‘Archetypal hippie’ Vivian Berger died in December

VIVIAN Lawrence Berger, who has died from cancer, was the schoolboy who featured in the Oz magazine obscenity trial in the late 1960s, having been one of the editors of the now infamous school kids edition.

He was the artist behind the “Rupert Bear” cartoons that were deemed offensive in the trial that rocked London in 1970. He was born in l955 in Singapore while his father Michael was posted there in the army.

His mother Grace Berger, née Denham, was chairwoman of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and was a very prominent exponent and supporter of the Children’s Rights movement. Viv lived with his mother and two sisters – Mandy and Karen – in Steele’s Road, Belsize Park.

He always said that being brought up by a mother and two sisters made him more aware of feminism than most. Grace was South African and a political activist and the UK anti-apartheid movement was established in their earlier Gloucester Crescent home.

Vivian appeared briefly as a small boy in an underground film called Let My People Go made in 1960 – a film marking the first anniversary of the Sharpville massacres in South Africa in 1959 and exposing the horrendous apartheid regime.

Grace also campaigned for comprehensive education and took Vivian out of his grammar school, Dame Alice Owen’s, and sent him and her daughters to Hampstead Comprehensive school.

The Oz magazine spoke for the London counterculture, embody­ing political dissent and rock music with fantastic design. When the editors invited teenagers to edit their May 1970 (number 28), the resulting “school kids issue” hit bookstalls with an impact that changed history.

Across pages 14 and 15, 16-year-old Vivian had pasted the head of Rupert Bear, the Daily Express mascot, onto a sex strip by the American illustrator Robert Crumb. Signed with “Viv”, he did not draw the comic strip himself but created a collage from two different sources – Crumb’s Eggs Ackley among the Vulture Demonesses and Rupert annuals.

He added descriptive titles above each panel of the cartoon strip and rhyming verses underneath. The speech bubbles were left unaltered.

In the final panel Vivian wrote: “Apologies to Crumb (the bum) – Viv”. The school kids issue gave some biographical background to Vivian Berger, describing him as an anarchist with an interest in mysticism who started smoking aged nine and took his first LSD trip at 16. In the issue he is called Viv Kylastron. This aroused the obscene publications squad and resulted in five charges including the “conspiracy to corrupt public morals”.

This helped generate some of the most surreal exchanges ever heard in a British court Vivian’s Rupert Bear was portrayed by the prosecution as pornography, promoting immoral values.

As Vivian was under age at the time of the trial he was not prosecuted, but was called as a prosecution witness.

The Oz school kids issue

Defence lawyer John Mortimer asked why he had done it. Vivian replied: “I think that I subconsciously wanted to shock your generation. Also it seemed to me very funny … this is the kind of drawing that goes around every classroom, every day in every school. Maybe I was portraying obscenity, but I don’t think I was being obscene myself…if the news shows pictures of war, then for me, they are portraying obscenity – the war. But they are not themselves creating that obscenity.”

Oz graphics (including Vivian’s) and the subsequent trial sparked responses from artists including John Lennon and David Hockney.

The editors were found guilty but their verdict was overturned on appeal. Vivian’s Rupert became a visual icon of its time, like the labour fist and nuclear disarmament sign. Vivian was the archetypal 60s hippie teenager going on protest demonstrations against the Vietnam war and CND marches. He went to music festivals and regularly imbibed the drugs of the day.

His best friend in at the time was Paddy Melly – George’s son.

Within a year of the Oz trial, Vivian was an influential voice as editorial adviser to the Children’s Rights magazine and an advocate of “Pupil Power”. Vivian had three children – Peter, Lucy and Ben – but he was neither married nor in a relationship for the last decade of his life.

In his twenties he went to America and secured a job as a computer programmer working on Apple technology and playing roles in amateur dramatics.

He remained there until his death on December 8.

MANDY BERGER and SUE MALDEN