Billy the Fish

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Billy the Fish is a long-running cartoon strip in the British comic Viz that first appeared in 1983. Created by artist Chris Donald and writer Simon Thorp (who later took on both roles) Billy the Fish is, like many Viz strips, a lampoon of British comics - In Billy the Fish's case, that of football-themed strips such as Roy 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 bookmakers betNOW, 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 a goalkeeper 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 his fins and tail. The first Billy was killed saving a booby-trapped ball in an FA 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 a sheepskin jacket, Tommy is the secondly-most used character - in the past he has had open heart surgery on the pitch and (coinciding with Channel 4's The Manageress starring Cherie 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 a Martian 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, an invisible striker
• Terry Jackson, Unsettled reserve team keeper.
• Professor Wolfgang Schnell BSc. PhD., a mad scientist who usually only shoots for goal after working out the best trajectory 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 when Spandau Ballet signed up for Melchester Rovers, the team featured in Roy of the Rovers. He was later joined by Mick Hucknall, the frontman for Simply 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 on Robert Maxwell.

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-outs from cliffhangers. For example, at the end of one strip, a game in Japan is interrupted by Mothra, the giant beast from the Godzilla 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 its 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 the FA 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 as Paul Gascoigne or David 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 footballer Roy 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 by Adolf 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.

[edit] 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 comedian Harry 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.^[1]

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• A real Fulchester United, named after the Viz strip, exists in Saskatchewan.
• The fictional Fulchester United team is currently sponsored by the real betNOW. They were formerly sponsored by Go! Discs.
• The heavy metal group The Melvins have recently added an original song titled "Billy the Fish" to their live sets. The song has not yet appeared on an official release.

[edit] References and Links