- Billy the Fish
Billy the Fish is a long-running
cartoon strip in the Britishcomic "Viz" that first appeared in 1983.Created by artistChris Donald and writerSimon Thorp (who later took on both roles) "Billy the Fish" is, like many "Viz" strips, a lampoon ofBritish comic s - In "Billy the Fish"'s case, that of football-themed strips such asRoy of the Rovers .The strip chronicles the football team Fulchester United F.C. (
Fulchester is the fictional town in which many of Viz's characters live). Originally the strip was produced in serial format, a rarity for "Viz", but later became an occasional strip, usually appearing when major tournaments were being played or parodying major incidents in the world of football. The strip returned to its serial format for six months in 2007 as a result of a sponsorship deal with bookmakersbetNOW , who were advertised in a deliberately ridiculous manner in each strip that they sponsored.Characters include:
*Billy Thompson, the main character. Despite born half-man , half-fish , has managed to have a long and successful career as agoalkeeper for Fulchester. Essentially, Billy is a human head (complete with mullet hairstyle) on a fish's body, who inexplicably floats approximately five feet above the ground, and propels himself with hisfin s and tail. The first Billy was killed saving a booby-trapped ball in anFA Cup final, but was replaced by his son, who was also called Billy and happened to look exactly like his father.
*Tommy Brown, the team manager. A bluff, no-nonsense type in asheepskin jacket , Tommy is the second-most used character - in the past he has hadopen heart surgery on the pitch and (coinciding withChannel 4 's "The Manageress" starringCherie Lunghi ) was revealed to be a woman in disguise. His catchphrase is "someone's out to make trouble for Fulchester United. The question is who?"
*Syd Preston, the team coach. Syd is usually a hapless straight man trying to make sense of events
*Rick Spangle, millionaire pop star and chairman. In one strip, Spangle was revealed to be aMartian determined to get Billy to sign for his team Dynamo Mars, but of course this plot thread was never expanded upon
*Brown Fox, a scantily clad, big-breasted Native American woman who plays winger
*Johnny X, aninvisible striker
*Terry Jackson, Unsettledreserve team keeper.
*Professor Wolfgang Schnell BSc. PhD., amad scientist who usually only shoots for goal after working out the besttrajectory he should kick the ball at, achieving this with a calculator, various charts and a geometry set
*Evil Gus Parker, boss of Grimthorpe City (Fulchester's arch rivals), and Wilf, his henchman. Parker is often behind highly contrived schemes to discredit Fulchester
*Shakin' Stevens , the famous pop star signed for Fulchester in an early strip, parodying the time whenSpandau Ballet signed up forMelchester Rovers , the team featured inRoy of the Rovers . He was later joined byMick Hucknall , the frontman forSimply Red .
*Maxwell Baxter a supposed "ruthless millionaire," whose schemes always seem to spell trouble for Fulchester United. Despite appearing in many strips, the real Baxter has never been seen, as he always turns out to in fact be a cardboard replica with a hidden tape recorder (except for one appearance where he was upgraded to a waxwork dummy with a concealed CD player). Based primarily onRobert Maxwell .
*Gus Parker, the manager of Grimthorpe City, Fulchester's rivals. Has no qualms with murder, if it helps his team win.As the above characters suggest, plot elements in the strip are frequently nonsensical, inconsistent, and highly contrived, often being set up and then forgotten about for no reason.They include:
* Surreal turns of events, especially in order to make ludicrious
cop-out s fromcliffhanger s. For example, at the end of one strip, a game inJapan is interrupted byMothra , the giant beast from theGodzilla movies. At the start of the strip in the next issue it is swiftly revealed that it was actually just a harmless cardboard cut-out of Mothra. Everyone sighs with relief and the game continues. On more than one occasion, characters have awakened from perilious situations to discover it was "just a dream" (e.g. "So... it was all a dream?"; "Yes, apart from the bit about playing for England.").
* Satire of the tendency in football fiction to have impossibly competent teams steamrollering their way through the competition. Fulchester usually win a game with scores of around 5-nil - but if Billy is not in goal they instead lose by the same margin. One strip, lampooning the 'back from the brink' plot type, had Fulchester narrowly beating a team of paperboys and then moving on to theFA Cup final the next day.
* Incidents relating to real-life events in British football. For example, Billy The Fish often adopts the current hairstyle of footballing celebrities such asPaul Gascoigne orDavid Beckham . On another occasion, Billy shouted a tirade of abuse at Tommy Brown, for daring to order him to tie his shoelaces (even though Billy, not having feet, does not wear shoes.) This prompted Brown to drop Billy from the team, which mimicked the incident whereby Irish footballerRoy Keane was dropped from his team and sent home from the 2002 World Cup for hurling abuse at his manager.
* References to the strip's supposed unpopularity amongst "Viz" readers. In one strip Tommy Brown drops his trousers and defecates on his desk to prove that no-one is reading.
* A "spot the difference" version of the strip, the differences from the normal version being extremely obvious; for instance the strip is titled "Pilly the Fish", Syd Preston suddenly appears nude in one panel, and Tommy Brown is replaced byAdolf Hitler .Anecdotal evidence suggests that the name of the character "Billy the Fish" may have been based on a real person as the football team at Heaton Manor Comprehensive school in the late 1970s where the Donald brothers were educated had a goalkeeper call Bill whose nickname was "Billy the Fish".
In other media
"Billy The Fish" was made into an animated show by
Channel 4 in 1990. It ran for two series, totaling nine episodes, and featured the voice of comedianHarry Enfield . This then spawned "The Viz Billy the Fish Football Yearbook", which described itself as "The Official Book of the cartoon of the Comic of the Channel 4 T.V. series of the cartoon Billy the Fish". [cite book
author = Chris Donald, Simon Thorp, & Graham Dury (writers & illustrators)
title = The Viz Billy the Fish Football Yearbook
origyear = 1990
origmonth = November
format = A4 S/B
edition = 1st Ed
publisher = John Brown Publishing
location = London SW6 8NJ
language = English
isbn = 1870870166
ref = 1 ]Trivia
* A real
Fulchester United FC , named after the Viz strip, exists inSaskatchewan .
* The fictional Fulchester United team is currently sponsored by the real [http://betnow.co.uk betNOW] . They were formerly sponsored by Go! Discs.
* The heavy metal group TheMelvins have a song titled "Billy Fish" on their 2008 albumNude With Boots
* Prince William was given the callsign "Billy the Fish" by his fellow RAF pilots, a pun on his title William of Wales which also uses a part of his father's title for his surname.References and Links
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