Viz Comics

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If you're a fan of Viz, I'll be uploading some of the issues I've scanned over the next while. I posted some of these early ones a good while back, but I'll try to get through all the ones I have this time. You'll need the Comic Book Reader, which you can get HERE for Windows, or HERE for MAC, to read these files.




"I just bought the CD advertised in a recent Viz with issues 26-40 on it and your scans blow them out of the water. Wish I'd saved my cash now." - a happy visitor

thanks to Jay for sending some issues and jacksprat for checking mistakes

more issues to come over the rolling years...

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Here are most of the animated videos released by Viz in the 90s. They feature voices done by Peter Cook, Harry Enfield and Bob Mortimer amongst others. The videos are in a playlist, so to choose the others, press play and then roll the mouse over the player.

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Armando Ianucci presented a show about British comics a few years back - here are the combined parts about Viz...



'Viz - The Rock n Roll Years'
is an extended radio feature about the comic... well worth a listen (it's in two parts)

There was a live-action movie based on The Fat Slags released in 2004, featuring many famous faces in cameo roles, plus Angus Deayton, Dolph Lundgren and Naomi Campbell to name a few. It was dubbed as one of 'Britain's worst ever movies' and utterly refuted by the Viz creators, but what the hell... here we go!




Chris Donald - A Picture of Tyneside
This documentary sees Chris Donald returning to his roots looking for inspiration for a new character.


Viz - The Documentary - Channel 4 1990
This has to be one of the earliest full-length mockumentaries - "People Like Us" definitely owes some tribute!




Chris Donald on episode 0201 of 'The Museum Of Curiosity'

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Founder won't be celebrating Viz's 30th birthday
Oct 25 2009
Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

Viz may be celebrating its 30th birthday this week but its founder, Chris Donald, will be taking a back seat as no longer having any involvement doesn’t bother him one bit. Chris, who lives near Alnwick, Northumberland, first came up with the adult magazine with his pal Jim Brownlow back in 1979, dishing out copies of their first edition at a gig in Gosforth, Newcastle.

He and his brothers Simon and Steve helped to flesh out characters like Sid the Sexist and Biffa Bacon from the bedroom of their home in Jesmond, Newcastle, before moving into their own studio. And the laughter organ’s characters like Eight Ace, the Fat Slags and the Pathetic Sharks soon ensured it was selling more than a million copies an issue – almost toppling the UK’s bestselling magazine of the time, the Radio Times. However, Chris quit as editor in 1999 . . . and says he’s never looked back.

He said: “It’s odd to think that Viz is 30 years old. When me and Jim Brownlow started putting the first edition together in 1979 it was only intended as a one-off. We did it for a joke, to amuse our mates. We didn’t think it would last a week. I’ve not been involved with Viz for the last 10 years. I still keep in touch with the people at the comic, but I’ve not done anything for their anniversary issue or their recent books. Although I did lend them a bunch of old cartoons for the London exhibition. I don’t think I’ll be going to see it. I have an allergy to London, and I’ve seen all the cartoons before. I don’t miss Viz at all. I wasn’t happy doing the same thing over and over again. It was like being on a treadmill. I’ve got a real treadmill now. It’s more fun, and I’m losing weight. I left Viz because I wanted to try something different. I worked in a bookshop for five years, then I got sick of that. I’ve recently started drawing cartoons again, for the QI TV show’s 2010 annual. I’ve got enthusiasm to last me until Christmas, then I don’t know what I’ll do next. Sit in the park and drink cider perhaps. I’m planning my own little celebration in Newcastle to mark the 30th anniversary. Just a handful of mates, a few strippers and a Transit van full of lager, perhaps. Nothing too fancy.”

The current editorial team – Simon Thorp, Graham Dury and Davey Jones – are marking Viz’s birthday, which falls on Tuesday, with an exhibition in London at the Cartoon Museum. And they’ll also be heading North for several book signings, of their 30th anniversary edition and their two new books, the news annual “Council Gritter” and the “Magna Fartlet”. The trio will be at HMV in Newcastle on Thursday and at Waterstone’s in Gateshead on Saturday, and they’ll also return to the region, to the Borders store at Silverlink, North Tyneside, on November 7.

