David Britton and John Coulthart
(with Michael Butterworth, Kris Guidio and others)
Savoy, 60 pages, £3.50
Review by David Kendall (2000)
‘People need two things from life – a good read and a quick death – I do my best to oblige.’ Yes, the quiff is back. After a three year absence David Britton’s impeccable psychopath Lord Horror returns to drag his plume through the gore once more, romancing his beloved, the winsome Jessie Matthews, as he goes. Picasso, Seurat, death camps, Children’s Hour, masturbating apes – it’s all thrown into a pot and emptied straight over your head. Artist John Coulthart works up a midnight mucksweat of dangerous images; herein writhes a bestiary of the sort seldom encountered this side of the veil. Turning these pages you begin to understand why the assistant editor of The Times implored Britton and his editor and co-publisher Michael Butterworth to ‘go away’.
Fat chance. The pair proceeded to publish – among other things – Britton’s infamous Lord Horror novel, to resurrect PJ Proby (and, with the great man’s help, to re-imagine The Waste Land on CD as a death row redneck’s most intimate confession) and to release Paul Temple ‘Wagnerian love song’ 'Reverbstorm', a dancefloor favourite of the nineties. Jessie Matthews sings: ‘I stole the chalice from the palace ’cos my baby / couldn’t reconcile fecundity / ether of the Windsors power of the Royals / the virus still sets me free.’ Gawd bless you ma’am.
In the end it’s the storm that’s the message. We can never have enough naysayers in the bookstores, the CD racks, the comic shelves. The fact that you’re unlikely to find Savoy on display goes some way towards proving my point.