We spent a great deal of time getting to grips with printing, plate making and swearing loads at the pile of crap of a printing press we had. My least favourite job was (can’t think of the word right now, but it means kind of shuffling the paper to stop 2 sticking together and jamming the machine), and often way past midnight. I have to give a special word of thanks also to St. Sheelan’s College, Templemore who very helpful in those early days with advice and use of computers etc.
Anyhow Magical Tipperary was 6 or 8 months in the making between selling ads, design and layout, printing and distribution. In that time I got a crash course, kind of hit by a speeding space shuttle type of crash, in sales, general computing, graphic design, printing and all that sort of stuff. That was a long time between issues if we were to do another one, so we had a think. We decided to publish a free monthly magazine and called it the Tipp Tatler . Then I went to the pub, for a week.
Our first issue was distributed in Tipperary Town and we gave all the advertisers from Tipp Town that were in Magical Tipperary a free ad to get started. We gradually started increasing the numbers we printed and delivering to more towns. After a while we were doing all the main towns in North Tipperary. My future wife to be appeared on the scene (sorry that should read – I was blown away by a new love) and she moved down from Belfast to live with me. We still weren’t getting any richer with the magazine and my father called it a day. I now had full control and was hot on the heels of Rupert Murdoch!