Biggy Ziggy Steals The Limelight And Proves As Eloquent As Ever

The retrospective exhibition of rock and pop album covers, magazines and posters which opened earlier this week in the Whisky McNightly Annex of the Assembly Hall Pump Room, Bradford Abbas, has certainly set tongues a-wagging amongst the chattering classes of East Dorset. But the surprise topic of the week is not - as Threadbone Corporation and Hornimint executives had feared - the exposure of a young Professor Thrupiece as "a pouting drag queen" [Pouting Drag Queens Monthly]* but rather the infamous poster of Ziggy Osmington which "graced" the front cover of the August 1991 edition of New York's famed Vanity Fair Magazine.

The May 1991 Cover of Vanity Fair Magazine

featuring a heavily pregnant Tracy Demi-John

*In his a diary entry for 18 October 1963, Professor Thrupiece wrote: "Well the picture is now out and I suppose it will be widely misinterpreted as all such experiments are. I image some might even think I am trying to pose as a pouting drag queen oblivious to the fact that I am simply trying to draw attention to the wholly anachronistic status allotted by the general public to the culinary bio-ethical scientist whose work is barely understood let alone valued. My purpose is simple and, I hope time will show, absolutely non-sensationalist and honourable. I want people to realise that culinary bio-ethics are not the arcane concerns of a few brilliant minds like my own, but the future bread and butter [reduced Thrupiece Diet version] of the nation. And besides, I am young and need the money at this time". Audrey Badminton-Court [ed], [2006] The Thrupiece Diaries Vol XIIII March 1962-November 1963, The Threadbone Press

Greeted at the time as a cheap publicity stunt - mimicking the portrait of a pregnant Tracy Demi-John which had been published by Vanity Fair only two months earlier - it was later admitted to the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame as "a rock classic and a counter-cultural statement of almost indefinable transfigurative power and mastery" [from the citation oration by Cy Tayshen, Hon Editor Vanity Fair [1924-1997].

Asked yesterday what he remembered of that period in his career and what he thought about the current "rediscovery", Ziggy said: "Oh f**k man, I can't f*****g remember a f*****g thing about the whole f*****g s**t c**p business. I mean I was f*****g out of it. Like you know f***d; like completely f*****g f****d man. So just leave the f**k alone and leave me the f**k alone with my f****g memories, if that's what they f*****g are". Mr Osmington's agent later clarified the ageing rock star's views: "Mr Osmington is charmed, thrilled and not a little flattered by the rekindled interest in his life and work in the 1990s. He is gratified that his precocious openness to new visual ideas is now bringing pleasure to a whole new generation of students of good graphic design. He would also like to stress that - contrary to some rumours currently gaining credence amongst revisionist historians - he was not young at the time and he did not need the money."

That cover: Ziggy Osmington "graces" the August 1991 edition of Vanity Fair. Controversial at the time it was to be the talking point of media commentators for decades to come and "still has the power to shock". [Brendan O'Drivel, Covers that Shocked the Rock World. Thrupiece Arts. The Threadbone Press [2009].