Passions: I’m only working for The Scotsman because I can’t work for Mad

Aged 12 I was still listening to my parents, paying attention in class, saying my prayers before bed and believing everything I saw on TV. Then along came Mad magazine which sketched the Mount Rushmore presidents in fine and noble detail except … who was that gormless, gap-toothed galoot?

You never forget your time. Your first exposure to satire, poking fun at the establishment and querying the natural order. The mag’s mascot Alfred E. Neuman – the galoot – had gatecrashed the natural order of US presidents on the rockface, squeezing between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. My reaction would have been: “Wait, how can they do this?” I’m not saying that immediately afterwards I joined the Monster Raving Loony Party or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but Mad showed the fun that could be had by taking a cross-eyed look at the world and I loved it.

So did lots of other people. In its 1970s peak, subscribers totalled 2.3 million and you could even buy it in John Menzies in Montrose. The world it subversively sent up and spoofed – politics, showbusiness, you name it – was mostly American and as a result, I learned a lot of American words: “klutz”, “schmuck”, “faucet”, etc. But Mum didn’t mind. At least I was reading something. And Dad was impressed when I could tell him who Spiro Agnew was.

To the uninitiated, the front covers seemed like commercial suicide (“This magazine is revolting” … “Wanted: new reader. No intelligence necessary” … “Last issue”). Mad flouted convention on every page. It didn’t carry advertising, instead ridiculing it. Founder Will Gaines implored readers: “Don’t believe in ads! Don’t believe in government! Watch yourself – everybody is trying to screw you!”

Gaines ran the tightest of ships. The same Christmas tree twinkled from the corner of the office all year round. He’d halt production for two whole days, determined to extract a confession from the culprit behind a rogue dollar seventy-five phonecall. In 2019 Mad came off the newsstands – gee, I’m writing this like an American – but lives on with end-of-year specials.

Only US postage rates prevent me from bidding on eBay for classic editions but I have five books celebrating the stunning cartoon strips and corny gags and am always trawling YouTube for old interviews with staffers, forever billed as “the usual gang of idiots”. It was a job, remarks one, that meant never having to grow up. I’m only working for The Scotsman because I can’t work for Mad.

Aidan Smith is a journalist and columnist at The Scotsman