Freak's Own ~ A History

Well, Freak’s Own started life in 1969 in the Lower Sixth as an exercise book issued to me by Doc Lewis for rough work. It was labelled "Maths 2 Rough". For some reason other people started scribbling in it. Several subsequent "volumes" of Maths 2 Rough attracted increasing contributions from others in the class, including comments that were attempts at scandal etc. Volume 3 was labelled Maths 2 Rough or "Teach Yourself to Scribble". For Volume 5 the sub-title was "Freak's Own Songbook", and volume 6 lost the original Maths title, being simply labelled "Freak's Own Annual".

Within these exercise books, amidst a lot of puerile trash, a newspaper-style structure began to appear, with anyone and everyone making contributions, particularly to the "Scandal Column". After we all left the Salvo in 1971, I continued to produce Freak's Own as a sort of old boy's paper, with appalling production on an old Gestetner duplicator that I had access to. I used to send it out by post to a couple of dozen people, who were supposed to send me their news, and that of other old boys, and also 2.5p stamps for the postage. The first such issue was No. 17, September 1971, and the last was No. 22, January 1974.

I still have all the exercise books, and most of the post-school days issues, although some of these are barely legible now. I had thought that I might scan some of this stuff to send to David for the website, but haven't done so because:
(i) it mainly refers to people who are not members of this group,
(ii) most of the content is trash, and
(iii) a lot of it would be un-readable.

However, over the last year I have posted to the group quotations from Freak's Own a few times.
(Neill Taylor 64-71)