The Fat Slags
Encyclopedia
The Fat Slags is a comic strip
appearing in the "alternative
" British
comic Viz. The characters made their debut in 1989. The eponymous slags are Sandra Burke and Tracey Tunstall, known to other characters as San and Tray. They are depicted as overweight, eating large amounts of food, mainly chips, while also having a lot of casual sex
. As with other Viz strips, the strip's authors use a brash writing style, avoiding political correctness
. "Slag" is a British English word for "slut
", or loose woman.
, and the circumstances of the sex or the partner in question are rarely an issue - they have been known to leap on delivery men or workmen for gratification, with the targeted man rarely given an opportunity to resist or escape. Both slags regularly enjoy carnal relations with Baz (full name Barry Askwith, seemingly as a nod to the actor Robin Askwith
), a local jobless dropout who divides his time between drinking, committing crime, and having sex with San and Tray. Baz's good-natured wife, Thelma, often finds out that Baz is cheating on her, but invariably forgives him. The other major character in the strip is Baz's slightly more successful friend, Dave, who works as a refuse collector, but earns most of his income through benefit fraud
.
Whilst most Viz characters are recognisably from North East England
, with the comic largely written in Geordie dialect
, the Fat Slags and their friends converse with a Nottingham
accent. This originates with the character's creator Graham Dury who, unlike the Geordie founder of Viz, is originally from that area.
Both characters are noticeably warm-hearted and easy-going, and their friendship is never undermined by their conquests. Although both of the Slags are somewhat stupid - albeit good-natured - nymphomaniacs, Tray is marginally more intelligent and literate than San, who is marginally more nymphomaniacal than Tray. These factors, combined with Tray's more dominant personality, make Tray the leader and San the follower in their adventures. One strip parodying the Batman films featured Tray as Batslag and San as Nobbin. In another strip, San got pregnant and brought the baby to term, tearfully vowing that she was prepared to make any sacrifice for her daughter's happiness. In the very next panel, realising that motherhood would conflict with her pub-crawling, she gave up the baby for adoption.
Tray normally wears tight-fitting Capri pants whilst San normally wears a too-small skirt; since the latter garment has more potential for jokes, San tends to get involved in more slapstick than Tray does. Although neither Slag has ever refused alcoholic refreshment in any setting, their favourite place to tipple is the "Dog and Hammer" pub, somewhere in Fulchester. Their run-down home - with its floor-level collection of alcohol cans, takeaway containers and cigarette butts - is at 10, Shit Street, Fulchester.
A running gag is that the Slags will accuse any men unwilling to sleep with them of being homosexuals and/or having small penises, and many other women of being unattractive and overweight, even when they are quite clearly far prettier and thinner than our heroines themselves.
Even though they are best friends San and Tray are actually cousins and when they were growing up spent a lot of time with each other at their grandmothers house. San is the third of five children and Tray is the second of seven children. San has an older sister called Sharon who looked after San and her younger siblings and Tray and her siblings when their mothers and grandmother went to Spain
for two weeks.
refers to this in his book, where he also mentions that the portrayal of the Slags was criticised by feminists writing in the Guardian
newspaper. At the time of these criticisms the Fat Slags had not appeared in the magazine for more than a year, but as a direct response to the criticism they were immediately resurrected for the next issue, in which they had a humorous run-in with the feminist Millie Tant
. Donald later questioned why the Guardian had slated the portrayals of the Slags, but hadn't mentioned that the two male characters were portrayed as a cheating layabout and a fraudster, and that the strip's only "well-behaved" character, Thelma, was a woman.
hit Summer Holiday
. The b-side was a track called Dance of the Handbags (Oh Lordy! It's The Fat Slags). Both tracks were produced by Mike Stock and Pete Watermen, two of the producers Stock Aitken Waterman
. The single failed to enter the music charts.
The characters once appeared in a UK television advert for energy drink Lucozade
, saying "Get it out of our fridge!" in unison.
animated shorts were produced for Channel4 with Jo Unwin voicing Tracey, Kathy Burke
as Sandra, and Simon Day
as Baz. The episodes; "Slags at Large", "Working Girls", and "Dirty Weekend", were compiled on DVD in 2004 as Oh Lordy! It's The Fat Slags. 1994 saw the release of Return of the Fat Slags in Blue Honeymoon this time with Jenny Eclair voicing Tracey.
version titled Fat Slags was released. It included cameo appearances from numerous well known personalities including Geri Halliwell
(as Paige), Naomi Campbell
(Sales Assistant), Angus Deayton
(Maurice the hotel receptionist) and Dolph Lundgren
(Randy). However, reviews of the film were so poor that it remains on the IMDb
's Bottom 100 as one of the worst movies ever made.
