Tasha Slappa

Tasha Slappa is a character in the British adult comic "Viz".

The strip satirizes "chav" culture and the popular image of chav teenagers, including other fictional characters such as Vicky Pollard in "Little Britain" and Lauren Cooper from "The Catherine Tate Show". Tasha's name is directly taken from the same slang term "Tasha Slappa" to refer to a young working class woman with low moral standards. The character began life as "Kappa Slappa" after the brand of sportswear, but the name was later changed for legal reasons. According to Chris Donald's account "Rude Kids", Kappa's lawyers threatened action, not because of the brand's association with an undesirable character, because the strip implied that Kappa shellsuits were highly flammable. The Viz team actually purchased some Kappa clothing and tried in vain to set fire to it before conceding defeat and agreeing to alter the name of the strip. Tasha's appearance is an exaggeration of the chav stereotype. ["Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz"] . Her hair is styled into an extreme Croydon facelift ponytail, and is almost always shown wearing a fake-brand tracksuit top and a short mini skirt. She also wears excessive amounts of cheap bling jewellery. Her speech is always written in Geordie dialect, so that she uses local colloquialisms and pronounces words phonetically.

Tasha is a moody, belligerent and foul mouthed teenage girl. She is arrogant, aggressive and frequently dismisses things with "I divvint (don't) give a fuck." Her home is in Newcastle with her lazy mother and countless siblings. She also has a boyfriend called Bobba - who it is hinted may also be her father and grandfather - who is fiercely defensive of her and has a violent temper, so that she can persuade him to beat up just about anyone for the most arbitrary of reasons. He is not very intelligent and is susceptible to anything she tells him, enabling her to get the better of him if he upsets her or tries to order her about.

She is unbelievably lazy, constantly truants and will go to any lengths to avoid any other work. She is an avid fan of "The Jeremy Kyle Show" (a British television chat show aimed at a lower class audience) and many of her schemes centre around procuring a way for her to sit at home all day and watch it non stop. Her other hobbies include having sex with strangers, (when Bobba isn't around), binge drinking, smoking and gossiping with her equally delinquent friends. She greatly admires her idle, irresponsible mother ("our Mam") and aspires to a similar lifestyle when - (and if) - she grows up. As her name suggests, Tasha is very promiscuous, and she has had many children in the strips. She is often seen either pushing them around in prams grudgingly, abandoning them on the doorstep of random buildings or drowning them in a nearby canal. Some of them also live at home with her mother.

Tasha's mother, "Mam", and one of her many brothers, Rat Boy, each have their own spin-off strips in the magazine. More so recently, her own kids have even had their own strip.

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