Sid the Sexist

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Sid the Sexist (real name Sidney Smutt) is a character from the English comic book Viz.

Sid and his mates Baz, Bob and Joe, who are all Geordies (meaning they are from Newcastle) spend a lot of time at the pub, using outrageously crude lines in their attempts to chat up women. In an early issue of Viz, Sid approached a woman with the line: 'How, Pet, my name's, Sid d'ya fancy a f***?' When she answered with a definite 'No!', he continued: 'Well, would you mind lying down while I have one?'

Sid and his mates brag continually about their sexual prowess, particularly the former, whose secret is that he is in fact a virgin, and each strip centers around his struggle to lose his virginity, which he never does (often due to the fact that he still lives with his mother).

The character was based in part on Graham Lines, a friend of Viz editor Chris Donald, whose endless sexual bravado and imaginative chat-up lines masked his shyness with the opposite sex. An invitation to 'go out on the pull' usually involved a few quiet beers, a takeaway dinner, and a late night spent watching Laurel & Hardy videos.

Like most comic book characters, Sid never appears to age, and nor do his friends. He is stuck in a limbo of being a desperate 30 year-old virgin: although one strip did state that he had turned 31 last week, his age has somehow returned to 30 a few months later. It is generally left to the imagination what his job is, and the usual implication is that he doesn't have one, or takes a series of casual jobs - in one episode, he attempts to chat up a woman by telling her that he works as 'an assistant to a well-established provider of goods to the younger end of the market'; despite being exposed as an elf in Santa's grotto in a local department store' by his derisive mates, he still desperately attempts to keep up the pretence that his job brings him success with women - 'Y'see lasses fancy summat a bit special'. He seems under-educated, knows little of the world outside Newcastle, and is sometimes barely even literate. He is physically very unfit, cowardly despite his pretence at macho aggression, and always comes off worst in a fight - he is often beaten up by the boyfriend of a woman he tries it on with. Although his three companions do sometimes succeed with women, they are much like him in their yobbish, misogynistic outlook and never marry, or expand their stagnant social circle. Bob and Joe are frequently in awe of Sid's supposed sexual prowess whereas Baz is more sceptical and is the only one of Sid's friends who comes close to seeing through his hollow bragging, often resulting in the two falling out or even coming to blows.

The recurrent format of Sid's misadventures is that he believes he has found a new approach to women which will secure him a sexual conquest at long last ('This time... this time! It HAS to be this time!!') - and he invariably ends up being humiliated, often painfully.

The strip was created and mostly drawn by Simon Donald. After Donald left the magazine in 2003, Paul Palmer took over as the strip's artist.

Examples include:

• Going horse riding, in the belief that posh female jockeys are always horny after being rubbed up by their saddle. An upper-class looking woman did indeed offer him a roll in the hay after riding, but when Sid cried out with excitement, a nearby horse was shocked and kicked him hard in the crotch, sending him to hospital.
• Buying a dubious self-help book, one of many purporting to teach the art of success with women by a self-proclaimed super-stud. He brags to his friends that he will reveal the amazing secrets it contains, 'only when me c***'s fallen off!' His overconfident attempt to attract a nearby girl, using the method in the book and a vile-smelling pheromone spray supplied with it, only results in a very rude, embarrassing rejection. Later that night, Bob, Baz and Joe have all pulled girls - while Sid wanders home alone, miserable and still smelling foul.
• Making a £1000 bet with his friend Baz that he can seduce a woman within a week. He attempts hypnosis on a nun, who kicks him in his genitals; buys another pheromone spray (Pig Piss) which only attracts a blind woman's guide dog; and makes a desperate approach to fat, bald, ugly uber-feminist Millie Tant, who repays him with yet another vicious kick. The final frame has Sid begging his mother for £1000 to pay off the grinning Baz...
• Attempting to become a biker having read a book about biker chicks. After buying a naff old moped Sid walks into a biker pub and is instantly out of place. Before long he has been severely beaten up, and has had the word 'Twat' engraved on his forehead.
• Going to Barcelona, Spain for his friend Joe's brother's bachelor party, because he knows bachelor parties generally involve at least one sex show. Even though Sid is the best man, all the other guys just want to booze themselves silly. Sid finally cracks and outright demands to go to a sex show, and pays all the entrance fees. At the show, a beautiful woman wants a volunteer for a 'strip' - Sid instantly jumps on the stage. The woman blindfolds him and asks him to bend over - and while everybody is watching, a man dressed in a gorilla suit bangs him from behind. Sid still didn't score, but everyone got a good laugh.
• Sid and his friends travel to Bangkok after hearing that the prostitutes there will sell themselves for as little as a pound. Sid is robbed at gun point by one of these ladies of the night after being tied to the bedpost. The final scene shows Sid trying to earn his flight home by working as a homosexual prostitute. "Just ten more goes and I'll have earned the fare to the airport."
• Setting up his own driving school, in the mistaken belief that the film Confessions of a Driving Instructor is a documentary. When a woman signs up he gets her to drive to a country lane, where he unzips his pants. She ends up panicking and speeding off towards a busy intersection. Sid discovers too late that the dual-controls he's had installed in his car don't actually do anything, and a huge pile-up is the result. To add insult to (literal) injury, Sid ends up getting fined for not being a registered driving instructor and not even having a driving licence. Not to be deterred, he watches another "documentary" in the series and sets up business as a window cleaner.
• Taking part in a pub quiz, hoping to win it and pull women who are impressed by intelligent men. Sid, Bob and Baz form a team and perform abysmally, saying that the dog star is Rin-Tin-Tin (after rejecting Lassie for being too obvious), initially getting the height of the Empire State building correct before changing it to a wrong answer (after Sid realises that it isn't the world's tallest building any more, so it must have shrunk) and saying that JFK was shot by Sue-Ellen (not only confusing JFK with J.R. Ewing but getting J.R.'s would-be assassin wrong as well). They end up with zero points. Joe, usually portrayed as being stupid even compared to the others, gets all but one question right (owing to a slight error over what "Laser" stands for), wins the quiz and manages to pull a pair of classy women.
• During a drinking session with Baz, Bob and Joe, Sid hears about the myth that you get a prostitute sent up to your hotel room if you call reception and ask for "an extra pillow". He dismisses the idea as ridiculous in front of his friends but, sure enough, books himself into a posh hotel later on and calls reception, asking for an "extra pillow". The hotel reception sends a maid up to his room with an actual extra pillow. Sid mistakes the maid for a prostitute and takes his clothes off in front of her, resulting in him being hospitalised after a serious beating. When Sid's friends visit him in hospital he blags off to them that he was in hospital because he had been trying it on with the girlfriends of World Wrestling Federation wrestlers who in turn had only managed to beat him up because The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin had ganged up on him. As usual Sid's friends fall for the story hook-line-and-sinker and leave. Later the doctor asks Sid if he would like "an extra pillow" to make him feel better. Sid takes the offer literally and accepts, only for the doctor to return with a prostitute to his utter amazement.

Sid also starred in a spinoff animated cartoon in 1992 (also called Sid the Sexist) which was aired on channel 4, which was released on DVD in 2004 which contained all five of the fifteen minute long episodes.