By the end of 1982 Gay News – Britain’s only national gay and lesbian paper – was looking increasingly shaky. The internal disputes had become so bad that, as one commentator put it, ‘they made up an increasingly large percentage of the paper’s news content’.

The collapse of such an important publication isn’t good news at the best of times but the early 80’s seemed to a particularly difficult time for the gay community. Not only did we face the usual level of media homophobia and police harassment, but we were also in the first stages of the AIDS crisis, with its attendant uncertainty and fear.

Since I was still in my first flush of gay activism I decided that ‘something needed to be done’! And that something was to establish a local gay community newspaper – despite having absolutely no experience in the area whatsoever.

Some people – myself included – would say that this was incredibly naive. And it was; but in practice, it was this naivety that got the project going in the first place. If I’d actually sat down beforehand and thought through what was likely to be involved there’s no way would it have seen the light of day. But I didn’t – and it did!

I did have some experience in organising events and campaigns – from local Friends of the Earth campaigns to Rock Against Racism gigs. I’d even written a couple of articles for Muther Grumble, the local ‘counter-culture’ paper in the early 70’s.

Maybe this is what had planted the idea in my head; there were certainly a number of similarities between the layout of Muther Grumble and that of my particular enterprise.

But for the main part, there was little relevant experience and lots of naive enthusiasm.It seemed like a good idea at the time!

Step One was to organise a meeting of interested parties. One of the advantages of living in a relatively small town like Nottingham is that you soon get to know all of the gay organisations. Indeed, it was a bit of a standing joke that it was always the same six people who ran most of the organisations – we just held different positions in each one.

So word got round the local ‘community’ pretty efficiently. I even managed to get something in Gay News just before it folded, which resulted in a couple of contacts from gay men who were, amazingly, not members of any other local group!

Our first meeting, early in March 1983, was extremely well attended: all the local activists (yes, all six of us!), the owner of Nottingham’s one and only gay club, two representatives from Manchester’s Mancunian Gay magazine offering fraternal support and a few other ‘non-aligned’ gay men.

The meeting room was full – of attendees and enthusiasm. It was enough to convince me that we had a viable project on our hands.

That was my first mistake!

By the time of the second meeting a week later we were down to a hard core of six members – although, thankfully, not all of them drawn from ‘the usual suspects’. We still had some gay community ‘virgins’ (in the very loosest sense!) who were uncommitted elsewhere.

And so we began the process of setting up our gay community newspaper – or Gay East Midlands (GEM), as it was to be called.

We aimed to cover Nottingham and the nearby towns of Leicester, Lincoln, Newark and Derby so one of our first actions was to arrange to visit all the gay organisations in each of those places to explain the plan. We would also be seeking a donation (of £10 per organisation, if I remember correctly) in order to help us get going. In return, each organisation would get a free ⅛ page advert in the first issue.

Much to my (delighted) amazement, everyone agreed! It was actually tangible evidence that we had the support of the community.

And so the GEM roadshow rolled on. A launch date (June) was set, frequency (monthly) was agreed, content was planned and printers lined up. One of our newbies volunteered to drum up some advertisers and letter were duly sent off to potential customers.  And we continued to meet regularly.

Well, most of us did anyway.

Our advertising manager missed the next few meetings. He didn’t contact us and messages left on his voice-mail were left unanswered. None of us had his home address; we only knew he lived out of town. As our deadline approached we began panic.

We started to approach prospective local advertisers. It was the usual suspects – the local radical bookshop, the local wholefood store and so on. And, as always, they came good and bought some advertising space.

So too did Part Two, Nottingham’s only gay club. From a commercial perspective they really didn’t need to since they had the monopoly on gay business and everyone already knew where they were. But, thankfully, they did anyway. I suspect a lot of that had to do with the fact that the Deputy Manager, Michael (or Mitzi as he was more commonly known) had some involvement in GEM, not least of which was designing our logo.

Then an order for a half-page ad for a gay hotel in Bournemouth turned up unexpectedly at our mailing address. And our long-lost advertising manager finally surfaced – although only long enough to explain his absence as work-related then submit his immediate resignation! Which brought us down to five volunteers – Dave Pitt, Nigel Leach, Bob Emerton, Mitzi (still don’t know his surname, sorry Mitz!) and me.

Then, at the penultimate meeting prior to our launch date, a woman called Cathy White stuck her head around the door and asked ‘if we’d be interested in a cartoon strip’ for GEM. It probably goes without saying at this stage that we almost snatched her hand off!

A week later, Cathy presented us with the first installment of Dykes About Town. Unfortunately, what she forgot to do was put her name on it so, when it was published, it was initially received with some hostility by lesbians. Thinking it had been produced by gay men, they took exception to what they thought was our use of the term ‘dyke’.

Needless to say, the omission of Cathy’s name was never repeated again!

Bit by bit, the paper gradually came together. We wrote the content, took it to be typeset, collected it from the typesetters, laid it out for printing, took it to the printers, collected it from the printers, folded and collated all the pages to make a 16-page magazine, then took it to newsagents and bookshops and hawked it round gay venues – all on a voluntary basis.

And so it was that in June 1983 the first issue of Gay East Midlands, a.k.a. GEM, hit the streets of England’s East Midlands.

When all 1,000 copies of Issue One sold out completely we were so elated we increased the print run to 1,500 for Issue Two. Then, on one particularly insane occasion, we upped it again to 2,000.  Another big  mistake!

Ultimately we ended up sending copies as far away as Edinburgh in Scotland and London in the South.  It was a great ego boost – but not a particularly good commercial decision. Which was no surprise really, given that between the six of us we didn’t have a commercial bone in our bodies.

We managed to put out nine issues. In the process, we got a lot of important information across – especially in relation to the mysterious illness called AIDS that had just started scything into the gay male community. But our naivety – along with internal tensions – got the better of us. We were also ripped off by some gay businesses who made every excuse possible to avoid paying for their ads.

It was certainly an experience – and a steep learning curve. And it obviously didn’t put me off journalism as I subsequently worked as a freelancer for two years in Sydney. Of course, if we’d only had the internet then: putting up a blog or a website would have been so much easier!