As the team look forward to – hopefully – another 30 years of filthy gags and crude characters, Chris lets us have a sneak peak at the early days of Viz, through a series of snaps taken behind the scenes. Over the years, a raft of stars took part in spoof photo love-stories, posters and adverts, from Alexei Sayle to Peter Cook.

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Happy 30th birthday Viz
Sinclair McKay
17 October 2009
spectator.co.uk

Some night soon on the peaceful back streets of Bloomsbury, you might want to keep an eye out for two young ladies from the north for whom the term ‘muffin top’ might have been invented. They will be extremely drunk, laughing like open drains and displaying unsuitable underwear. They will be looking for romance. They are known widely as the ‘Fat Slags’.

Sandra and Tracey are two of the Hogarthian figures that populate the pages of Viz, a distinctly adult comic. It is now celebrating an anniversary that few children’s comics ever see: 30 years of scatalogical, frequently obscene cartoons. To celebrate this birthday, the normally decorous Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury is staging a special Viz exhibition. The Fat Slags will be there, alongside a sweary parade of characters who have, over the past few decades, provided a most unflattering reflection of modern British society. Among these are: Sid the Sexist; Roger Mellie, the Man On The Telly; Mrs Brady, Old Lady; Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres; Millie Tant And Her Radical Conscience; Billy The Fish; Major Misunderstanding. All are drawn in a richly detailed style reminiscent of every comic you grew up with. Viz also has a raucously funny letters page, and a ceaselessly ingenious ‘Top Tips’ advice column (‘Catch moths using a mousetrap baited with a jumper’ was one recent suggestion).

But the genius of the comic throughout the years has been its unflinching and rather unforgiving approach to various forms of antisocial behaviour. From benefits fraud to unreconstructed sexism to alcoholism to tiresome green posturing, Viz characters are quite often vividly irredeemable. The comic’s founder Chris Donald once disingenously described the Fat Slags’ ceaseless promiscuity as ‘unbecoming’.

For long-term fans, it is a shock to think that Viz started as far back as Margaret Thatcher’s first term as prime minister in 1979. ‘We still get a few young readers,’ says co-editor and prolific cartoonist Simon Thorp drily. ‘That is, people in their late thirties and upwards.’ Thorp has been with the comic since 1985. The Viz office, just outside Newcastle, comprises himself and his fellow cartoonists Graham Dury and Davy Jones, plus Stevie, their office manageress, and their designer Wayne. For a publication so comically ferocious, its monthly gestation is very equable. They all sit around on sofas ‘discussing what they watched on television’; ideas come up; and if one person writes a script, then the other will draw the strip for it. Thorp says that the only real editorial requirement is that the stuff that makes them all laugh loudest goes in. And despite language that would make a horse retch, Viz is embraced snugly in the bosom of the comedy establishment. For instance, the veteran comic genius Barry Cryer is a huge fan, and once took the Viz team out to a pub — accolades really do not come higher.

Take another look, though, and some of the strips seem — unless this is my imagination — surprisingly right-wing, as opposed to simply anarchic. One regular is ‘8-Ace’, a frequently incontinent alcoholic made to live in his shed by his understandably violent wife. Ace’s sporadic attempts to find gainful work are always scuppered by his remorseless daily consumption of eight tins of extra-strength ‘Ace’ lager. Then there is ‘Tasha Slapper’ and ‘Tasha’s Mum’ who seem to be emblems of a Jeremy Kyle culture — caterwauling, pathologically selfish, and again frequently drunken. It is all prime Iain Duncan Smith material.

Elsewhere, in Mrs Brady Old Lady’s latest adventure, the formidable old bag is seen diddling her disability allowance and then, having fooled the benefits inspector, refereeing a football match. Meanwhile, the Fat Slags — and their various paramours — are rarely seen in any form of legitimate employment. In other words, the implication of these recurring strips is that the welfare state as it stands is often being played for a patsy by feckless, irredeemable monsters.

