Bad News are a fictional English heavy metal band created for the Channel 4 television series The Comic Strip Presents.... Its members were Vim Fuego (played by Ade Edmondson) on vocals and lead guitar; Den Dennis (Nigel Planer) on rhythm guitar; Colin Grigson (Rik Mayall) on bass; and Spider "Eight-Legs" Webb (Peter Richardson) on drums.

Along the way, there is much inter-group squabbling as Bad News are profiled by "rock journalist extraordinaire" Sally Freidman (Jennifer Saunders), and pick up a schoolgirl groupie named Tracy (Dawn French).

[2] The opening sequence of "Bad News Tour" shows Vim living in the notorious Chantry Point tower block on the Elgin Estate in west London.

After a pause of a few years, the previously fictional-only band became an entity in real life when Bad News were invited to play at the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in 1986.

All this was in aid of promoting an eponymously titled Bad News album, consisting of thrashy rock songs punctuated by frequent squabbling amongst the band's members.

[5] Later in 1988, the band issued the largely spoken word album Bootleg, which ostensibly consisted of dialogue (mostly interband arguments) recorded during the sessions for Bad News.

In 2012, for the 30 Years of Comic Strip documentary, Planer and Richardson returned as Den Dennis and Spider Webb respectively to recall stories from their time as Bad News.

In the documentary, the post-1988 fates of the Bad News members were revealed: Alan (Vim) returned to his business as a painter and decorator, with Den assisting him; Colin's father got him a job as a bank clerk; and Spider retired to the West Country with his partner and three children.