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Alex Masterley
Alex (1987- ) is a Slice of Life humour comic by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor following the life of Alex Masterley, a City of London merchant banker.
Alex is a topical strip, satirizing banker's attitudes to most of the major financial, political and sporting stories of the day. It also targets the changes that have occurred in the business world in the last twenty years, such as the rise of political correctness, the increase in rules and regulations, and changes in technology. The cartoonists receive a lot of material from bankers themselves, and many of the situations they poke fun at in the comic are based on real occurrences.
It is a gag-a-day strip, and has no overarching meta-plot or story, but will occasionally have longer story arcs lasting for anything up to a month. The comic is set firmly within the real world (other than fictitious bank names), but does have some dream and fantasy sequences, such as when Alex and his colleague Clive are put in charge of buying out and floating Santa's North Pole operation.
The comic has been running in the pages of The Independent since 1987, then The Daily Telegraph from 1992, and the strip has been duplicated on the Web since 1999. It has always updated five days a week (Monday to Friday) without fail, matching the newspaper copy, although it takes a short break whenever the cartoonists have a holiday, as the strips are drawn the day before publication.
The archive is very badly designed, so the first strip on the Web can be found here. If you take a break during an Archive Binge, it is recommended you take note of the URL, and return later via the address bar, or use your browser history menu.
Has an Audio Adaptation on Classic FM.
- Broke Episode: Alex spent a large part of 2003 unemployed.
- Butt Monkey: Alex's friend and colleague, Clive.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The early strips often featured a match seller Alex would verbally joust with. He vanished without trace after a couple of years.
- Elseworld: A one-off strip made for the British Library's "Hold The Front Page" exhibition reimagined Alex for World War Two. In this strip Alex has a bowler hat and moustache, and is talking about rationing and the Blitz.
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Butcher: So I'm afraid even you rich city types will have to go short. |
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- Girlfriend in Canada: While at university, Clive used to claim he had a 'girlfriend in London'.
- Jury Duty: Happens to Clive.
- Luvvies: In one strip, Alex and Clive are in a bar discussing Quentin Tarantino's plan to make a Shakespeare movie. Clive makes a joke "I can see it now: Quentin Tarantino's 'F*@# Macbeth'." One of the other patrons objects to Clive's language and he immediately apologises and corrects himself to 'F*@# The Scottish Play' as the final panel reveals the bar is full of luvvies.
- Mistaken for Servant: Alex and his American boss Cyrus are invited to a grouse shoot, for which Cyrus buys a brand new set of tweeds to wear (having never been to one), despite repeated warnings to get a used set instead. At the shoot, Cyrus gets tipped by another guest, who believed he was the gardener breaking in the new tweeds for the lord of the house.
- Must Have Nicotine: The Smokers Club
- Oop North: Any strip involving Hardcastle.
- Put on a Bus: Clive's American girlfriend Ruth and their lovechild, who vanished from the comic in the late 90s and have not been seen since.
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Alex's son, Christopher, has gone from birth to age 20 in roughly 14 years.
- Strip Buffer: Averted. The strips are drawn the day before publication.
- Unconfessed Unemployment: When Clive was laid off, he spent the best part of a year pretending to still be employed. His wife figured it out when she was able to spend a whole night without being woken by Clive's boss texting him.
- Work Off the Debt: Alex ends up washing dishes while unemployed.
- Write Who You Know: A lot of material is provided by people in the banking industry.