Add to this the nauseatingly right-on monologues of spoiled, mollycoddled Student Grant, and the insanely politically correct diatribes from lesbian Millie Tant and... well, it is certainly not Guardian territory. Indeed, traditional Guardian readers are also traduced in the ‘Modern Parents’ strip, in which a pair of sanctimonious, ill-tempered eco-hypocrites bully their poor children out of mass-produced toys, TV-watching and meat-eating.

But Simon Thorp recoils from this suggestion of right-wingery like a cat squirted with lemon juice. ‘No, I don’t think we are right-wing,’ he protests. ‘I don’t even know where we stand on the Lisbon Treaty.’ He also says that Viz tries to be even-handed with politicians, in the sense that ‘we lash out at everybody’. ‘We once included Stephen Pound’s name for some reason in a word-search puzzle which was themed around “large organs”,’ he says. ‘He sent us a box of chocolates.’ Thorp also cites the long-running Viz character Baxter Basics MP — who as the name implies, came into being at the end of John Major’s premiership, ‘but then flipped to being New Labour’.

The circulation might not be quite what it was 20 years ago — there was a point when Viz was outselling Radio Times, with a million copies per issue — but Thorp is aware of just how loyal long-term Viz readers are. The forthcoming 30th anniversary issue features the return of such old favourites as Roger Irrelevant and Finbarr Saunders. ‘Some characters have continual appeal because they reflect the times,’ Thorp says. ‘Billy the Fish (half-fish, half-goalkeeper, Viz’s surreal answer to Roy of the Rovers) will be competing on Strictly Come Dancing.’

Perhaps average Viz readers now resemble the three-bearded real-ale bores who sometimes appear in the comic. Every time I see someone chortling away at it, it’s a middle-aged man in a jacket and tie. Oh, hold on. That’s me as well. ‘We have had people reading us for a very long time. And convicts,’ Thorp adds helpfully. ‘We had a plaintive letter from a convict recently complaining that he couldn’t get Viz in his prison. We sent him an issue with the proviso that on his release, he must never offend again. We always look out for our incarcerated clientele.’

Thorp is thrilled about the forthcoming Cartoon Museum exhibition. His own favourite artists are H.M. Bateman and Pont. ‘Pont...’ he says wistfully. ‘I only wish I had that subtlety. It’d have to be an accident.’ Too modest! In truth, the needle-sharp satire of Viz — combined with the important fact that it is consistently, howlingly funny — means that it has more than earned its place in the comic pantheon.

The Viz exhibition is at the Cartoon Museum, Little Russell St, London WC1, from 4 November.


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Roger Mellie, It's Him Off The Telly
October 27, 2009
Jo Couzens,
Sky News

Roger Mellie talks to Sky News Online on Viz's 30th birthday and reveals which Sky presenter he thinks most closely resembles him.

Q. Who do you admire at the moment on telly?

A. It's got to be Brucie, hasn't it? What a pro, still going after all those years at the top. Amazing. Getting a bit long in the tooth now, and that's definitely a wig, but I only hope I look as good when I reach that age.

Q. How popular do you think you are with today's audience?

A. In this business you have to keep re-inventing yourself for each new generation. You've got to keep in touch with all the latest fads and crazes that the kids are getting "into". That's what my new show Roger Mellie's Groovy Hula-Hoop Barbecue (Sky One) is all about.

Q. Which Sky News presenter do you think is most like you, and why?

A. Definitely Eamonn Holmes, because like me, he (the rest of this answer has been omitted on legal advice).

Q. Who in the media would be your ideal date?

A. Apart from Fiona Bruce, you mean? You know, I've always thought that Janet Street-Porter was the most fascinating woman in the media. She's got the most amazing mind - she's witty, clever, well-informed, and she's got a strong personality and knows exactly what she wants. But have you seen the state of her? Bloody hell. So, if I had to pick my ideal date, it would probably be someone with big knockers like Krystle off Page Three.

Q. What would be your perfect night out?

A. When you're a celebrity, you're forever running the gauntlet of the paparazzis' cameras. Whatever you do, it's difficult to stay out of the public eye. So I've recently joined an exclusive club where I can relax and be myself without getting splashed all over the tabloids in the morning. It's very discreet, tucked away under some railway arches in Acton and the dancers do this trick with ping-pong balls that would make your eyes water.

