The interview was conducted by Timothy d’Arch Smith.

Going back a bit, what was your time at school like?

I went to Abbey Grange, a secondary modern Church of England school where the principle lessons were religion and sport, both of which I totally loathed. We had an art class once a week, and that was my favourite lesson. I also liked English and, for some strange reason, geology. The weekly hour we were given to learn about art, however, was when I tried to do as much as I could. Everybody else in the class was moaning and wanting to escape into the playground, but I was completely happy making art. To avoid the cross-country running ordeal, which was the next lesson, I used to stay behind and wash all the brushes.

I will always remember this big steaming sink of scalding hot water, and the mix of colours that swirled around as I cleaned the brushes. Outside, my classmates were running about in the pouring rain, while I lingered in the art room cleaning the equipment in the warm.

To be honest the entire state school system was a waste of time for me. They failed to teach me anything and so I learned how to read and write on my own – through the books that I read at home instead of going out kicking a football around a muddy field. The school staff there were mostly de-mobbed army types who had blundered into teaching as a profession because they didn’t know what else to do. Dull people who didn’t really have any enthusiasm or passion about the subjects they were supposed to be teaching. There were a few I got on with, the art, physical education and woodwork teachers made an effort to guide me, but for the most part I was treated like an idiot. As a result I felt excluded from the school system and gradually drifted away from it. When my careers adviser asked me what I would like to do when I left school, I told him that I wanted to go to art college. This was impossible, he explained, as I had no educational qualifications. What do my parents do for a living? They run a small newsagents business, I replied. Had I ever thought about going into retailing? That’s how I ended up at Lewis’s and, four years later, at the shop with the giant rat.

But you did eventually get a place at art college.

Yes, but not at Leeds. I had to leave home and go to Colchester in Essex before I could realise my true vocation as an artist.

My only friend in Leeds had got a place at Essex University and moved there leaving me stuck in Leeds. I was a bit fed up at this point, and to try and cheer me up he said, “You should come and live in Essex too. There’s an art college in Colchester and you could probably get in there if you applied.” I thought to myself, he’s right. I don’t have anything here. My parents’ shop was going to be demolished, and there wasn’t much room in their new house, so why don’t I just bail out? When I told them I was planning to move to Essex they seemed almost relieved that I had decided to go my own way. Thus, our parting was amicable and I left Leeds with their blessing.

After finding my feet in Colchester, I eventually put together a portfolio of work and took it to Colchester College of Art. They looked at it and said to me, “If you can get a student grant you can start in September.” I applied for a grant, which was approved, and spent the next four years studying graphic design there.

Can you tell me what sort of work you were doing at this point?

I was involved in a wide range of things, from painting and sculpture, ceramics, life drawing and graphic design, which was the course I had initially signed up for. Once I was through the door, however, the sky was the limit, and I wanted to try my hand at everything. For me it was like being set free from a prison cell and I felt totally liberated.

As well as being able to fully focus on my art I was also surrounded by a completely different crowd of people, some of whom I ended up collaborating with on various projects.

Such as?

Producing comics and magazines, screen-printing posters for student union gigs, writing and self publishing a small book of poetry and making a film about a chicken in a bathroom, among other actions. The guy I worked with on the comic was called Bob Gibbs. He was in another part of the college, but he was interested in comics and art. He liked the old school UK comics that we all read in the 60s, and he also had a penchant for 78 rpm recordings of music hall songs. These could be picked up at jumble sales and in junk shops for almost nothing – together with stacks of prewar children’s annuals that we stockpiled in the flat we eventually ended up sharing together. Most nights were spent reading these annuals and listening to 78s on the wind-up gramophone we had acquired.

Were you listening to anything else?

We were also really into Marc Bolan and T Rex. It started off as a joke to begin with, but gradually we became quite obsessed. Our kitchen became a shrine to Marc Bolan with posters and cuttings about him covering the walls. The few people we let into the flat were somewhat astonished to discover we were closet teenyboppers, but that was part of the exercise anyway. We would drag Yoko Ono and John Coltrane records back from the library and play them full blast with all the doors open, until our landlady threatened to evict us because of the noise. Happy days.

As well as playing loud music we were also deeply involved in the production of Oryx Komix, a sort of homage to postwar UK comics, but with a sense of the absurd flowing through. Oryx Komix was, in essence, a funny animal comic for the Dada movement. The two main characters were an Arabian Oryx and a rhino, who watched TV together and lived on a diet of tinned ravioli. We drew the pages and then printed them out on a mimeograph machine. It was really crude, but we were quite pleased with the end result.

How many of these did you publish?

We printed two issues, the second was included as an insert in the college union’s magazine Juicy. After Oryx Komix, we embarked on a larger comic project called Poodle Romance, but it was never completed. We used to sit up all night writing and drawing these mad stories and howling with laughter. People thought we were stoned, or something, but we were totally straight. It was just a joyous release.

Around the same time I published my sole volume of poetry titled The Reichstag Bleep Hour. I assembled three finished copies and smuggled them on to the shelves of local bookshops in the dark. This was during the three day working week that Ted Heath’s Conservative government introduced, so it was easy to add a bit of stock to their poetry sections. I’ve always liked the idea of making something and then giving it away before anybody really knows it existed in the first place. I suppose TRBH was the first of these.

Do you keep any of them?

I try to keep a file copy, a finished copy and an Artist’s Proof, but I mostly scatter the edition of any publication I make hither and yon. Just to know they are out there somewhere is the main idea behind the exercise.

Do you sell many?

Not really. I tend to give them away to people who I feel would appreciate having a copy. The archive copies I hold will, when I’m gone, be worth a fortune. So that’s how I will make my money back. Good plan, eh?

Apart from your book of poetry, what other projects have you released?

A few comix, posters for various events, an art catalogue of my automatic drawings with an original drawing tipped in, a comic/DVD package called Shredder Comix and 15 Flys, my most recent book of fly drawings. All of these are published in very small quantities, mainly because I don’t have the money to print, or the room to store, a large edition. My first proper comic was Corpsemeat Comix where I printed up a first edition of 500 copies. They sat on the top of my wardrobe for years, slowly trickling away until I finally got rid of them all. Never again, I vowed, so all subsequent publishing ventures are kept to a minimum.

In the 80s I teamed up with two artist friends, Chris Long and Andy Dog. We formed a collaborative art group called Battle Of The Eyes and together we worked on a large-sized poster comic called NyakNyak!. That was the biggest print run I ever got involved with, because it was included as an insert inside copies of Wiseblood’s Motorslug EP.

Rated SavX: The Savage Pencil Skratchbook is out now on Strange Attractor. It was reviewed by Byron Coley in The Wire 436. Subscribers can read that on Exact Editions