It's the only Big Dave story not drawn by Steve Parkhouse. I miss the great man, obviously... but Anthony Williams is clearly having a whale of a time drawing these bad people. His style is big, bold and cartoonish, after all. If you had to pick a 2000 AD artist from this era to stand in for Parkhouse, he's a fun choice. He makes these yobs vile, exaggerated and often grotesquely ugly. He instead creates his own Dave who arguably looks more distinctive than the original.

Big Dave goes on holiday to Tenerife. This lets Morrison and Miller take the piss out of the following tabloid traits:

(a) racism. Dave smashes a bottle in the head of their good and poor bus driver for no reason at all, except that he's foreign. His friends all laugh. Meanwhile, the Spanish are dirty, ugly sub-humans with parodic dialogue.

"Queeck! Get heem een the van while he ees drunk!"

"Si! Eet ees the coward's way!"

(b) Robert Maxwell. Every Big Dave story so far has guest-starred some unlikely celebrity who's been in lots of newspapers. This time, it's that infamous pension fund fraudster and media proprietor, despite the small handicap of being dead.

(c) Right-wing nonsense in general. "Inside the sinister hell-hole which makes British jails look like the holiday camps they are..."

This time, Dave's enemy is a Geordie called Ballser who also claims to be Britain's hardest man. When they fight in ep.4, they're throwing Superman punches and knocking each other through mountains. He's as disgusting as Dave, but more importantly he's calling Dave a poof. Obviously, both think that's the worst insult in the world. They're racist, sexist, homophobic apologies for humans and a shame on the human race, let alone any specific country... but, obviously, the caption boxes worship our anti-hero. "Well done, Dave! For too long, Britain's been the laughing stock of Europe and the world. Thanks to you we've got our dignity back! Fly the flag proudly, son!"

Still awesome.

"I moss desert my friends and flee for my own safety!"