Gilbert Ratchet
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Gilbert Ratchet is a character in the British comic Viz. In both his appearance and the surreal humour of the strip, Gilbert is similar to the other Viz character Tinribs.
Gilbert is a young boy who is an expert at swiftly constructing items with which to help people. Quite often he is desperate for money for something, such as some new tools or sweets, and so he strolls around town seeking people in a dilemma of some sort. In return for a promise of some money, Gilbert builds a contraption to assist them. In many ways this parodies (or is a tribute to, depending on how you look at it) the characters and plots of many strips in British children's comics like The Beano and Whizzer and Chips, which see youngsters with fantastic skills or magic objects that enable them to help others. This also mirrors the prevalence in British comics of wandering eccentric millionaires, ever ready to dole out cash in return for junk. Several other stock characters in British comics (such as vicars, mayors and pop stars wearing star-shaped sunglasses) are also parodied.
Gilbert is indeed good at DIY and engineering and can build highly complicated devices in a matter of minutes. The humour from the strip derives from the ludicrious nature of his inventions, the way they work with implausible efficiency and also the way they frequently go wrong in the most spectacular fashion.
For example, the head of an orphanage worries the children in her care are not getting a good upbringing because they are starved of parental attention. Gilbert swiftly constructs a device in which the children travel along on a conveyor belt whilst two dummies - with wigs and clothes to make them look like mum and dad - say pleasant and encouraging things to the children through speakers. When the children get off at the end of the conveyor belt they are well-turned out, playing the violin and carrying schoolbooks. However, Gilbert accidentally hits the switch that puts the device into Dysfunctional Mode. The dummy parents start shouting at the children, telling them they are worthless and even making lewd sexual advances towards them. The children then emerge from the machine horribly messed up, taking heroin and listening to Marilyn Manson. The orphanage owner clips Gilbert round the ear for screwing up her charges and, naturally, refuses to give him a reward.
In fact it is quite common for Gilbert to inexplicably give his devices a harmful mode, and almost without fail the control lever is accidentally switched.
Gilbert is so happy to assist people he never actually considers whether it is good or bad to help people achieve their aims. For example, he does not hesitate to help a supermodel with bulimia achieve her aim of vomiting by building a terrifying contraption he cheerfully dubs "The Vomit-O-Matic".
Invariably, all of his devices go wrong, but by accident he does something right at the end of the strip that results in a reward. However, the thing he was after all along usually results in a surreal misunderstanding. He was once excited when he went to spend his reward money on a "forty-inch surround sound TV" - he believed he would be getting a television, but after handing over his cash Gilbert was given several forty-inch tall Eddie Izzards who promptly stood round him making a lot of noise (Eddie Izzard is a transvestite, which is sometimes abbreviated to TV) "Oh no, it's that kind of forty-inch surround sound TV!" Gilbert sighs.
Ratchett was once so annoyed with frequent misunderstandings like this that in a final frame he once wrote a letter resigning his position as a comic character (although he soon reappeared in Viz.)
Religion is often poked fun at in Gilbert Ratchet (and Viz as a whole), usually Christianity. In a 2005 Gilbert Ratchet strip, he was on his way to a mosque, saying the he hoped to make some light-hearted fun at the expense of Muslims. At the last minute he changed his mind and instead went to the Christian church across the road; the rest of the storyline was about him helping a vicar find Jesus's collection of pornographic magazines. Christians often object to the way various forms of media poke fun at their religion but not of other religions, such as Islam, and this curious opening to the strip could either be seen as a deliberately blatant confirmation of this accusation, or indeed it could be interpreted as the strip's creator making fun of his own reluctance to mock Islam and instead picking on the easier target of Christianity.
