Speedway Mail

[Humphrey Appleby]

i do think that you have to congratulate Speedway Star though...hundreds of magazines have gone to the wall yet Speedway Star is still out there and is a far superior magazine now to back in the 70's and 80's ..

 

I'd agree that the Star made the necessary investments at critical times and wasn't lagging behind in DTP terms. It also has to be understood though, that the Star had backing from certain establishment figures and your only have to look at the list of (former) shareholders to see that.

[PHILIPRISING]

IN two weeks time it will be 24 years since I was offered the chance to purchase Speedway Star as part of a redundancy package from IPC. The deal also required that Richard Clark, Andrew Skeels, Mick Hooker and Philip Lanning participated. By coincidence, on the same day there was a lunch at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street organised by SWAPA ... The Speedway Writers and Photographers Association. There as a guest was Terry Russell and he was keen to see Speedway Star survive rather than be thrown on the scrapheap.

 

Pinegen Limited was acquired as an off-the-shelf company and within a few days a deal with the then MD of IPC was struck. The five of us contributed from our redundancy payment to acquire the title but we had no working capital and nowhere to work from. Luckily my parents had two spare rooms in a flat in Surbiton rented to three women and within seven days we had converted it into a temporary base. Over the years we took over the whole flat, then had a purpose-built Portakabin, then an office built on the same site before moving 50 yards down Brighton Road to our current location six years ago.

 

What we didn't have in April 1989 was any working capital, which is why we sold 20 per cent of the shares to Terry Russell, James Easter, Barry Briggs and a mate of mine who worked in the city. Without their initial support we would never have got started. But none and especially Terry ever had any influence on Pinegen or attempted to do so.

 

Within seven years all of the aforementioned had relinquished their shares in Pinegen.

 

So Humphrey, your suggestion that we had backing from certain establishment (?) figures is loosely correct but not I would suggest in quite the manner that your remark might be interpreted.

[The H Man]

When I was an avid fan I used to get both delivered. I remember the controversy of the Mail printing pictures of Erik Gundersen crash at Bradford when Star elected not too.

My fave bit in Mail was the Fastbenders stories which included the legendary Bernie Collier if I remember rightly.

 

[BuckTaylor64]

I still say bring back the Mail! Even if it's only an online edition!

[Humphrey Appleby]

So Humphrey, your suggestion that we had backing from certain establishment (?) figures is loosely correct but not I would suggest in quite the manner that your remark might be interpreted.

 

My point was that there were people in the speedway establishment who didn't want the Star to disappear and were willing to help out, whereas I suspect the opposite may have been the case with the Mail..

[Paulco]

The Mail was pretty amateurish though , the amount of mistakes in it ( spelling and otherwise ) was unbelievable .

[Humphrey Appleby]

The Mail was pretty amateurish though , the amount of mistakes in it ( spelling and otherwise ) was unbelievable .

 

A lot of that could have been rectified with a DTP system though.

[moxey63]

The Mail was pretty amateurish though , the amount of mistakes in it ( spelling and otherwise ) was unbelievable .

 

I contributid meny times to the Male... what speeling misteakes.

[Backless]

The Speedway Mail was one of many publications in the past that inadvertently illustrated just how good the Speedway Star was.

 

That's something that continues to this day.

To say the Star carries information already known & in someways makes it less of a publication than before is spurious because 40 years ago there obviously wasn't the online outlets for club information. There's only so much to be written because there's only so much happens.

 

The Star raises the bar, whether its the revamp unveiled this week, features as well as news, it's own online content or wallowing in the past with their Kiwi special.

 

The rest merely follow & generally fail to keep pace.

 

 

There must be enough material on here now to bash out an article & pass it off as journalism by now - a fitting tribute.

[TonyMac]

Can anyone please confirm the cover-date of the last issue of Speedway Mail International - think it was some time during 1997?

 

Much appreciate any help on this.

[TonyMac]

Many thanks to posters for previous comments. Can anyone out there remember the name of the Mai's seller at Poole (think he might also have sold at Exeter)? He was a deaf and dumb chap.