It sounds very grand but I am about to donate my papers to the University of York Student Life Collection. Not my dissertation on George Orwell and the English class system (they do not keep these), but my letters home, cuttings from Nouse, the student newspaper, and, more importantly to me, Yarboo.
Yarboo was the Private Eye-style broadsheet that I created with housemates Toby Haggith and Mark Ray. We called it Yarboo because we were not fans of the Yars, as in “OK, yar”, a catchphrase of the student toffs of York.
People with double-barrelled surnames called Venetia were new to me. They would ask, “What college did you apply for?” They were Oxbridge rejects, so they didn’t mean Alcuin or Derwent. The influence of ITV’s Brideshead Revisited was everywhere. Toby spotted a would-be Sebastian sauntering through Vanbrugh clutching a teddy bear!
If this all feels a bit Saltburny, we didn’t kill anyone or drink their bathwater. But when Toby got a party invitation to a Victory to the Miners’ Party (dress code: pit clothing), we decided to photocopy and distribute invites around campus accompanied with a scathing editorial.
This appeared as the first edition of Yarboo on 22 November 1984. The effect was gratifying. The Nouse editor, whose party it was, was seen running around campus binning copies of the (now rare) first edition.
Emboldened by our success, Yarboo 2 featured Andy Anderson’s Bunty-style Barbour Dolly to match the Barbour Doll Toby created for the first.
Yarboo sucks?
I would have got a First for sleeping. My earliest student mornings were the 7.30am photocopy runs with Mark. The music department had the cheapest A3 copier (3 copies for 10p). Once I left the originals on the photocopier and had to go back to retrieve them!
By 1985, Yarboo was beginning to create a stir. The Wrist Review, a satirical campus cabaret, mentioned Yarboo 4. People began to wonder who was behind this scandal sheet. It was our secret. I did tell my girlfriend at the time, but she was distinctly unimpressed: “It’s not very funny, but then I don’t move in those circles.”
Nor did I! Toby was our roving reporter of the party scene. I was the editor (it was my typewriter) and I produced the Letraset headlines, using the cut and paste techniques I had learnt as Sports Editor of Nouse. I was elected on 18 March 1985, just before my final term. My predecessor very wisely was quitting to concentrate on his Finals.
By contrast, I was writing my dissertation, doing a 2-week Shakespeare open paper (during which I played 5 games of cricket) and an 8-hour Weimar Republic open paper (where I famously fitted in a game of five-a-side football). When people ask me how I did, I said “We drew 2-2.”
Yarboo who?
Toby overheard two people speculating who wrote Yarboo. When one wistfully conceded that he was too low-profile to receive a mauling in our great organ of truth, we knew that we were established… but also realised that if it was now cool to be pilloried in Yarboo. It was time for us to close the broadsheet.
Yarboo’s targets were known campus figures who seemed to revel in the notoriety. We created a cast of characters: hack Nicholas Beard, national treasure Dame Joan Hedge, Robert Groan MP (Croydon) and Doris Rombouts, the library snack bar queen. It certainly did not seem to hurt their careers! The alpha cast list included future film directors, actors, writers and sports commentator.
I was a double agent and could hear the Nouse editor’s speculations about who was behind Yarboo. We hatched a cunning plan to create a story about the chief suspect Toby, “Haggard’s Dope Duel” in the final edition, issue 6.
We left university without telling anyone that we had done Yarboo. I am sure some people know or guessed it was us. My article on gatecrashing in Nouse was a big clue! Not all the jokes stand the test of time but the memory of Yarboo still makes us smile. Forty years on, I hope that it is an interesting record of 1980s student humour and our lasting friendship.
Alex White writes 
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