Frank Dillon: “It wasn’t just me, it was also them”
In 1983, the humorous publishing “mode du jour” was The Complete Naff Guide:
Purportedly by three authors, it was in fact written almost exclusively by William Donaldson, who was better known as Henry Root. I read the Henry Root Letters books earlier than 1983 in my time at Keele and found them laugh-out-loud funny. I still treasure my copies of those.
Perhaps it was those Henry Root book covers that inspired The Price Of Fish…
…but I digress.
The point is, Frank Dillon and others decided to put together a spoof of The Complete Naff Guide, in the form of a booklet, which was given away with Concourse. It caused a bit of a flurry, because it was, to Keele students at the time, very funny.
Indeed, at the time I recall thinking that the Keele “Naff” Guide was, to my mind, a lot funnier than the real thing. Returning to both recently, my view has, if anything, hardened on this. The Complete Naff Guide seems terribly dated and riddled with in-jokes directed at particular media people of that era, presumably those who were not on William Donaldson’s Christmas card list. I suspect that rather a lot of well-known people were not on Christmas card terms with Donaldson.
As for the Keele “Naff” Guide, while some jokes are dated, chunks of it remain funny and probably relevant. I think many of the jokes will resonate with Keele alums and students throughout the ages.
You can judge for yourselves and let us know what you think. Here, with Frank Dillon’s permission, I republish it in full. All 20 pages of it.
Frank says the following:
I did write at least some of it, but can’t take credit (or blame) for the whole thing, though the idea that I had “friends” will come as a shock to many.
I suspect that the harsher observations contained therein would not evade the blue pencil of 21st-century mores, so apologies to those who might have been offended (and are yet to be so, upon re-publication).
I echo the last sentence of Frank’s message, but suggest that you would need to be super-sensitive to be offended by any of the content, as long as you read it in its context: a 1983 comedic piece. The first item in the list of “Naff Records To Request At the Disco”, for example, reads like a cruel joke today, in late May 2023, whereas it was, at the time, a reference to a record that didn’t need to be requested, because it was almost always played at union discos and/or on the main bar jukebox!
Returning to the Keele “Naff” Guide…
…you can view the document two ways. I have uploaded all 20 images to Flickr, which is perhaps more navigable (or at least makes it easier to enlarge the pages) – the first link below is the cover, clicking on that one takes you to Flickr. Below that are the other 19 images shown within this piece – each one is clickable if you want to delve deeper or larger into that one page.
It does bother me a bit, though, that Frank and “friends” were persuading me to run for Chair of Constitutional Committee around the same time as they were listing that role as quintessentially naff.
I thought you were my friend, Frank. 😉