Baxter Basics

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sections=February 2008

Baxter Basics ("The MP who loves to eMPty his nuts") was a fictional character in the British comic "Viz". He is the most political of "Viz's" characters. [cite news |title=Satire is alive and kicking |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19981119/ai_n14193331/pg_2 |work=The Independent |date=19 November 1998 |accessdate=2008-10-08 ]

Baxter was a politician and member of the Conservative Party. He was essentially a sexual pervert, [cite news |title=PAISLEY MARCHES INTO CULT MAG'S COMIC STRIP; DUP chief lampooned looking for his bowler. |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-60161075.html |work=The People |date=6 June 1999 |accessdate=2008-10-08 |format=fee required] closet homosexual and utterly corrupt, yet he always attempted to portray himself as a fine and upstanding family man of utter integrity.

Baxter Basics first appeared in the early 1990s and his name is a spoof of the then British Prime Minister John Major's rallying call for his Conservative Party to "get back to basics", widely interpreted as meaning a return to traditional family values and morality. This was mocked a great deal as it was followed by a time when Conservatives were frequently mired in political scandals involving adultery and other forms of sexual misbehaviour (e.g. David Mellor, Stephen Milligan) or corruption.

A complete hypocrite, [cite news |title=Fulchester's finest |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14269933 |work=The Independent |date=26 November 1999 |accessdate=2008-10-08 ] Baxter would denounce the evils of things like prostitution, yet he frequently hired the services of prostitutes.cite news |title=Sideline |url=http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/sideline-71592.html |work=Irish Independent |date=4 October 2006 |accessdate=2008-10-08 ] He once had a sexual relationship with a young man and in that same episode, when he was later asked by a reporter if he was gay ("Are you a lifter of gentlemen's shirts sir?"), Baxter cheerfully replied in the negative and emphasised his belief in family values by insisting that all gay men "should be rounded up, put on an island and used for bombing practice by the RAF." In many episodes he has even shown symptoms of masochism, be it having his genitals burned with a cigarette lighter, slamming his own penis in a fridge door or ramming a petrol pump up his backside.

Baxter Basics was not featured in Viz for many years since the mid-1990s, the 1997 election victory of the Labour Party obviously depriving the strip of its Conservative-oriented satire potential. However, the imprisonment of Jeffrey Archer in 2001 led to a satirical revival for the character; as an imprisoned politician who was given a luxurious cell and let out to meet his publishers. It also satirised the affair between Major and Edwina Currie which had been revealed in the latter's diaries.

One character from years past who made a once-off appearance in Baxter's strip was Billy Bunter - now Sir William Bunter, conservative MP for Greyfriars Central. His body was as wide as it was tall, and he was in the most horrendous health. He is killed off by Baxter very quickly with a popped paper bag (heart attack) so that Baxter can stand for his seat.

In 2008 Basics made a return to Viz (issue 173,) in a strip satirising the tribulations of labour Deputy leadership campaigner, Peter Hain. Basics is shown robbing a bank after which he apologises for "my failure to observe the correct procedures when raising funds for my Deputy Leadership campaign. When I robbed the bank, I accepted the bags of money across the counter in good faith." He then promises to take the matter up with his PPS, (who is paid £50,000 a year from the public purse) and who turns out to be his infant son, (a reference to embattled Tory MP Derek Conway, then in the news for employing his son as a political researcher (the son was in fact, studying full-time at Newcastle University), but who was found to have done no work by a commons standards committee.

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