Eight years ago a little topical paper appeared in all the right places. The paper was the Feminist Times and it was distributed in the coastal area at outlets where one expects to find an open-ended invitation to join the revolution. The Good Tern, Second Read, Belfast Co-op, Marketplace, interesting venues like these, got a fresh call to battle, weekly I think. Working Waterfront’ s layout and design guy, Charlie Oldham, read the Feminist Times and, after acknowledging the paper’s legitimacy and its place in the scheme of things, and after some immoderate reflection, he proposed the creation of a paper whose focus would be the many injustices suffered by us, by men, in today’s cruel world. He would call the paper called Guy Times.
Charlie began at the beginning. He produced a color cover that was a mutant hybrid of a Harlequin bodice ripper and a Tarzan Comic. The scene that emerged was of a loin-clad King of the Jungle-like figure (not unlike himself, Charlie was quick to observe) in the upper branches of a tree, quite put upon by a bevy of aggressive looking young ladies, each very well assembled, ascending single mindedly from below. Barely clad in shredded fabric, no doubt torn in their frantic efforts to reach our hero and have their way with him, the girls were clearly insatiable, hungry and, it follows, threatening.
Charlie and I ran with this idea and had a great time talking and speculating about what Guy Times might look like and how it might be received but we didn’t run far enough and, due largely to my own inability to focus on one thing at a time, talk was all we did. Among the features of our first issue, had it ever taken flight, would have been found:
Man, he really knew how to talk to a woman.
— Phil Crossman, Vinalhaven