Biffa Bacon
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Biffa Bacon is a cartoon character in the British comic magazine Viz. Biffa and his family—Mutha and Fatha(real names Vermintrude and Basha) —hail from the Tyneside region of North East England and speak in the Geordie dialect. The strip focuses on their surreal world entirely governed by physical violence where Biffa is constantly subjected to abuse by his parents. Biffa appears to be a visual parody of the character Bully Beef from The Dandy, while his mother, even more rough-looking and masculine than his already tough father, bears a striking resemblance to Desperate Dan, a character from the same comic, including the pronounced stubble. The characters were allegedly inspired by a real family observed by Viz editor Chris Donald in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne city centre, where the son began an unprovoked assault on another boy; the parents, rather than intervene, began shouting encouragement to their child. As soon as it appeared the victim of the assault was able to defend himself the father joined in the attack that only ceased when police officers intervened.
Generally speaking, the plot of a strip includes a flimsy pretext for Biffa to be violently attacked, and then, just when a reconciliation is in order, the reconciliation emerges as just another flimsy pretext for a violent attack. Often the violence is surreal or impossible – Mutha Bacon's foot flying out of a small handbag to kick Biffa in the teeth, after which she somehow climbs out of the handbag. In the earlier editions of Viz, Biffa's violence was directed against the weedy Cedric Soft, (a parody of Dennis The Menace's rivalry with Walter The Softy in The Beano) but over the years the focus has changed and now the strip almost exclusively focuses on Biffa's abuse at the hands of his parents. Recently, however, Cedric and his family had their own strip, which the Bacons obviously stepped in to ruin.
Some characters who have extended the Bacon family have appeared and only existed for one strip and then never mentioned again. These include Biffa gaining a new baby brother Basha, and owning a dog called Knacka (a pun of Dennis The Menace's dog Gnasher and the slang word knacker).
Nevertheless, Biffa and his parents invariably band together to assault against any outsiders who appear in the strip and, as with all Viz cartoons, much of the humour comes from putting the characters against the setting of "ordinary" people. On one occasion, however, the strip ended with all-out war between the Bacons and the McBashers (the Glaswegian equivalent of the Bacons, who refer to them as "soft Geordie bastards").
The characters and plotlines also bear some resemblance to The Jocks and the Geordies, another historical comic strip in The Dandy comic.
[edit] External Links
- Flash scan of strip from Viz website: Biffa Bacon
