Hating Work And Working With Pricks

WORDS BY BRUNO BAYLEY, CARTOONS BY MODERN TOSS

Modern Toss is our favourite British cartoon by miles. It’s as if Johnny Ryan’s strips have been transplanted into a jobcentre in Slough.

Created by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, two guys who used to be at

Loaded

in the days when it wasn’t the most embarrassing magazine in the world, Modern Toss is adept at making short, bitter fuck-yous to contemporary society that also make us LOL pretty much every time.

For this issue they did a collection of new strips, styled a “fashion story” and also deigned to talk to us on the phone for a few minutes.

Vice: Your strips are often based in the office. Whose side are you on—the pissed-off worker or the pissed-off boss?

Jon Link:

We’re more in the pissed-off worker section, based on our very limited experience of having real jobs or being in a normal office.

When did this traumatic exposure to shit working life occur?

Well, both me and Mick had had quite a few shit jobs before we worked in magazines. I used to do night work as a paste-up artist for the

Finchley Gazette

, which was quite depressing. Mick’s done some really choice jobs actually. He used to move chairs around at an architects’ society. They are quite particular as far as chair moving goes. You don’t need to work in an office for long to work out it’s shit, though.

I guess that’s why the comics are successful—everyone knows what it’s like to hate work and work with pricks.

Yeah. All our comics are about work: about doing work and people not being happy with it, or hating your job. It happens a lot.

Did you get much grief when you first started?

Yeah, a bit. But I think that’s pretty standard. We got a bit of grief about Mr Tourette, but not much, and only in the first six months. It doesn’t seem to happen any more. I think the world has moved on.

These days you have a Channel 4 show and books and so on. Were you surprised by how quickly things took off?

Yeah, we brought the comic out at the start of 2004 and about two months later Channel 4 asked us if we wanted to do a pilot. We had a lot of input on the show, possibly too much. They just let us get on with it, really. Every step of the way we wanted to make sure the drawings, animation and the voices were right. Some people approached us actually. Mackenzie Crook wanted to do a voiceover, which was nice.

Anything exciting on the way?

Yeah. We’ve got some animation projects on the go for next year which are going to be pretty mental. We just did some Christmas cards that we’re pretty pleased with. There’s one where a man is attacking some carol singers with a baseball bat. That’s a good one.

The book

Modern Toss Presents More Work

is out now published by Modern Toss Ltd.