short strip called "The Nice, Honest Gypsies", featuring a kindly Gypsy woman selling pegs door-to-door and helpfully returning forgotten change. The strip "Wanker Watson", a parody of the children's comic character Winker Watson, led to litigation by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, the owners of the Winker character. This was after they had issued several warnings previously about infringement of copyright in earlier parody strips, which Viz had ignored. In retaliation, Viz featured a new character called 'D.C. Thompson The Humourless Scottish Git'. However, coinciding with DC Thomson’s legal action, and unaware of it, Dandy editor Maurice Heggie published a good humoured strip in response, "The Jocks and The Geordies", a revival of an old strip from The Dandy, in which the Geordies (clearly representing Viz) competed with the Jocks (clearly representing Thomson) in a competition to design funny cartoon characters. The Geordies' miserable efforts bore sharp similarity to actual Viz characters, such as 'The Boy with Big Pants' which was a reference to Felix and his Amazing Underpants. This served to deflate the situation. (Chris Donald's book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, notes the good-humoured nature of the latter stages of this episode). Sports clothing manufacturer Kappa insisted that the comic drop the name of one of its characters, "Kappa Slappa", as it had no permission to use the brand name. Kappa also believed that the character in question insulted its customer base. "Slappa" was an obnoxious, uneducated, highly unattractive and sexually promiscuous 14-year-old living on a Tyneside council estate, always wearing a Kappa shellsuit. The characterisation was said to be more descriptive than insulting. However, after several runs of the strip, Viz agreed to change her name to "Tasha Slappa". In his book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, Chris Donald mentions that he was interviewed by police after giving the go-ahead to publish a Top Tip which could have been interpreted as an incitement to carry out a bomb plot. Donald claims that he then accidentally included the offending statement in that year's Viz annual The Sausage Sandwich. It was covered with a sticker reading "PUBLISHERS. Ensure that your editors have read the proofs of your books before printing a quarter of a million of them. J. Brown, London". Bibliography Highlights of the comic are collected into regular annuals, invariably with innuendo-laden titles. There have also been a large number of themed collections