swansonj
Guru
Ooh, goody, this is turning into a serious discussion.So where would you draw the line? Surely Roy "Chubby" Brown is a character created by Royston Vasey,as much as the inhabitants of the fictional town of Royston Vasey are characters created by Shearsmith, Pemberton, Gatiss and Dyson?
To me, on this issue as on so many (tax avoidance is another one), the key is a person's motivation. If a person is adopting an obnoxious alien persona to explore it or to expose it, that's valid. Actors and authors do it all the time. If the person is adopting an obnoxious persona to entertain people who don't see it as obnoxious, or to be able to say things they don't want to be heard saying in "real life", that is dodgy.
I'm not saying the dividing line is always clear but I do think the principles are (to my way of thinking) fairly clear.