As the UK's most scurrilous and irreverent anarchist magazine we have frequently confused our readers, and often ourselves, with some of our efforts. Editor Tug Wilson asks, just what is the point of it all? The below facts could offer some answers, or perhaps not...
1 When we were a newspaper, our cover price was confusingly 34p, 35p and finally 37p (to match the price of Norwich rag The Evening News). Eventually we made a concession to common sense and raised the price to £1. We now sell for the extortionate price of £2.50.
2 We used to be the official publication of Norwich Anarchists. Refusing to be in any way respectable, and wishing to continue in our quest to give anarchism a bad name, we became an independent publication from issue 9.
3 We have a sister Maoist publication called Mao or Never!
4 Now or Never! was first published late April 2002. 5 Our chief salesman Youth Section is a bungalow bitch.
6 We once ran a photo story with a character called Nazi Dad in. Nazi Dad will return one day.
7Now or Never! has made Adrian Ramsay cry. One of our moles in the Green Party was distributing extracts from his Now or Never! diaries at the Green Party national conference and upon realising this, he burst into tears in front of his colleagues.
8Now or Never! hates religion. We've covered a diversity of subjects in our publication but none so much as our stupid superstitious friends.
9 The range of ability of our contributors is huge. Some are borderline illiterate, others are highly accomplished, including a few professional journalists that really should know better.
10 We embrace our detractors, regularly publishing their comments, often on the front cover. In the past we have been described as: "faeces in paper form", "the second worst anarchist publication in Britain", "misrepresenting anarchism more than any punk with a circled A on their jacket", "appearring to be put together by enthusiastic 15 year olds", "a punker version of Class War with worse politics" and "with no respect and in the worst possible taste".
11 We persuaded Piskie to drink his own piss for a week and write a diary of his experience. To date this has by far been the most talked about and popular piece we have published.
12 We constantly struggle to fund our efforts. Rich benefactors please take note.
13 Our regular contributors number around twenty. There are three of us who take care of the mundane logistics of running Now or Never!
14 We have a female punk as a mascot. So far she has no name other than “the Now or Never! girl”.
15 Despite our jovial style and attitude we actually take our politics very seriously.
16 We will publish near enough anything. Write something for us and see!
17 We recently signed gay punk band Baggins & the Homosexuals to the Now or Never! label following Virgin Record’s decision to recall from sale their debut single, I Stole the Corpse of Ian Stuart..., which made reference to sodomizing the remains of the controversial lead singer of far-right band Skrewdriver.
18 We regularly change the colour of our front cover to represent different forms of struggle. Each issue will either be predominantly red (socialism), green (ecology), purple (feminism) or pink (gayology). The colours appear to be less and less dominant of late, probably because from a design point of view this is ridiculously limiting (and perhaps also reflecting the dilution of our politics…). 19 Our most popular cover to date has been Bush & Blair cuddling under an American Flag with the slogan "You're My Wife Now".
20 We were responsible for a hoax Green Party bonfire night poster, inviting people to attend an event to throw recycled tin cans at a 20 foot effigy of Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Clarkson responded to this with an attack on the Norwich Green Party in his column in The Sun newspaper. A double page spread on the hoax followed in Norwich newspaper The Evening News. Despite having nothing to do with the hoax, Norwich Anarchists got the blame and received rather feeble threats from the Green Party that they were considering going to the police for use of their logo and Adrian Ramsay's phone number on the poster without permission.
21 Tug Wilson posed as a Maoist for 6 months. Stubbornly sticking to this persona he was on the verge of being physically beaten before Harry K came to his rescue. Hurrah, Mao is unpopular after all!
22 Our t-shirt with the Last Supper painting and the slogan "Let's Fuck" caused an angry Christian woman to jab Harry K with her walking stick at one of our stalls. The following year she came back and bought one! Come find us at various wretched events to appreciate the full range of offensive t-shirts that we stock.
23 Our spoof “Nazi Cosmopolitan” style cover, Frau or Never, nearly caused industrial action. The entire workforce at the printers downed tools and only went back to work after the management persuaded them that it was in fact a joke.
24 The same cover also resulted in a couple of dozen of the magazines being stolen off our stall by an angry woman, insisting she was taking them away to burn. Hurrah, Nazis are unpopular after all!
25 To much relief and surprise, Nonce or Never was received with relatively little controversy (just another few stockists cancelling their orders).
This poor excuse for an article originally appeared as one of those annoying note things on Facebook, but soon cut and pasted its merry way into Issue 19 of Now or Never!