Q. Have you got any new TV shows in the pipeline?

A. Yeah, we've always got a few irons in the fire. In fact, my production company's got a few things in development with Sky at the moment, as it happens. Television has been dumbing down a lot recently, so we're trying to redress the balance a bit, come up with some more intellectually-demanding programme formats. Topless Paintball Question Time with Diane Abbott has just got the green light, and we've got high hopes for Kerry Katona's Sky at Night.

Q. Are you planning to write any more books?

A. I'll let you into a little secret. Us celebrities don't actually write our own bestsellers - we're far too busy. For example, it's a well known fact that Jordan gets someone else to type all her books out for her - she just comes up with the ideas. I've taken that process one step further. Someone else thinks up my ideas and does the writing.

Q. Are you still working with Tom?

A. Who? You mean the bloke with the beard and the specs? Oh yeah, me and Tom go back years. We met on the set of my first show, Family Fart-Tunes, 30 years ago, and he's been with me at FTV ever since, through thick and thin. Sadly, though, I had to make him redundant last week. I'm having my office refitted and it was either Tom or the iridescent tiles in my en-suite bathroom. They really are beautiful tiles.

Q. Sky notices you have a Twitter page and a Facebook page. What do you think of the latest social networking tools?

A. I don't really know the first thing about computers, to be honest - I'm no Stephen Fry! Though funnily enough, I met him last week in the BBC canteen, as it happens. Shorter than he looks on the telly and smelled very strongly of TCP. Hang on, I tell a lie, that was Moira Stuart.

Q. Would you consider working for Sky News?

A. Yeah, why not? I'm not proud. Is Paul Ross not available or something?

Q. What advice do you have for someone wanting to get into television work?

A. It's the hardest game in the world, it really is. The competition is so fierce. My advice to any young women who want to get into television is to get in touch with me, Roger Mellie, c/o FTV Television Centre, Fulchester. I'll happily do what I can to give them a leg up, and keep my eye out out for any openings, so to speak.

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Sky News interviewing a cartoon character - nothing ever changes!

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Viz Comic takes over the Guardian
On the occasion of its 30th birthday, Britain's fourth or fifth funniest comic does its business - Warf! Warf! – all over our pages. Check the images below for our exclusive Viz strips
Justin Quirk
The Guardian,
7 November 2009

This month sees the 30th anniversary of "the magazine that's not as funny as it used to be". Viz, Chris Donald's foul-mouthed comic, evolved from a 12-page fanzine hawked around Newcastle's pubs into one of the country's highest-selling titles, shifting over a million copies an issue with celebrity fans ranging from David Bowie to Simon Bates. Since that 1990 peak, sales have declined to around the 100,000 mark; however, the comic which first posed the then-unanswered question "Morrissey; pop genius or twat?" is still going strong as it enters its fourth decade.

Viz's influence on British comedy has been profound. Its squalid brand of anarchy and self-referential surrealism is present in everything from Mitchell and Webb and The League Of Gentlemen to Little Britain and The Daily Mash. And while its writers resist serious analysis, Viz's most overlooked quality has always been a furious intelligence.

As its numerous, pathetic imitators (Smut, Zit, Brain Damage etc) proved, a comic cannot survive on profanity alone and Viz strips like Biffa Bacon, Sid The Sexist and The Fat Slags tell you more about the national character than many literary heavyweights. In a tongue-in-cheek documentary, Auberon Waugh suggested that "if the future generations look back on the literature of the age, they'll more usefully look to Viz than they would, for instance, the novels of Peter Ackroyd or Julian Barnes, because Viz has a genuine vitality of its own which comes from the society which it represents". His favourite strip was The Bottom Inspectors, by the way.

The classic premise of situation comedy has always been that of a man trapped in his surroundings; and this is the case in Viz's finest strips, the characters poignantly locked in a doomed cycle by their giant testicles, religious fervour, undiagnosed autism, painful haemorrhoids, and terminal stupidity. Writer Graham Dury claims a core readership of "the well educated, the unemployed and people in prison" and Viz speaks to the parts of Britain that have a simmering and instinctive dislike of the rich, the show-offs, the moronic and the vain.

