The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids

CHAPTER THREE

Ghost Town

In the summer of 1980 Newcastle’s Quayside wasn’t the glitzy playground for footballers and fat slags that it is today. On the corner of Quayside and Broad Chare there now stands an estate agent’s office where river view apartmentettes are advertised for £250,000 and penthouse suites overlooking the Baltic Art Gallery and the landmark Egg-slicer Bridge sell for a million plus. On the same corner site twenty-four years ago Anti-Pop rented a derelict rehearsal room for £7 a week. Nobody wanted to live or work on the Quayside back then, largely because the river stank of shit. As you walked beneath the railway viaduct, along The Side and into what was once the thriving commercial heart of the city, it was like entering a ghost town. Beneath the north pier of the Tyne Bridge buildings stood empty, their stonework blackened with a century of soot. On the river front itself the Port Authority and a solitary advertising agency seemed to be the only buildings in use. The city’s party epicentre was much further north, and at night you could walk from The Side to the Baltic Tavern in Broad Chare without passing a single under-dressed, drunken woman staggering about in high heels.

The Baltic was a rough-and-ready pub with a reputation for violence dating back to an unfortunate shotgun and testicles incident that had taken place a year or two earlier. But there was cheap rehearsal space in the run-down buildings that surrounded it and the Live Theatre group had established themselves just up the road, so the pub had a pretty bohemian clientele. It was still a sailors’ pub too, with the odd naval vessel mooring nearby, and on Sundays it filled up with dodgy market traders. The Baltic was decorated in a half-hearted nautical theme with fishing nets and orange buoys draped above the bar, and there were a couple of token lifebelts hanging on the wall next to the tab machine. But this was no theme pub. It was a good old-fashioned boozer. The jukebox featured an eclectic mix of disco, soul and early Adam Ant records, and the wall behind it was a sea of posters advertising gigs, plays and exhibitions. In front of the jukebox was a pool table, and it was here I whiled away most of my free time after packing in my job.

Pathetic Sharks

By now Jim Brownlow had got himself a girlfriend. Fenella was a petite and pretty brunette whom I’d known at school, but since we’d left school Jim had got to know her considerably better than me and they now shared a flat. Fenella was a revelation when it came to selling comics. She worked in a clothes boutique by day and by night she’d accompany us on our rounds of pubs and Students’ Union bars. With her looks, patter and personality, Fenella could sell a dozen or more comics where I would have struggled to sell two or three, blokes literally queuing up to hand her their money. Armed with this new sales weapon, in July of 1980 I ordered an ambitious 1000 copies of the third issue. The bill came to £126.57. I hadn’t minded losing money on the first two comics but now I was living on £14 a week state benefit and if Viz was going to continue it would have to start paying for itself. Editorially one of the highlights of the new comic was the début of the Pathetic Sharks. This was a fairly crude half-page strip which had started out as a Jaws spoof before I abandoned it halfway through. Shortly afterwards Jim had picked it up and added a speech balloon, something to the effect that my sharks looked crap. And thus the Pathetic Sharks were born.

During the summer of 1980 I got a message that Brian Sandells wanted to see me. Brian owned the near-legendary Kard Bar tat emporium in what was then the Handyside’s Arcade. This run-down Victorian shopping arcade stood in Percy Street, on the site of what is now ‘Eldon Garden’, a notably plant-free, glass and tiles shopping mall. Today the place buzzes with footballers’ wives spending their husbands’ cash on fancy knickers and designer jewellery, but in the early 1980s it was at the opposite end of the commercial property scale. In the sixties the Handyside had been home to the famous Club A-Go-Go where The Animals had been the resident band. Twenty years on the club was now a grotty carpet warehouse, better known for the historic hole in the ceiling where Jimi Hendrix had once carelessly thrust his guitar, than for its carpets. Most of the low-rent shops in the arcade below sold second-hand kaftans, incense or punk clobber. The Kard Bar was the biggest of these and sold every shade of shit imaginable, from pop posters to dope pipes, via Japanese death stars. The shop was compact and packed, a maze of shelves and racks displaying any manner of tasteless tat. Marilyn Monroe pillow cases, Steve McQueen cigarette lighters, Jim Morrison bath salts. You name it. Brian, the owner, was a smartly dressed, grey-haired man in his late forties who would have looked more at home working in an old-fashioned bank. Standing behind his unusually high counter he looked a bit like a glove puppet operator without a puppet. Brian told me he’d seen copies of Viz and been impressed. A lot of it was rubbish, he added quickly to counteract the praise, but he thought it was well produced. He ordered a modest ten copies of issue 3 to begin with, but paid me £1.50, cash up front, and immediately put them on sale right next to his till.

