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The Drunken Bakers: Viz At Its Finest
Where else can you find intelligent Beckettian drama featuring addiction, depression, fatalism and gastronomy?
Viz isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s mistakenly considered by many to be nothing more than puerile toilet humour. Admittedly, it’s very often puerile and the toilet probably features more than is strictly healthy, but it’s also the most socially-aware, well written and (occasionally) on-the-money satirical publication around. Some of the comedy is even – and I’m going to struggle to back this up – quite sophisticated. However, even a hardened fan like me has to admit that the adult comic that gleefully mocks itself as ‘not as funny as it used to be’ on its own front cover is usually not as funny as it used to be. Whether through laziness, repetition of deliberate sabotage its output tickles the ribs less often than it used. The infrequently published Drunken Bakers, however, has proven itself a high point not just in Viz’s predominantly impressive back catalogue but in the history of British humour.
For the unenlightened, the Drunken Bakers is a single page strip following the non-adventures of two middle aged dipsomaniac men who, in theory, run a bakery. In reality they simply drink till they collapse, knock themselves out, end up in hospital or are beaten insensible. We never find out their names and they rarely successfully bake anything or end the day without burning the shop down. There’s blood, seepings, death, despair and ruination. It sounds pretty bleak and it is – bleak, desperate, painful, tragic and absolutely hilarious. Blackly hilarious. I love it. But I realise I’m not selling it very well.
There’s no punch lines, no happy endings, no escape – just self-raising immolation.
I believe that if you like the doomed demeanour of Withnail, the grim wit of Tony Hancock or Harvey Pekar, the exacting pacing of Beckett or the minimal plotting of the Royle Family you’ll like the bakers. I like it because there’s nothing else quite like it our there. The strip’s creators, Barney Farmer and Lee Healey, present a world of misery and futility encapsulated in a few simple lines and rudimentary typeset speech bubbles and made extraordinary by the doomed, futile symbiotic relationship between the bakers, their mordant non-sequital interactions and their unending quest for boozed-up oblivion. The worse their lives get, the darker and funnier it all becomes.
The strip is utterly atypical of Viz in that it’s the only one of the comic’s offerings that’s even on nodding terms with reality. If you make your brain squint real hard you can just about imagine these characters living their tragic, brutal lives in your town. The same could never be said of Biffa Bacon or the Pathetic Sharks. But what is typical is the determination of Viz’s ever-contrary editorial staff to not pander to the ever-growing army of Bakers fans demanding that their heroes appear more regularly. They aren’t in every issue, far from it, there’s not been a compendium and only a couple of badly scanned strips can be found via a Google search. This decision is both headstrong and very canny – if we want to follow the Bakers’ adventures we have to buy the comic.
So, do it. If you are unaware of the magnificence of the Drunken Bakers buy Viz, hope the strip is in that issue and then lie back and glory in its hilariously deathly-grim glow. There’s no punch lines, no happy endings, no escape – just self-raising immolation.
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COMMENTS
Always really liked the Drunken Bakers, so its nice to see them get some recognition at last
Nice to see the Drunken Bakers getting the recognition they deserve. Great piece!
Alongside 8 Ace The Drunken Bakers is the finest and funniest analysis of alcoholism I've yet to see. But of course, as you rightly say, it's much more than that. It's an extended endgame (if there can be such a thing) without redemption or respite, and therein lies it's strange comfort. It's the perfect antidote to the rational world of new labour and it's bastard offspring and reassures me and my fellow misanthropes that the Big Society can never succeed in ending darkness. There'll always be a Moat hiding in a culvert somewhere or the occasional headlit dogfight to spoil everything. I'm one of those who's prissily hankered for a compendium of sorts, possibly including The Critics or Modern Parents but your wise words have enlightened me to the wrongness of such a call. It needs to remain and be sought within the pages of Viz and the streets of Fulchester. Anything else would be a form of ethnic cleansing - "political correctness gone mad!" as Biffa's dad exclaimed on being told it was no longer legal for parents to "Bait headbutt, punch or generally batter their kids for no reason"
I'm not one of the people who complains that Viz isn't as funny as it used to be. Nothing you've seen before is as funny as it used to be unless you're an amnesiac or suffer from Alzheimer's. That's because of linear time. But The Drunken Bakers seem to exist outside or beyond normal time and space. There is no past or future, only the hilarious misery of an eternal present moment, repeating itself even as it happens. Rib-tickling existential dread. It's brilliant.
Never read Viz but am very curious for a look at the Drunken Bakers now.
Absolutely class. I don't read Viz that often anymore, but it's always a pleasure to turn the page and find a Drunken Bakers strip waiting. Properly bleak and dark. Love it.
Biffa Bacon not reality? I know at least 6 people that ARE Biffa Bacon in all but name (including Muthas tattoos)
I didn't understand Drunken Bakers at first, just finding it grim and disgusting. After a few strips, I caught on to the pathos and searing, careless inevitability. It has changed the way I look at alcoholism. Eight Ace has a similar theme, and is a quality strip, but it doesn't have the ghastly reality.
I love the drunken bakers. It is a work of genius and long may it continue. Just reading the Wikipedia entry explaining the characters and plot made me laugh uncontrollably: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_Bakers
there is a collection of drunken bakers episodes out there, google for drunken bakers download
This is a brutal and brilliant strip. I'd not bought Viz for 15 years. Saw the one in which one of the bakers has slipped in a stupor on snow and cracked his skull, they think it's port. The dark gloop on his hand suggests otherwise. In the final frame his desolate corpse (?) is being gnawed by wild dogs. His drunken friend unable to recall where he left him, utterly befuddled speaking to the ambulance services. The darkness makes "When The Wind Blows" look like panto. Subtle, understated, genius.
I have subscribed to Viz for fifteen years, and the Drunken Bakers are in a class of their own. Viz doesn't always make me laugh out loud,but when it does, I can barely stop and there's nothing like it. I love it when the bakers discuss the merits of certain liquors as if it really matters what the 'bouquet' is like!
please be honest,theyr'e based on greggs in erith true
they are based on greggs in erith kent
Great piece, all true. However, Letterbocks, Top Tips and the Profanisaurus are always worth a look. But then they're reader generated.
Great stuff, I haven't bought Viz for years, because, well, it isn't as funny as it used to be. I'll be buying it again shortly to check out the strip.
Brilliant. I've been a fan of the Drunken Bakers for some time. I agree that they are darkly amusing and -together with 8 Ace- provide a bleak but comedic glimpse into the world of the alcoholic. I once met Simon Donald in Stereo on the Quayside in Newcastle and drunkly stumbled "'ere, your that bloke off of the TV that used to write Viz." He then said he'd give me £100 if I knew his name. To my eternal shame I couldn't. I bought him a drink and shambled away, embarrassed as fook.
Check out George Bestial in this months viz.Blackest of black humour and v funny. Those 2guys are genius.
This article is so good it could have been written by me.
Someone once tried to describe alcoholism to me and it went somethiong like this... It's Monday, you don't get paid until Friday and you've got £50, so you're doing pretty well. You're feeling good, so you go to the pub. You wake up on Tuesday morning, check your wallet and there's just £5 left. Oh well, you head off to the local Spar to get a loaf and 5 tins of beans - you won't be dining like a king, but that'll keep you going until payday. You go into the shop for your bread and beans and when you come out of the shop, you look in the bag and there's two bottles of cider in there. You have no idea how this happened.
"The same could never be said of Biffa Bacon"... you've clearly never been to Elswick then?!
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