4901: Little Gemfield

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Little Gemfield

Made by: Manyhills

Explanation

This strip pokes fun at the then-ongoing turbulent administration of United Kingdom Prime Minister Liz Truss, and in particular whether a head of lettuce could keep longer than Ms. Truss could stay in office. As the Garfield strip had its own character named Liz among its roster, the references fell into place from there. Ms. Truss resigned from office six days after this strip was published, after only fifty days in office under two different monarchs.

This strip managed to be published during the Truss administration due to Manyhills's ability to cheat the strip queue. Unless an author managed to coordinate things very carefully with manyhills (as would happen with 5193: RIPee running as a tribute strip only eight days after its honoree's death), the normal workings of the strip queue would have very likely seen uncoordinated attempts at the reference published during the administration of Rishi Sunak or one of his successors.

The author writes:

Original lettuce: Daily Star: LIVE: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?.

Original strips: 2008-01-24, 2012-08-04.

Transcript

Garfield {indicating a head of lettuce made up with a wig and googly eyes to vaguely resemble British Prime Minister [at time of writing] Liz Truss}: Look, Liz, it's Liz! {Liz looks unimpressed}
Garfield: Oops, sorry, it's just a head of lettuce!
{Liz looks alarmed}
Garfield: We don't have the same sense of humor, do we?
{Liz looks concerned}