By now my nationwide distribution network included top retailers like the Moonraker science-fiction bookshop in Brighton and the Freewheel Community Bookshop in Norwich. I got in touch with these unlikely places by scouring the national Yellow Pages archive in the Central Library and sending off unsolicited samples by post. Meanwhile the south coast retirement resort of Bournemouth was becoming an unlikely sales hot spot thanks to the efforts of Derek Gritten. He had even approached the local branch of WHSmith with issue 2. They’d told him where to go, of course, but Derek was still confident enough to order a staggering eighty copies of No. 3. I had distribution north of the border too, a Stirling student called Bill Gordon having forked out £15 for 100 copies to sell among his friends. But selling 1000 copies was proving to be difficult, and after five months I still had a couple of hundred left and not enough money to pay the next print bill. Brian Sandells got me out of a scrape, buying the lot off me and paying cash up front.

Sales hadn’t been helped by our second press review, this time in the local morning paper. I’d sent offbeat columnist Tony Jones at the Newcastle Journal copies of the first three comics and he invited myself and Jim in to meet him and to pose for our first ever press picture on the roof of the local newspaper offices. His review was a bit more objective than the Evening Chronicle’s. Under the headline ‘Comic is a five letter word’ he said that most of the magazine was ‘cheap, nasty and misdirected’. But he wasn’t entirely negative. His concluding words were, ‘If they clean up their act, this enterprising duo could yet find Viz has a future.’

Despite struggling to shift issue 3, I printed another 1000 copies of issue 4 in October 1980. This comic featured the first ever letters page, a combination of genuine letters I’d received (such as the stock letter from the dole office that accompanied my weekly giro) and letters that I’d made up to mimic the vacuous style of the tabloid letters pages. As more and more of my time got taken up by selling – posting off parcels and chasing up payments – the interval between comics was increasing. The next comic didn’t appear until March 1981, but No. 5 was worth waiting for as it marked a watershed. We had our first full-page cartoons, with Jim’s brilliant Paul Whicker the Tall Vicar instantly becoming our most popular character to date. There was also Simon’s SWANT, parodying the American TV series SWAT, and for my money a strip called Ciggies and Beer was Martin Stevens’s best ever contribution. I’d also made my first crude attempt to mimic the teenage photo-romance stories I’d read in girls’ comics like Jackie, taking the pictures at home on my dad’s old camera and using our neighbours as actors. Issue 5 also included the first genuine commercial advert. Brian Sandells asked if he could advertise the Kard Bar and I agreed, on condition that the advert was in keeping with the editorial style of the magazine. This set a famous trend of amusing adverts that was to last for several years. I charged Brian £11 for his half-page advert, and he gave me £15. Brian could be very generous – a little too generous at times when it came to offering advice. On every visit to his shop I’d receive a lengthy lecture on business or graphic design and I’d be stuck there for up to an hour smiling and nodding my head. He was also a real stickler when it came to proofreading his adverts. He always insisted I got the spelling right, for example. He was a real nit-picker, Brian.

When issue 5 was printed the Free Press invited us to come in and do some ‘self work’ finishing which meant that they printed the pages and we put the comics together ourselves. This cut the production costs considerably and was also an important gesture of compliance with the Free Press’s socialist principles. They were, after all, a bunch of commies, not a commercial printer, and for them the object of the exercise was to give us a share in the means of production. Jim, Simon and myself spent many a happy day at Charlotte Square collating, folding and then stapling comics together on a Dickensian saddle-stitching machine. Eventually they let us use the guillotine too, and finally the ‘Hobson’, a fully automated and highly temperamental page collating, folding and shredding machine.

The Free Press was a fascinating environment to work in, with a wonderful mix of characters present. For me that place encapsulated the comical conflict between trendy, right-on socialists and down-to-earth, working-class people that was central to some of my favourite cartoons at the time. Cartoons like Woolly Wilfy Wichardson who orders weal ale in a working-class boozer, and Community Shop where a bloke in a vest goes into a community wholefood collective and tries to buy twenty Embassy Regal. The Free Press was a co-operative where all the workers were equal, but there was an obvious divide between the middle-class political ideologists whose idea it had been to set it up, and the working-class printers who’d been drafted in to work there. Printers like Jimmy, a fat Geordie bloke from Scotswood. He may not have had the intellect of colleagues like Howard, the idealistic hippy, and Andy, the hardcore socialist Scouser, but Jimmy could debunk the lot of them with his blunt wit and choice turn of phrase.

Despite having been fobbed off by Malcolm Gerrie I kept on bombarding Check It Out with copies of Viz and eventually a researcher called Alfie Fox got in touch and invited myself and Simon to a meeting. It turned out Fox was new to the show and didn’t realize Viz was off limits. But our meeting wasn’t a complete waste of time. Alfie Fox took us to the canteen at Tyne-Tees Television for a chat, but I spent the entire meeting listening to someone talking on an adjoining table. A local TV newsreader and continuity announcer by the name of Rod Griffiths was holding court with a group of colleagues, and he was swearing like a trooper. It was astounding to hear such a familiar voice coming out with such unfamiliar language, and I was mesmerized. When we left the meeting we were no closer to getting Viz on TV, but the seeds for a new cartoon character had just been sown.

