Student Grant
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Student Grant is a cartoon strip in the British comic Viz featuring a University student named Grant Wankshaft. It first appeared in 1992 and was quite prolific during the rest of the 1990s, although has appeared less frequently since then. The strip was created by Simon Thorp.
Grant Wankshaft is a student at the fictional Spunkbridge University (presumably a pun on Cambridge; spunk and cum are British slang for semen). It is not known exactly what he is studying as he rarely turns up to lectures.
Grant likes to think of himself as a very liberal intellectual who is both independent and is very worldly-wise. In reality he frequently shows bigoted opinions, is not especially bright, relies on his doting parents for money and has little idea about the world outside of campus. In some ways he is similar to the character Rick in the sitcom The Young Ones.
Grant has a number of friends who are just like him in that they are eager to express their "individuality" by all wearing the same kind of clothes. The latest student fashions they wear are invariably ridiculous, like huge hats, bright yellow dungarees and T-shirts with geeky slogans on them like All your base are belong to us, Thunderbirds Are Go! and, in the late 1990s especially, Teletubbies Say 'Eh Oh'!. They are very opinionated and love to talk loudly (and ignorantly) about various subjects, emphasising their sureness about their statements by tagging "...actually!" at the end of their sentences. They are convinced of how intelligent they are, usually "proving" it by listing the grades they got in their A-levels.
Grant and his friends are all obsessed with being politically correct, to the point where they often argue about who is the most politically correct of them all, such as the time they had a passionate debate about whether it was racist or not to like Ali G ("Well I heard black people do like Ali G, so if you don't like him, that makes you racist, actually!"}
Although Grant likes to think of himself as in touch with the working classes, he is actually from a solid middle class background. He also clearly has a lot of latent contempt for the working classes and non-students in general, regarding them as ill-educated peasants. Because he has a habit of making his opinions loud and clear, this has resulted in a number of savage beatings for Grant on the occasions he strayed off campus and into the real world.
In the 1990s, when students received a maintenance grant (which irritated some people intensely), Student Grant appeared in most issues. Since most students do not receive a maintenance grant now, and end up after university with an average of £10,000 of debts, the humour-potential for poking fun at students is less obvious.