It was reported that the strip's artist, Graham Dury
was so demoralised by the treatment of his creations that he announced that he was dropping them from the comic altogether. This was actually a misquote by an over-enthusiastic press officer and there was no intention of dropping the characters.
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
appearing in the "alternative
Alternative comics
Alternative comics defines a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to "mainstream" superhero comics which in the past have dominated the US comic book industry...
" British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
comic Viz. The characters made their debut in 1989. The eponymous slags are Sandra Burke and Tracey Tunstall, known to other characters as San and Tray. They are depicted as overweight, eating large amounts of food, mainly chips, while also having a lot of casual sex
Casual sex
Casual sex or hooking up refers to certain types of human sexual activity outside the context of a romantic relationship. The term is not always used consistently: some use it to refer to any extramarital sex, some use it to refer to sex in a casual relationship, whereas others reserve its use for...
. As with other Viz strips, the strip's authors use a brash writing style, avoiding political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
. "Slag" is a British English word for "slut
Slut
Slut or slattern is a pejorative term applied to an individual who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous...
", or loose woman.
Activities
The Slags' eating frequently follows a night of binge drinkingBinge drinking
Binge drinking or heavy episodic drinking is the modern epithet for drinking alcoholic beverages with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time. It is a kind of purposeful drinking style that is popular in several countries worldwide,...
, and the circumstances of the sex or the partner in question are rarely an issue - they have been known to leap on delivery men or workmen for gratification, with the targeted man rarely given an opportunity to resist or escape. Both slags regularly enjoy carnal relations with Baz (full name Barry Askwith, seemingly as a nod to the actor Robin Askwith
Robin Askwith
Robin Askwith , is an English film actor, most famous for his role as Timmy Lea in the Confessions... sex comedies.-Confessions...:...
), a local jobless dropout who divides his time between drinking, committing crime, and having sex with San and Tray. Baz's good-natured wife, Thelma, often finds out that Baz is cheating on her, but invariably forgives him. The other major character in the strip is Baz's slightly more successful friend, Dave, who works as a refuse collector, but earns most of his income through benefit fraud
Benefit fraud
Benefit fraud is a form of welfare fraud as found within the system of government benefits paid to individuals by the UK welfare state.- What is benefit fraud? :...
.
Whilst most Viz characters are recognisably from North East England
North East England
North East England is one of the nine official regions of England. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Teesside . The only cities in the region are Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland...
, with the comic largely written in Geordie dialect
Geordie
Geordie is a regional nickname for a person from the Tyneside region of the north east of England, or the name of the English-language dialect spoken by its inhabitants...
, the Fat Slags and their friends converse with a Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
accent. This originates with the character's creator Graham Dury who, unlike the Geordie founder of Viz, is originally from that area.
Both characters are noticeably warm-hearted and easy-going, and their friendship is never undermined by their conquests. Although both of the Slags are somewhat stupid - albeit good-natured - nymphomaniacs, Tray is marginally more intelligent and literate than San, who is marginally more nymphomaniacal than Tray. These factors, combined with Tray's more dominant personality, make Tray the leader and San the follower in their adventures. One strip parodying the Batman films featured Tray as Batslag and San as Nobbin. In another strip, San got pregnant and brought the baby to term, tearfully vowing that she was prepared to make any sacrifice for her daughter's happiness. In the very next panel, realising that motherhood would conflict with her pub-crawling, she gave up the baby for adoption.
Tray normally wears tight-fitting Capri pants whilst San normally wears a too-small skirt; since the latter garment has more potential for jokes, San tends to get involved in more slapstick than Tray does. Although neither Slag has ever refused alcoholic refreshment in any setting, their favourite place to tipple is the "Dog and Hammer" pub, somewhere in Fulchester. Their run-down home - with its floor-level collection of alcohol cans, takeaway containers and cigarette butts - is at 10, Shit Street, Fulchester.
A running gag is that the Slags will accuse any men unwilling to sleep with them of being homosexuals and/or having small penises, and many other women of being unattractive and overweight, even when they are quite clearly far prettier and thinner than our heroines themselves.
Even though they are best friends San and Tray are actually cousins and when they were growing up spent a lot of time with each other at their grandmothers house. San is the third of five children and Tray is the second of seven children. San has an older sister called Sharon who looked after San and her younger siblings and Tray and her siblings when their mothers and grandmother went to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
for two weeks.
