Wicked Willie

Wicked Willie is a humorous British cartoon character personified as a talking penis, created by Gray Jolliffe (illustrator) and Peter Mayle (writer). He first appeared in the book Man's Best Friend, published in 1984.^[1] He has subsequently appeared in Wicked Willie – The Movie,^[2] and the board game, The Wicked Willie Game.^[3] Jolliffe has said that the idea for Wicked Willie came to him one day, while he was in the bath.^[4] A more detailed history of Wicked Willie is found in the book Wicked Willie Reloaded.^[5][6]

Wicked Willie Reloaded book cover featuring the eponymous Wicked Willie

Journalist Peter Silverton described it thus: "...comic books about a man and his Wicked Willie. It was a dialogue—mostly about women, of course—between the two. Its irony is that the 'dreadful little trouser mole' is by far the sharper of the two brains".^[7]

Personification

Author Peter Mayle describes Wicked Willie as "a rampant penis".^[8] In her book Communicating Gender, Suzanne Romaine notes:

"The personification metaphor suggests that the penis leads a life of its own. It has been popularized in Britain in the form of the Wicked Willie books, where Willie is referred to as "Man's Best Friend".^[9]

Scottish feminist linguist Deborah Cameron notes that:

"In England, there is a popular cartoon character called "Wicked Willie" [...] The underlying conceit is that men secretly regard their penis as an individual in its own right (and one to whom they are deeply attached). Though the cartoon is a joke, it presumably speaks to a widely recognized, culturally constructed experience of the penis as an uncontrollable Other, with a life of its own".^[10]

The character also contributed to the permissiveness and acceptance of sex on the high street. British journalist Libby Purves writes:

"High street shops no longer bother to put their hopping penises on a high shelf, and nor do bookshops selling Wicked Willie and the like."^[11]

Reception

In March 1987, the book Wicked Willie's Guide to Women was in the number 7 position in the Paperback Non-Fiction section of the Month's Bestsellers.^[12] Almost a year later, Wicked Willie's Low-down on Men had reached number 6 in the same chart.^[13]