VIZ: AN EXPERT'S VIEW.(review of the publication "Viz" and its advertising)(Brief Article)

Viz may have a new look but its content is unchanged and still as good, Nick McElwee reports

If the upper classes have The Lady and Horse & Hound, why can't the working classes have Viz, that pamphlet of unmodified smut? But just as pornography is a middle-class invention (the upper classes don't masturbate and the working classes don't think of anything when they do), Viz feels like nothing but a well-branded middleclass advertising medium that fills a gap on newsagents' shelves between Razzle and Computer Weekly.

There's a market for this sort of stuff and don't the publishers know it. You know exactly who it is that buys this rag too. They're people who find wind-up calls funny -- you know, where you get your mate to call a supposedly innocent number but it turns out to be Mrs Davenport, the stammering caller, or a "Madam's services unpaid" phone line.

They're the sort of people who are obsessed with mobile phone screensavers and ring tones, desperate to see a bouncing pair of pixilated tits wobble in the window of their mobile phone (where normally Vodafone or whatever goes) to the tune of Danger Mouse when they get a call from their mum. How we laughed.

But then you're at the train station on your way somewhere and you pick it up. You fancy a trip down University Lane. Doesn't it suck you in? And not only funny, doesn't it make absolute sense to wonder why, if heat rises, the top of Mount Everest is so f**king cold? Doesn't it make absolute sense to ...