128: Puns 2

The other visual-punning trick used by cartoonists is to take something that almost sounds like “gay” and then illustrate comedically it as interpreted through a matrix of homosexual signifiers, or if you prefer just make it look as though it actually were gay, i.e “Oklahomo”.

- Michael Heath in “Private Eye” 7 March 1975

So we get “Gay the Gorilla”. Guy the Gorilla was one of the most famous animals at the London Zoo from the 1940s-‘70s.

- Michael Heath in “Private Eye” 28 October 1977

Bonfire night is November 5 in Britain, when effigies of Guy Fawkes are burnt in to celebrate his unsuccessful attempt to blow up Parliament. It used to be a common feature of life that in the days leading up to Bonfire Night children would parade their dummies, importuning passers-by, “Penny for the Guy?”

- Barry Fantoni in “Private Eye” 9 November 1979

Richard Ingrams, the editor of “Private Eye”, either forgot that he had already run the joke once or else thought it such a great gag that it deserved repeating.

See how in all three it's the same thing about the eyes and mouth which indicates that they're gay.