Social context
Their excessive lifestyle is a parody of British ladette culture. Viz creator Chris DonaldChris Donald
Chris Donald is the founder of, and one of the principal contributors to, the British comic magazine Viz...
refers to this in his book, where he also mentions that the portrayal of the Slags was criticised by feminists writing in the Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper. At the time of these criticisms the Fat Slags had not appeared in the magazine for more than a year, but as a direct response to the criticism they were immediately resurrected for the next issue, in which they had a humorous run-in with the feminist Millie Tant
Millie Tant
Millicent 'Millie' Buckridge Tant is a fictional comic-strip character in the British comic, Viz.A caricature of the militant feminist, Millie thinks of herself as a champion of "Wimmin's" rights but is often self-centered and dismissive of the feelings of others. She rants, raises her fist in the...
. Donald later questioned why the Guardian had slated the portrayals of the Slags, but hadn't mentioned that the two male characters were portrayed as a cheating layabout and a fraudster, and that the strip's only "well-behaved" character, Thelma, was a woman.
Merchandise
In 1992, a Fat Slags single was released, a cover of the 1963 Cliff RichardCliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
hit Summer Holiday
Summer Holiday (song)
"Summer Holiday" is a song recorded by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, written by rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch and drummer Brian Bennett. It went to number one in the UK. It is taken from the film of the same name and is one of Richard's best known titles...
. The b-side was a track called Dance of the Handbags (Oh Lordy! It's The Fat Slags). Both tracks were produced by Mike Stock and Pete Watermen, two of the producers Stock Aitken Waterman
Stock Aitken Waterman
Stock Aitken Waterman, sometimes known as SAW, were a UK songwriting and record producing trio consisting of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. They had great success during the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s...
. The single failed to enter the music charts.
The characters once appeared in a UK television advert for energy drink Lucozade
Lucozade
Lucozade is an umbrella name for a 6 series of energy and sports drinks, produced by GlaxoSmithKline in Gloucestershire. The former company became part of Beecham and, after the mergers of SmithKline and Beecham in 2000, GlaxoSmithKline....
, saying "Get it out of our fridge!" in unison.
Animated version
In 1992 stop motionStop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animated shorts were produced for Channel4 with Jo Unwin voicing Tracey, Kathy Burke
Kathy Burke
Katherine Lucy Bridget Burke is an English actress, comedienne, playwright and theatre director. She is best known for her portrayals of Perry in the Harry Enfield film Kevin and Perry Go Large, and of Linda La Hughes in the British sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme...
as Sandra, and Simon Day
Simon Day
Simon Day is a British comedian most famous for his roles in the sketch show The Fast Show, sitcom Grass and a series of comedic adverts for Powergen.-Life and career:...
as Baz. The episodes; "Slags at Large", "Working Girls", and "Dirty Weekend", were compiled on DVD in 2004 as Oh Lordy! It's The Fat Slags. 1994 saw the release of Return of the Fat Slags in Blue Honeymoon this time with Jenny Eclair voicing Tracey.
Fat Slags: The Film
In 2004, a feature filmFilm
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
version titled Fat Slags was released. It included cameo appearances from numerous well known personalities including Geri Halliwell
Geri Halliwell
Geraldine Estelle "Geri" Halliwell is an English pop singer-songwriter, author and actress. After coming to international prominence in the late 1990s as Ginger Spice, a member of the girl group the Spice Girls, Halliwell launched her solo career in 1998 and released her album Schizophonic...
(as Paige), Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell is a British model. Scouted at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognisable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion world...
(Sales Assistant), Angus Deayton
Angus Deayton
Gordon Angus Deayton is an English actor, writer, musician, comedian and broadcaster. He is best known for his role as Victor Meldrew's long-suffering neighbour Patrick Trench in the comedy series One Foot in the Grave...
(Maurice the hotel receptionist) and Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the movie action hero stereotype including Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.A graduate in chemical...
(Randy). However, reviews of the film were so poor that it remains on the IMDb
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
's Bottom 100 as one of the worst movies ever made.
It was reported that the strip's artist, Graham Dury
Graham Dury
Graham Dury is a British cartoonist. He is known for his work with adult comic Viz, having contributed to the magazine from its early years...
was so demoralised by the treatment of his creations that he announced that he was dropping them from the comic altogether. This was actually a misquote by an over-enthusiastic press officer and there was no intention of dropping the characters.
External links
- BBC News OnlineBBC News OnlineBBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most popular news website in the United Kingdom and forms a major part of BBC Online ....
- R.I.P. The Fat Slags - Online version of the first Fat Slags strip
