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Guy
Gorilla

Guy
was a charming, innocent young lad. Butter wouldn't melt
in his mouth, you know. But peanuts would. You see,
young
Guy had a thing about peanuts. Give him one and the old
"wibble-wobbles" would start. The next you
know, he's gone
and transformed himself into a rampaging, fifteen
foot tall gorilla!

Remarkably, Guy was somehow able to keep his big secret
from his mum and Dad, who simply couldn't understand
why
this hulking great ape would keep turning up iun the
middle
of their shopping expeditions, or when they went visiting
folk,
or any number of their everyday haunts. His friends
also
copped it. And after he'd returned to normal, Guy would
invariably cop it back from his pals, incensed at his
destructive ways...
Guy in gorilla form would terrify the bejezus out of
his Mum and
dad. Indeed, Mum would lose her hat and Dad would eject
his
false teeth with fright!
In the 1984 Whizzer & Chips Annual, we discovered
an
interesting role reversal. An elephant at the local
zoo pinches
Guy's peanuts and turns into a boy!
And then there was Guy's encounter with a forlorn ickle
girl on
a park bench one day. It turned out she was transformed in
to a
giant frog whenever she tasted prawns (or prawn cocktail
crisps!).
Coo, it must be catching...
Guy Gorilla takes its title from that of Guy the Gorilla,
London
Zoo's famous resident silverback who was something of
a
celebrity in the 60s/70s. He was often profiled on kids
tv
shows and natural history productions.

Gosh, what a simple idea for a strip. And what a simply
brilliant
execution. This was tooned by the marvellous master
of mischief,
Tom Paterson, who enlivened each and every panel with witty
asides, snoozing cats, pongy socks, and much gleeful jibbering,
as you might expect. But what made it even more fun was the
juxtaposition of size and mayhem. Quite frankly, no
one does
manic mayhem better than Mr Paterson!
In his gorilla form, Guy became a gigantic rampaging lunatic,
crushing cars and constructions and sending his wee parents,
townsfolk and various unfortunates fleeing for their
lives.
And let's face it, there's nowt like a nerdling nerk in a gibbering
panic to get you smiling!
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