Visit tonyfletchersubstack.com for more show notes, fanzine covers, the Ode To a Better-Badged Boychik poem and more. https://tonyfletcher.substack.com/p/how-14-yr-old-mark-jays-skum-zine

Mark Jay was just 14 years old in 1976 when, hanging out at the Rock On record shop next in Camden Town, close to his violence-ridden state school, an inadvertent reacquaintance with John Simon Ritchie - a.k.a. Sid Vicious - propelled him into the heart of the fledgling UK punk scene.

By the end of that year, Mark had started one of the first British punk fanzines, SKUM, and not only been befriended by Bernie Rhodes, The Clash, and members of the Sex Pistols, but by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who having seen Mark’s cartoon of the Sex Pistols v. Bill Grundy TV fiasco, commissioned a ‘Story So Far’ from him that became the insert to the Never Mind The Bollocks album. Mark was among the only proper fans, and surely the youngest to attend the Pistols’ Silver Jubilee boat trip/concert on June 7, 1977, at which he was arrested and spend the night in jail. By then he was all of 15. He remembers it to this day as the best gig of his life.

Mark ceased publishing SKUM in December 1977, a year after he had started, and indulged his Beat Poetry obsession instead, starting a fanzine called All The Poets, printed in early 1979 by Joly MacFie (featured on Episode 3 of this podcast) at Better Badges, as a ‘guinea pig’ for his new printing press. Around the same time, he allowed my zine Jamming! to cut-and-paste his (first ever) Sid Vicious interview from SKUM 1 for my Jamming! 7, also printed at Better Badges.

At the end of September 2025, Mark and I had a real time conversation for the first time in over 46 years, which I recorded in entirety for this, the final UK episode of the Fanzine Podcast. It is, quite possibly, and not as much for the renewed personal connection as for Mark’s incredible origin stories, my favourite episode of them all.

Other fanzines mentioned in this podcast: Sniffin’ Glue, White Stuff, Bondage, Ripped & Torn, and London’s Burning.

Find Mark on Instagram. Further links:

SKUM archives

All The Poets archives

The Sex Pistols: The Story So Far poster

Mark Jay’s Sex Pistols Jubilee boat story and more on sex-pistols.net

Mark Jay’s films are all listed and linked at the bottom of this page:

To order Geshmack x Gesheft via Spinners (and Mark’s next poemtry pamflet ‘Five Years - between the gutter and the galaxies,‘ when published November 2025). Five Years will contain ‘Ode to the Better Badged Boychik at the Favourite Caff,’ 

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