Biff (cartoon)
Encyclopedia
Biff are British cartoonists, perhaps best known for cartoon strips
appearing in The Guardian
from 1985 onwards (Biff Weekend ran weekly for 20 years). Also featured on many postcards, Biff cartoons have appeared in books, Viz
and, since 2001, the magazine of the Rough Guides
.
, found images, tracings and original drawings, and Mick Kidd is responsible for the text. One of the unique aspects of Biff is that Mick lives in London
and Chris in the Scilly Isles. They have created their strips and other artwork over the last 30 years by phone, post, email and occasional meetings.
In 2007 Chris Garratt introduced a retrospective of Biff work in these terms:
They are still working and contribute to BBC
History magazines with ‘A Biff History of Exploration’ and ‘A Biff History of The Media’, People Management
with ‘Human Resources’, Latest Art with ‘Biff Art’ and Rough News with ‘The 6 Ages of Travel’.
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
appearing in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
from 1985 onwards (Biff Weekend ran weekly for 20 years). Also featured on many postcards, Biff cartoons have appeared in books, Viz
Viz (comic)
Viz is a popular British comic magazine which has been running since 1979.The comic's style parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with incongruous language, crude toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and either sexual or violent storylines...
and, since 2001, the magazine of the Rough Guides
Rough Guides
Rough Guides Ltd is a travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Pearson PLC. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group...
.
History
Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd are the creators of Biff. They met at Grammar school in the 1950s and have collaborated on Biff since the mid-1970s. Chris Garratt creates the artwork - a mixture of collageCollage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, found images, tracings and original drawings, and Mick Kidd is responsible for the text. One of the unique aspects of Biff is that Mick lives in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Chris in the Scilly Isles. They have created their strips and other artwork over the last 30 years by phone, post, email and occasional meetings.
In 2007 Chris Garratt introduced a retrospective of Biff work in these terms:
-
- Raised on a diet of Hymns Ancient and ModernHymns Ancient and ModernHymns Ancient and Modern was a hymnal in common use within the Church of England. Over the years it has grown into a large family of hymnals....
, Sartre and Joe MeekJoe MeekRobert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
hits, Goldfish Virgins of the dodgems, Intrepid Riders of the Waltzers, wags of youth club literati and pioneers of skiffleSkiffleSkiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
, the Biff boys belong to a generation that said goodbye to trilby hats, pipes and National ServiceNational serviceNational service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
and ushered in the Golden Age of Rhythm & Blues, ExistentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
and VietnamVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Their early work, retrospectively recognised as anglicised Situationism with its artless articulation of image and text détournement, montaging comic strip and philosophy, angst-riddled soliloquies and cowboy drawls, featured prominently in the sprawling publications and smudged ink mags of the Counter CultureCountercultureCounterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
.
- Raised on a diet of Hymns Ancient and Modern
-
- Holding up a cracked and peeling mirror to a cracked and peeling generation of new adults who exchanged WRPWorkers' Revolutionary Party (UK)The Workers Revolutionary Party is a minute Trotskyist group in Britain. In the mid-1980s, it split several ways.-The Club:The WRP grew out of the faction Gerry Healy and John Lawrence led in the Revolutionary Communist Party which urged that the RCP enter the Labour Party. This policy was also...
for SDPSocial Democratic Party (UK)The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...
, beanbags for HabitatHabitat (retailer)Habitat Retail Ltd. is a retailer of household furnishings in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and has franchised outlets in other countries. Founded in 1964 by Terence Conran, it was sold by the IKANO Group, owned by the Kamprad family, in December 2009 to Hilco, a restructuring...
and IKEAIKEAIKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...
, Biff eschewed the tedious route of “political satire” and its toothless ranting-to-the-converted in favour of a bewildered but first-hand commentary on the mapless aspirations, pretensions and farcical antics of the baby boomer meritocracy. Threaded through this nonsensical catalogue of faux-academic posturing, management-speak, Baudrillardian ramblings and psychobabble set in the deathly milieu of wicker furniture and avocado dips was a continuing fascination for new frontiers in astronomy, particle physics, psychology and the arts, deliberately colliding such “serious” endeavours with the loonier fringes of self improvement such as cushion-bashing psychotherapy, astrology and sweat lodges.
- Holding up a cracked and peeling mirror to a cracked and peeling generation of new adults who exchanged WRP
-
- Biff’s 20 year tenure in “The Guardian” effectively charted the Rise and Fall of the not-so-angry young things as they shambled from Grosvenor SquareGrosvenor SquareGrosvenor Square is a large garden square in the exclusive Mayfair district of London, England. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from their surname, "Grosvenor".-History:...
to Hay-on-WyeHay FestivalThe Hay Festival of Literature & Arts is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales for ten days from May to June. Devised by Norman and Peter Florence in 1988, the festival was described by Bill Clinton in 2001 as "The Woodstock of the mind"...
, from the Ugly RumoursUgly Rumours (band)Ugly Rumours was the name of a rock band founded in part by former UK prime minister Tony Blair, while studying law at St John's College, Oxford during the early 1970s; he sang and played guitar...
to Iraq, into the present wilderness of collective paranoia.
- Biff’s 20 year tenure in “The Guardian” effectively charted the Rise and Fall of the not-so-angry young things as they shambled from Grosvenor Square
They are still working and contribute to BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
History magazines with ‘A Biff History of Exploration’ and ‘A Biff History of The Media’, People Management
People Management
People Management is the UK's biggest human resources publication with a fortnightly circulation of 128,904...
with ‘Human Resources’, Latest Art with ‘Biff Art’ and Rough News with ‘The 6 Ages of Travel’.
Quote
-
- Biff quotes have a way of sticking in the mind. Is it ironical cultural commentary which pioneered a unique style of visual ‘sampling’ before the word had even been invented? Or is it Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, two mad old farts from LeicestershireLeicestershireLeicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
, locked in a long-distance comedy partnership since childhood? In 1985 they got their big break, standing in for Posy SimmondsPosy SimmondsRosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds MBE is a British newspaper cartoonist and writer and illustrator of children's books. She is best known for her long association with The Guardian, for which she has drawn the cartoons Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe , both later published as books...
on the women’s page of the Guardian. They stayed on after Posy’s return for a further twenty years. Then, as foretold by the sudden appearance of the Hale-Bopp cometComet Hale-BoppComet Hale–Bopp was perhaps the most widely observed comet of the 20th century, and one of the brightest seen for many decades...
in the western sky, Blairism began to bite. They were downsized, monochromed, shrunk and eventually berlinered out of the paper altogether. But fear not for their work continues in other magazines - so as their homepage advises ‘Relax and float downstream’. Steve BellSteve Bell (cartoonist)Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
, 2007
- Biff quotes have a way of sticking in the mind. Is it ironical cultural commentary which pioneered a unique style of visual ‘sampling’ before the word had even been invented? Or is it Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, two mad old farts from Leicestershire
Books
- The Essential Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Pavement Press, 1982
- The Rainy Day Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Pavement Press, 1983
- Desert Island Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Corgi, 1985
- Sincerely Yours, Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Corgi, 1986
- File Under Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Mandarin, 1988
- Faxes From Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Mandarin, 1990
- Best of Biff by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Impact Books, 1990
- Life on the Floor and Other Mattresses by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Impact Books, 1993
- Biff: The Missing Years by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, Icon Books, 1996