Bizarrely, after trying for over a year to get Viz onto a shoddy local yoof programme, a slot on national TV fell into our lap. In June 1981 a hand-written note addressed to ‘Anyone from Viz Comics’ was left at the Kard Bar. It came from Jane Oliver and Gavin Dutton, producers of a BBC2 yoof show called Something Else. They were planning to make an alternative programme about Newcastle and were in town looking for suitably disaffected young people to take part. Something Else was a product of the BBC’s Community Programme Unit, and the idea of the show was to give ‘the kids’ access to television.

When we met the two producers they explained that we, the kids, were going to make the programme, not them, the boring grown-ups. They were just going to help us a little. They hand-picked a panel of five appropriately discontented youths from the area, all of whom had got ‘something to say’. As well as myself, representing the comic, there were four others. A motorcyclist called Mick wanted to draw attention to the plight of motorcyclists who are occasionally barred from pubs just because they wear leather clothing. Mick was a fireman, and it occurred to him that if the pubs from which he was barred caught fire, it would be him the landlord would turn to to put the fire out. The irony and injustice of this situation clearly rankled with Mick, and the idea of filming people riding around on bikes clearly appealed to producer Gavin Dutton, who was himself a bit of a biker. Then there was Mark, a chubby, monotone mod who wanted to moan about local bands not getting a ‘fair deal’ from London record companies. There was also Tracey, an actress who I suspected was on the other bus, and had some sort of gripe about the stereotyping of women. And there was Stephen, a long-haired hippy who didn’t like being stereotyped as a long-haired hippy just because he was a long-haired hippy. This was going to be some show.

As with all yoof shows there were a couple of live music slots in the programme to try and entice people to watch it, and because it was our programme the producers said it was up to us to choose the bands. I realized this was a golden opportunity for Arthur 2 Stroke and The Chart Commandos so I got to work lobbying the other panel members. The Chart Commandos were just about the biggest band in Newcastle at the time and their recent single, a dub version of the theme from Hawaii Five-0, had recently stormed in at number 175 in the charts. After a lot of arm-twisting all five of us eventually agreed that Arthur 2 Stroke and the Chart Commandos, and notorious South Shields punk outfit the Angelic Upstarts, would provide the music for our show. With this settled I ran all the way from the BBC studios in Newbridge Street to the Anti-Pop rehearsal room on the Quayside to break the good news.

The next day producer Gavin Dutton rang me. He said he’d been thinking. Because the North-East had such a reputation for heavy metal music, would it not be a good idea to have a heavy metal band on the programme? ‘Not all Geordies are air guitarists,’ I told him. ‘You’d just be reinforcing another stereotype. Can’t we just stick with the bands we chose?’ No, we couldn’t. It turned out that Dutton, himself a bit of a heavy metal fan, had already twisted the arms of the other panel members and the decision had been made to replace Arthur 2 Stroke with a bunch of tight-trousered, cock-thrusting Charlie’s Angels lookalikes, the Tygers of Pan fucking Tang.

My next contribution to the programme was to draw cartoons of a few other North-East stereotypes, such as a man with a flat cap and whippet and a woman chained to the kitchen sink. These were to be included in the show in the hope that the use of such stereotypes on national television would in some way help put a stop to the use of such stereotypes in the media. I seem to recall that was one of the producers’ ideas too. Jim, Simon and I were also going to be interviewed about Viz by another member of the panel. On the day of our interview the film crew were scheduled to arrive at my house at 2.00 p.m. We’d never been on telly before so the three of us decided to pop out to a local pub beforehand in order to calm our nerves. By the time the TV crew arrived we were fucking rat-arsed, Simon especially so, and for some reason we’d dressed up in a selection of silly wigs and false moustaches. Mark, the monotone mod interviewer, read out his questions with some difficulty, and a total lack of enthusiasm, while we gave a giggling performance of Ozzy Osbourne-esque incoherence. When filming was complete all three of us were invited down to London to make a trailer for the show. As a special treat they let us write out the programme credits by hand, in white paint on a very long roll of blue paper. It took us most of the night to do it, and we later learned this had saved them £125 in production costs. The tight bastards didn’t give us a penny. But the benefits of our TV exposure were apparent even before the programme had been finished. In July 1981 I got a letter from TV presenter Tony Bilbow saying he’d seen a copy of Viz at the Community Programme Unit offices and wanted to subscribe to future issues. He generously enclosed £10 and in doing so became our first ever celebrity reader. ‘Something Else Newcastle’ was broadcast on BBC2 at 6.55 p.m. on Friday 25 September 1981. In those days there were only three TV channels, and being on telly was a real event. Everyone either saw us or heard about it, and the programme resulted in a massive upsurge of interest in the magazine, from my parents in particular.

Up till this point they’d been unaware that Viz existed, but keeping it a secret had been getting harder by the day. I knew full well that a BBC film crew arriving at the door might need some form of explanation, but before I’d had a chance to say anything my dad had invited them into the living room for a cup of tea and casually enquired about what they were filming upstairs. The cat was finally out of the bag and a few days later my mum broached the subject of this ‘comic’ 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.