Baxter Basics
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Baxter Basics was a fictional character in the British comic Viz.
Baxter was a politician and member of the Conservative Party. He was essentially a sexual pervert, 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", 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 (e.g. David Mellor) or corruption.
A complete hypocrite, Baxter would denounce the evils of things like prostitution, yet he frequently hired the services of prostitutes. 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 or slamming his own penis in a fridge door.
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.
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