Scotch Changes

When I was a student, everyone read Viz. It was just The Done Thing. You also had to say "it's not as good as it used to be", and pretend you read it when it had a circulation of 5 and was hand-drawn by monks in Buckfast Abbey.

Part of Viz's stock-in trade were the spoof ads that littered the pages between the strips. I distinctly remember seeing the above example, and not being quite able to believe it.

It's a very accurate parody of an ad that used to appear in the back of the News of the World each weekend for "Tranformation Change-Aways". The original showed a half-man, half-woman image and promised hours of unalloyed feminine bliss for cross-dressers under the auspices of Transformation's discreet dressing service.

Every British tranny of a certain age remembers that advert. I used to stare at it for hours at my Nan's when we went over for Sunday lunch (my immediate family being too lower middle class to get the News of the World), guiltily turning to another page when someone entered the room.

The fact that someone at Viz also seemed to have noticed it too, and had gone as far as lampooning it, amazed me. In my little neophyte tranny mind I thought I was the only person who knew about it! I wonder how many Viz readers knew that it was a Transformation spoof, and how many thought it was just mocking the Scots!

Anyway, I found it again in a collection of Viz spoof ads I bought the other day, and I thought I'd share it with you.