Good Times Begin
 

A few weeks after delivering comics, a newsagent (Wardwick News, Derby) contacted us to tell us their magazine wholesaler was interested in distributing Smut. Several phone conversations over a week or two led to a meeting in London. In our first, shared, company car, a rusting two hundred quid Mk4 Cortina, we drove down to the Elephant and Castle and returned to Derby with an order for 40,000 copies of our comic.

We were then under pressure to find the money to fund the costs and a company willing to print our irreverent material (no internet back then; we only had books and directories for research), but by the May of 1989, Smut was on sale, nationally. Our first issue made 75% sales, which in the magazine world was unprecedented and a lowly paid tyre fitter and Reckitt & Coleman security man were suddenly earning yuppy money (ish).

Smut immediately created controversy with its exceedingly indecorous content and drew the attention of the media from day one. However, the adverse publicity was always at our advantage.

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Life became better overnight, we rented an office, bought new cars and my family, now three sons, moved from the council estate to the new estate, the posher bit of Sinfin.