As part of the CG’s ‘Living History Programme’, we’ve interviewed some key players in the magazine’s history: This excerpt is from an interview with Albert Buckle (1902-) who worked for the CG for 20 years...
Well blimey guv’nor! Ain’t nobody never asked yours truly to write about our beloved CG before, me being juss’ a ’umble paper seller an’ all. I firs’ started this job back in 1913 when the CG was jus’ two badly photocopied bits of A3 without a staple to be seen on its flimsy spine. Course, it’s probably changed now what with this being the age of the information super’ighway an’ all. My uncle used to work down ULU as a printer, back when they ’ad to print every letter by ’and with a stencil and a fel’ tip, and ’e used to say the followin’ to me all the time, and now I recall it was was the last fing ’e ever said to me (Spanish Flu combined with a predeliction for gin and bawdy houses) and I’ll never forget it:
“This pathetic rag could be something of merit one day if only it could dispense with its pseudo-intellectual and bourgeois pretensions, and stop being a shitty imitation of ‘Punch’. If these dickheads were even half as funny or clever as they clearly think they are, then somebody might actually read it for once”.
’Ow we laughed when ’e said that to us. But then, like a former editor’s ginger hair in the midst of an existential crisis, ’e left us, a man struck down well past his prime. We found ’im all rigor mortis’d with a look of ’orror on ’is face, very similar to that of Lauren Laverne when gripped in the arms of a certain ex-editor.
Of course in those days the Great War was jus’ around the corner, and when brave little Belgium needed an ’and, us lads formed a UCL media battalion and headed right off to the front. It’s not particularly well known, but that’s where our motto ‘A diamond in a sea of shit’ came from, because we’d keep printing even in the trenches and we always made a point of wiping our arses with PI-regiment’s publication, while keeping our beloved CG pristine. Many men died to keep that magazine clean. Mostly Northerners, though, so I’m not too broken up by it.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, reader; plus c’est la même chose.