Roger Irrelevant

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Roger Irrelevant ("he's completely hatstand") is a character from the British comic Viz. During the 1980s he starred in short, half-page or three-framed strips which later evolved to full-page spreads by the 1990s. Since 2005 he has appeared only sporadically in Viz.

A bespectacled boy of indeterminate age (perhaps early teens), Roger Irrelevant is utterly detached from reality. The premise of the strip is that he spends his entire time making irrelevant remarks and suffering from bizarre delusions, usually involving inanimate objects. Roger does not have much of a personality and is oblivious to nearly everything around him.

For example, in one strip, Roger throws a lamp from the roof of a house after a long, impassioned (and obviously unsuccessful) plea for the lamp not to commit suicide. On another occasion he decides to elope with an armchair, declaring it is pregnant with his children. Another time sees him disrupting the funeral of a relative by dragging the corpse out of the coffin and - employing a Brooklyn accent and emulating a character from a Mickey Spillane novel - aggressively questioning the deceased about some stolen goods.

His parents seem to be very understanding and merely politely request that he stops his behaviour. These are the only times that Roger manages to show any sign of interaction with real people, although usually it is only in the form of saying things like "wibble wibble." (dictionary.com attributes this nonsense-word to Roger; see External Links below.) "Frisnit" and "z'goft" are two of Roger's other favourite words.

The secondary character of the strip is Roger's (normal) younger sister, Roberta Irrelevant, who is very unsympathetic towards her older brother. Quite often she despairs at the end of the strip when her brother's behaviour is somehow rewarded. For example, one strip shows Roger indulging in his customary ridiculous behaviour in public until an authority figure stops him. Roberta is pleased that her deranged brother will be put in a mental asylum, but she is horrified when the authority figure turns out to be a representative of a local drama class who is impressed with what he thinks is Roger's performance art. He promptly gives Roger a scholarship and a promise to encourage his behaviour.

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