Contents
4 Celibacy and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll
5 Lunch in the Penthouse Suite
6 Four-Letter Comic on Public Cash
8 The Fizzing of the Blue Touch Paper
11 The TV Comedy of the Nineties
13 A Night at the Welsh BAFTAs
17 Honk if You’ve Shagged Catherine Zeta-Jones
19 A Minor Problem with Our Reservations
21 You Can’t Tie an Ice Cube to Your Beard
23 The Case of the Flying Bin Liner
‘Chris Donald has written a brilliant book . . . an enthralling story . . . and as you’d expect from the creator of Billy the Fish and Roger Mellie, it’s also extremely funny.’
The Guardian – The Guide
‘If you haven’t read Chris Donald’s excellent book about that excellent magazine, get your copy now while stocks last.’
Evening Standard
‘Donald is lucid and engaging, and he’s affably disrespectful to the celebrities he meets when his life turns (relatively) showbiz.’
Q Magazine
‘The inside track on the why, who, how and what for of Britain’s greatest publishing phenomenon’
Loaded
‘a very good read’
New Statesman
‘Clunky’
Time Out
Dedicated to the memory of my mum, Kay, who would not have approved.
Also to my dad, Jimmy, and my wife, Dolores.
Oh, and ‘hi’ to my kids. Hi kids.
Way back in 1992 Viz publisher John Brown suggested I write a blockbuster book telling the story of our magazine. And what a remarkable story it would be. In the space of a few years the tatty rag I’d started from my Newcastle bedroom, with a print run of 150, had grown to become the third best-selling magazine in Britain, with an astonishing circulation of 1.2 million, outselling Woman’s Own, Cosmopolitan and Hello! Only the Radio Times and TV Times sold more copies. Viz was a publishing phenomenon, revolutionizing the magazine market and making household names of Biffa Bacon, Johnny Fartpants and Buster Gonad. Its social effects had been dramatic too, launching words like ‘oo-er!’ ‘hatstand’ and ‘hairy pie’ into the national vocabulary, and paving the way for the great 1990s chauvinism revival through politically incorrect stereotypes like Sid the Sexist and the Fat Slags. Viz had even pre-empted the chronic decline of TV broadcasting standards through the creation of Roger Mellie the Man on the Telly.
As the founder and editor of Viz I had enjoyed a remarkable, rags-to-riches, roller-coaster ride of against-all-odds achievement and outrageous controversy. I’d won publishing awards, offended gypsies, been invited to tea by Prince Charles, and been taken in for questioning by officers of New Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch. Along the way I’d gained incredible insights into the world of light entertainment as I launched, almost single-handed, the hugely successful showbusiness careers of Harry Enfield and Caroline Aherne, to name but two. I’d caught my wife up to no good with Keith Richards in Peter Cook’s attic, I’d wined and dined the delightful Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I’d seen John Leslie’s cock in the showers at a celebrity football match. By any standards the book would have been a sensation