Eighteen or so years ago I was at University trying to narrowly fail to flunk my degree whilst learning how the world worked. Of the many projects into which I threw myself, one of the most formative was working on Pi Magazine, then as now the student magazine of University College London.

For most Universities this would be a sweet and amateurish endeavour, but Pi was taken rather more seriously; it’s now (2006) in its 60th year of publication, and even back in the mid 1980s it had an ISSN number, had copies sent to the British Library for archiving, and had an formidable list of alumni including Nicholas De Jongh, Bel Mooney, Jonathan Dimbleby, David Thompson (then of the Daily Telegraph), Ian Ridpath and others – meeting up with some of the above we were told romantic stories of putting the copy to bed and everyone piling into Dimbleby’s car for a long night’s drive to the printers – which I seem to remember them saying was miles away (in Somerset?) leading to an awful lot of early mornings, too.

Pi swapped from newspaper to magazine format well before my arrival, but was fighting a last action against the student union who were trying to strip Pi of its editorial independence; thus we were equipped not merely with history, but also a sense of affronted identity which bonded the late-80s editorial co-op very strongly.

Two years of Pi branded me with the ability to spot typos (except my own) on copy from six feet away; a vast appreciation of what can be achieved with Scotch 3M Spray Mount, and an almost physical pain when looking at bad typography.

That, plus Rob and I used to do hacking experiments from there, like the time we demon-dialled Moscow. The Student Union soon worked out that they’d goofed in unblocking our phone line for foreign calls.

So a few weeks ago I was pleased to stumble across the negs from an old roll of FP4:

…they’re dusty and blurry and rough, but very sentimental.