Viz has been entirely prescient about where our culture is going. Once, its obsession with third-rate celebrities, Roger Mellie's endless ideas for cheap television ("I've got an idea, Tom – Celebrity Shit Bucket!"), dishonest overselling, and ludicrously hyperbolic real-life stories seemed like flights of fancy. Now, they look like the vast majority of the modern media.

"We pride ourselves on the fact you're no cleverer when you've read Viz," says Dury. "You might have had a few laughs, but you've not learnt anything." If that really is the case, then the fault lies with the reader, not the comic.

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I've finally got my old scanner working again, so I can start doing more issues. It takes a few hours to do each one, so I'll be taking my time. There's still a lot to come...

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Issues 80, 81, 82, 83 added

Previous updates

March 28th - Issues 115, 118, 124 and 130 added

March 23rd - Issues 17, 21, 22, 24 added thanks to uploads by Trelard. He's also supplied a few of the specials, but I'll add them when I've got a few more to include.

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download video - 60mb mp4
Rude Britannia at The Tate
A new exhibition at Tate Britain explores the British tradition of irreverence, from Viz comic to political satirist Gerald Scarfe.

One of Britain’s rudest institutions is based in the genteel coastal town of Tynemouth, near Newcastle. This is the current home of Viz comic, founded in 1979, infamous for such characters as The Fat Slags, Johnny Fartpants, foul TV presenter Roger Mellie and Buster Gonad, and now a central attraction of Tate Britain’s new exhibition of British comic art, Rude Britannia.

‘People are often surprised by how civilised the office is,’ says genial production manager Stevie Glover, ushering me into an elegant townhouse to meet editor/artists Simon Thorp, Graham Dury and Davey Jones, and designer Wayne Gamble. ‘I think the local residents’ association were originally worried that we’d erect a giant neon arse on the side of the building.’

There are no such decorations in view but the Viz office is crammed with pop culture ephemera and beautifully hand-drawn storyboards depicting bawdy antics. ‘For the Tate exhibition, we’re creating a ten-foot tall comic sprouting out of the floor, featuring characters like The Fat Slags and a Letterbocks page,’ says Dury. ‘We’ve also done a Roger Mellie-style comment for each of the art exhibits.’

Rude Britannia’s exhibits will also draw suggestive connections between different media and eras, from William Hogarth’s irreverent illustrations of 18th-century society to seaside postcards and modern designs including Grayson Perry’s ceramics and Sarah Lucas’s provocative visual puns. Surreal comedian Harry Hill curates the show’s Absurd room, while legendary cartoonist Gerald Scarfe oversees the political satire section.

‘The exhibition isn’t setting out a singular tradition, it’s exploring comedy through graphic arts and other media, and trying to tell a bigger story,’ explains Tate curator Martin Myrone. ‘Society has become much more accommodating of low art alongside high art. Each room is going to feel very different but these are also works that seemed to chime together as an ensemble.’ While saucy humour is fondly regarded as part of British tradition, Myrone is wary of getting too cosy in Rude Britannia. ‘Ultimately, it’s a celebration but there are undertones we do need to question within the jokes,’ he argues. ‘Should we be laughing at this? Does political satire actually change anything?’

The Viz team, meanwhile, are happy with their Bawdy category. ‘We’ve never really bothered with politics except in a very broad “they’re all liars” sense,’ says Thorp. ‘Whenever we try to do politics, it soon moves into “pants-down” and farting jokes,’ adds Dury.

The venerable Scarfe’s take on politics certainly hasn’t been any safer, as his section of the exhibition should demonstrate. ‘My position is that anything is questionable,’ he says jovially. ‘I did a cartoon about the Pope in The Sunday Times recently and got shoals of letters. I once drew Mary Whitehouse being screwed by Rupert Bear and she sued me – but to my amazement it’s in the Tate now. My drawings have really been about the things I can’t stand: fear; abuse; everything that’s wrong with the world. That’s why they’re grotesque. I’ve been lucky to have a platform to rail about them. Humour is quite a destructive weapon and if you can’t have a sense of humour, then it’s a pretty grim world.’

