlitz from Felixstowe, in a persuasive letter to the paper. "For all its sexist comments (towards both sexes) it makes valid points about modern Britain."

A comparison of current and early issues confirms that Viz is still just as funny as it was in its heyday - if not funnier - and if it no longer seems so shocking, that's because everyone else has caught up. There are no secrets in publishing, and although none of Viz's insipid imitators ever made much impact, plenty of other publications now mimic its irreverent tone. Viz has become a victim of its own success.

Viz has always been mainly written for and read by young men. Back in the 1980s, there were precious few irreverent and funny magazines aimed at that market. The first lads mag, Loaded, didn't appear until 1994. Loaded's launch editor, James Brown, cited Viz as one of Loaded's main inspirations (he used to sell the comic in Leeds when he was a student). Loaded was of course nothing like Viz, but it did share some of the same schoolboy humour - and like Viz, its success spawned a rash of imitators.

Inevitably, some aspects of Viz have changed, especially in recent years. Chris Donald retired from the comic in 1999 (he now works part-time in a second-hand bookshop), and his brother Simon left last year to set up a TV writing partnership called Blissna (Geordiespeak for excellent) with fellow Viz cartoonist Alex Collier, creator of Viz modern classics like Tasha Slapper, Billy No Mates and Anna Reksik. Chris's greatest characters, Billy The Fish and Roger Mellie, are now drawn by Simon Thorp and Graham Dury, and even though, like Walt Disney cartoons, these strips remain remarkably faithful to their prototypes, it's telling that the three cartoonists who've left the comic are local lads who never went to college, while the three cartoonists who remain are outsiders with degrees. Viz is now a mainstream magazine rather than an underground fanzine, and even though its contents are as anarchic as ever, its glossy cover and conventional ads are a far cry from the early days. Yet although Viz's circulation has dwindled, today its influence is everywhere. It started out parodying the tabloid papers. Today the tabloids read like parodies of Viz. It started out running adverts that sent up the products they were supposed to be promoting. Today you scarcely see an advert that isn't sending up itself. Viz has always been apolitical, even in the Thatcherite 1980s. Today, apolitical comedy isn't the exception, but the norm. In its own inimitable way, Viz has changed the sense of humour of the nation. Not bad for an obscure fanzine published from the proceeds of a dead-end desk job at the DHSS.
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