Drunken Bakers

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The Drunken Bakers are characters in the British adult humour magazine Viz created by Barney Farmer and Lee Healey.

The two bakers, whose names are never mentioned, run a bakery together. They suffer from severe alcoholism, and every strip shows them drinking strong alcoholic beverages such as various liqueurs. Hints have been made in the strip that at least one of them has an estranged daughter. They try their best to bake something every night, but because of their severe inebriation, the results are always completely hopeless. If they even manage to bake something, it is often inedible, sometimes even toxic. For instance in one episode they baked cakes made with paraffin instead of milk - "This milk is blue and it tastes funny".

Customers sometimes arrive at the baker's shop, asking for various kinds of breads or pastries. The bakers promise they'll bake it for them, but always fail to fulfill their promise. How the bakers manage to stay in business is a complete mystery. Recent strips have featured one of the protagonists being hospitalised with renal failure while the other drinks rum at his bedside. Their shop has been vandalised many times, and has burnt down several times, generally due to them leaving the oven on and falling into a drunken stupor.

The presentation of the strip portrays a fatalistic style, where it is obvious that the bakers will never reform, their customers will never get proper service, and no-one is doing a thing about it. Some storylines simply fail to resolve themselves and end indeterminately, reinforcing the character's cyclical and depressing existence. (In a recent strip, one of the bakers is bitten by a stray dog he has befriended, but he doesn't notice. "Your mouth is pissing blood" remarks the other baker).

[edit] Exhibitions

In 2006 The Drunken Bakers were the subject of an exhibition by Mark Leckey at the Tate Britain.

[edit] Critical Acclaim

The Strip and the Tate Britain exhibition have received wide critical acclaim from both the art and literary worlds:

I think the Drunken Bakers is like Samuel fucking Beckett or something. It's horrible and really funny. - Alan Moore

Comedy drunks have been around since drinks first began, but few have been so utterly forlorn as the Drunken Bakers. - Steve Lowe,The Guardian

The aesthetic compression of Mr Farmer's dialogue and Mr healey's line...convey an oppressive sense of the drinkers irresistible drive for oblivion. - Roberta Smith, New York Times

Its brilliant. - Christopher Howse, The Daily Telegraph