The public definition of ‘rudeness’ changes all the time; are British audiences shocked by anything any more? ‘There probably aren’t as many storms about transgressions now,’ concedes Thorp. ‘Even kids’ telly is a lot ruder. Johnny Fartpants seemed quite ground-breaking at the time – or wind-breaking. I don’t think we’d deliberately try to provoke anybody. We’ve always said that if something made you laugh first and then wince it was all right but if you winced first and chuckled afterwards, it’s probably beyond the pale.’

The team agree that Viz’s humour is fuelled by its Britishness. ‘A lot of the comics we were inspired by, like The Dandy and The Beano from decades ago, don’t exist abroad,’ points out Jones. ‘And maybe Geordie characters like Biffa Bacon or Tasha Slappa wouldn’t be as good if they spoke standard English. People do write in asking for translations.’ The fundamental question remains, though: is Viz art? The editors reply in unison: ‘Naaah!’ ‘It is artier than a pile of bricks, though,’ adds Thorp thoughtfully. ‘It’s cheaper too.’

Rude Britannia opens at Tate Britain tomorrow and runs until September 5. www.tate.org.uk/britain

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That sounds excellent - almost worth a trip to that there Laahndaaan.

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If the failed 21/7 bombers had just waited three more days, we'd all be calling them the 24/7 bombers. This would imply that they blow things up all day every day and, despite their actual lack of success, make them at least sound like they were good at bombing.
Christina Martin, London

I just saw a van drive by with the company name 'Seafood Solutions'. I must admit, I didn't know seafood was a problem.
Martin Kristos

It is said that gentlemen prefer blondes. I hope then that lesbians prefer brunettes, otherwise we might have to organise some kind of rota system.
Johnny Pring

I'm beginning to think there may be something in this climate change after all. Four months ago it was very cold and now it's quite warm.
Alan Heath

A woman whose daughter was hospitalised in a US tornado told ITV News that 'God would make her better.' presumably, that's a different God from the one that almost killed her with a tornado.
M Lovejoy

'She can dish it out, but she cannot take it', I once heard someone say of me. And it's true - I'm a school dinner lady and I'm allergic to mashed potatoes.
Mrs Pinches, Hereford

I heard on the news that the January storms had cost this country a billion pounds. What an utter waste of money. If anything, they did more harm than good.
S Prodnipple, Scarborough

So Princes Harry and William are throwing a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their mother's death. I'm glad that they can finally laugh about it, but throwing a party seems a bit harsh.
D Antarctica, Rhyll

I think Sir Paul McCartney should try to put his current predicament into perspective. In olden days, if you were unfortunate enough to be robbed by an omniped, it would almost certainly be a pirate. At least he's going to
come out of this alive.
Stella Matlock

What is it with diabetics? One minute they're on the floor with a loved one standing by screaming 'Give him some chocolate! Give him some chocolate!' The next day someone offers them a piece of chocolate and quick as a flash they say 'No thanks, I'm diabetic.' I wish they'd get their story straight.
T Potter

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a bored housewife looking for some action. Eager to please the young lady I sent her my ironing. That should keep her quiet for a while.
Warren

THIS new police knife amnesty is a bloody nightmare. I dutifully handed all my knives in and now I've got nothing to eat my dinner with.
Richard Karslake, Oxfordshire

TO THE zookeeper in 1978 who replied 'I'll tell you when you're older' when I asked him why one of the monkeys stuck its tongue up another one's arse: I'm 36 now and still waiting for that explanation.
Joe McKeown

I HAVE just returned from a diplomatic trip to the Congo and I can testify that at no point did I see anyone drinking Um Bongo.
Neil Palmer

I'M A terrorist, and when ID cards come into force I will probably employ great cunning and not declare that as my job. I'll probably say I'm a grocer or something.
A Terrorist

WHY DON'T NHS bosses start hiring obsessive compulsives as nurses? Their attention to hygiene and constant hand washing would see an end to MRSA outbreaks in no time.
Stu Bray

'Alton Towers - Where the magic never ends', or so the commercial says. Imagine my disappointment when it closed at 7.30.
Colum Hill

'Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak', sang Thin Lizzy in 1976, 'somewhere in this town'. Well, I'm guessing it's going to be at the prison.
Raymond Cuntybollocks

