Baxter Basics

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 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 rounded up, put on an island and used for bombing practice by the RAF."

Baxter Basics has not appeared in Viz since the mid-1990s, the 1997 election victory of the Labour Party obviously depriving the strip of it's Conservative-orientated satire potential.