SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

I've just been talking to my mate about the Queens hall. He's too young to remember it. I was telling him about the Flea markets you got down there on a Saturday, and the guy who walked around town with the sandwich board advertising it.Then i said about the mad Saturday when the Students paraded round town.I suddenly thought 'Do they still have it' I'm sure it doesn't happen no more.Was it called RAG day and when did it finish?    

I remember the 'Rag ' day from the 70s/80s - they used to print a mag of 'jokes' with proceeds to charity.

That's right Drapsey.I was only young in the early 70's.I still remember i appreciated the student girls St Trinians escapades lol I suddenly thought i hadn't seen rag day for years.They used to come down past the market didn't they on flat lorrys with cash buckets?    

On second thoughts it think it was 'Rag Week' rather than 'Rag day'

The Rag Mags were ace with all the rather smutty jokes in.

For all the beauty of this hi tech world we live in we don't seem to have any fun anymore.There was loads of stuff went on like this in those days.

RAG Week still exists, but in a very low-key way (it happened in February and you wouldn't have known!).Here's the website:http://www.leedsrag.org.uk/I used to look forward to the RAGMAG each year - it was the best value joke book you could buy at the time!

The mags seemed to die out when I was at university in the mid-80s - I think to an extent they rather suffered from a wish not to offend so any slightly contentious jokes went in the bin. After that time students seemed to go to university to actually work and no-one had time to produce the mags.I saw a strange twist to the rag mag in Matlock about 15 years ago: there was a young woman selling something that looked a rag mag on the street, so naturally I bought one. It looked just like a university mag but didn't seem to actually represent one, and appeared to be being sold to raise money for the students themselves, like a more respectable Big Issue.

The ragmag was called TYKE back in the 60s

Ragmags started to die out in the late 1980's for two reasons.Furstly there were a couple of attempted prosecutions for racist jokes, and secondly there were some people printing and selling fake maga to rake in cash.I seem to remember that leeds was one city hit by the fake Ragmag sellers.it seemed to put people off as the public(including myself at the time) assumed all sellers from then on were rip off merchants and stopped buying the mags.