How ridiculous of NASA spending billions of pounds to come up with the non-stick frying pan. In the weightlessness of space, the astronauts' sausages are just going to float right out of the pan. If anything, they
should have been developing something to make them stick.
J Boxbury, Norfolk

MFI's new tag line is 'You dream it, we make it'. They are obviously relying on my dreams being mostly about cheap cupboards.
Peter Marwood

I work in a call centre in Norwich and we've just been told our jobs are moving to India. I'm so excited! I've always wanted to visit India and with the salary they pay me I'll be able to live like a Maharaja over there. Well done Aviva, keep up the good work.
Charles Turner

Doctors say that you should eat 5 pieces of fruit or veg a day to remain healthy. Last week I ate 5 mouldy plums and that night I shat the bed. What's healthy about that?
Mark J, Barnsley

I went to a house the other day to fix a lady's washing machine, a Zanussi ZWF 161, which kept stopping halfway through the spin cycle. I took it apart, but couldn't for the life of me see what was causing the problem. I realised why when I suddenly remembered that I was not an electrical engineer, but a pensions and savings advisor with the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society. How foolish I felt as I tried to put it back together.
Norman Topsoil, Luton

ACCORDING to the BBC website, Heather Mills has blamed the breakdown of her marriage to Sir Paul McCartney on 'constant intrusion' into the couple's private life. It seems a shame that Heather objects so much to the public taking an interest in her personal business. If only she had mentioned it in one of her two published autobiographies, A Single Step and Out On A Limb, or the 'About Heather' section of her website www.heathermillsmccartney.com, or perhaps when she sold her life story to the News of the World in 1993.Perhaps then the public would have got the message and left her to live her life out of the constant glare of publicity.
A Cherry, Leeds

MY HUSBAND plays a joke on me every April Fool's day. Last year I was determined not to be caught out, but lo and behold he tricked me again. Knowing I like cats, he woke me at 3.00am and told me there was a basket of kittens stuck on our chimney. I immediately climbed out of the bedroom window and shinned up the drainpipe onto the roof. When I got there and saw nothing but the television aerial I realised I had been had. However, the joke wasn't over. When I got back into the bedroom the cheeky devil had filled my slippers with broken glass. I'm determined he won't get me this year.
Ethel Alcohol, Sutton

I am married to a Taiwanese lady, and people often ask me if she was a mail-order bride. I find this very insensitive. The Royal Mail loose around 2 million letters and parcels each year, and to suggest that I would trust the delivery of my wife to them is insulting in the extreme. She was sent by DHL next day delivery.
L Palmer, London

With reference to Mr Palmer's previous letter. I am also married to a Taiwanese lady, but nobody ever asks me if she is a mail order bride. But perhaps that's because I am also Taiwanese. And we live in Taiwan.
Lo Chi Chang, Taipei

I recently bought a fridge freezer from Currys, and after I had paid for it they asked me for my address to arrange delivery. I told them that I lived between Gateshead and Hexham, and if they rang me a week next Tuesday between 8am and 7pm, I night be able to give them a six hour slot when I would be able to take delivery. When they rang me, I told them that my house was out of stock and they should ring back on Saturday. The shoe's on the other foot now, isn't it, Currys?
DF Kant

Did anyone else feel that Mel Gibson's remake of the classic Life of Brian wasn't anywhere near as funny as the original?
Wayne

I often receive bills saying 'final demand'. But it never is. If anything they start asking me for more money.
Ian Sertname, Brighton le Sands

I'm not surprised Ellen MacArthur's boat went in a great big circle around the world. I've bought lengths of wood from B&Q as well.
T Haliday, Shropshire

Last week I attended an AA meeting, and to my horror, each person present stood up and openly admitted to being an alcoholic. I'm not having these boastful drunkards repairing my car. I can only hope the RAC have more responsible employees.
Hugie Dixon, West Drayton

Every time I use my local NatWest cashpoint, the screen says 'You have not been charged for this transaction'. Yet when I check my statement, I find without fail that I have had ten pounds debited for every tenner I withdraw. No wonder the banks are raking it in.
Gary Beergut, e-mail