From The Archive
Created | Updated Dec 3, 2008
The Post has been lucky to attract many contributors over the years and, thankfully, all
their articles are lovingly preserved in our extensive archives. This series aims to introduce you to some
of them.
Personality Number Five: The Italics
Interviews and Views
In the early days, when h2g2 was a dot com site not owned by the BBC, the
italics1 were probably seen around far more than now and were
eminentaly approachable. They expressed great enthusiasm when the idea of The Post was first
mooted, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that they wanted to be a part of it.
The very first outing of The Post, which was hosted off the h2g2 site, saw the Community Editor,
Peta subjected to a 1-2-1. As if this
wasn't enough, a spy was dispatched to 'The Towers'2 and Peta was coerced into
revealing future plans and what exactly the italics were up to. In Scoop she also let us display the new page badges which can now be seen
throughout the site.
Not to be outdone by his Community Editor, the overall Project Manager, Mark
Moxon, also agreed to be interviewed by the Post, not once but twice. His Initial Interview dealt with the time leading up to h2g2 and the subsequent 1-2-1 delved more into how his role at h2g2 was
developing.
One lucky American student, Dave, was an intern at the Towers
when shazz paid a visit, so it should come as no surprise that he had to write a little something called
An American at h2g2. The 1-2-1 series managed to corner two more
italics during its run; first new kid on the block Sam on 7th February 2000, then Anna on 21st February 2000.
By 2002 h2g2 had moved to the BBC, The Post had moved (again) onto h2g2 and the team of italics was swelled by one. In A New Italic Travels In we were pleased to meet Mina in her new role only to lose her in Open Letter To Whom it May Concern as her obvious skills were rewarded by a sideways/upwards career move.
By 2004, Mark, Mina, Peta and Abi had also all moved on and Jimster/Smij thrilled the airways and Post readers when Bill Whiteford from BBC Radio Scotland turned up and was reported as Trying to Interview a Human. Interviews with italics then went rather quiet... until
now. I am delighted to see that Rich has resurrected the 1-2-1 to bring us an Interview with Antelia.
Comments, Commentaries and Communities
Sometimes the best way for the italics to answer their critics or queries or keep in touch with the ever growing community was through the medium of
The Post. When concern was expressed about the length of time entries sat in 'the queue' for approval
to enter the Edited Guide, Anna published an article In Reply to Mr Cynic. Just one month later we were privileged to be given
A Tribute to Peter Jones written by DNA.
The gold star for most prolific writer and supporter of The Post as an italic has to go to Abi. Her first major column, This Sporting Life, ran for ten weeks and encompassed a hot summer of cricket and horse racing. Abi took her role as Community Editor very seriously, so it should come as no surprise that she managed to write her Community Column almost every week for over eight months.
Features of an Italic Persuasion
The Post wouldn't be the paper it is without its regular columnists, fiction and poetry writers and cartoonists. What I think makes it even more addictive are the irregular and often surprising features that pop up in each issue. The first italic to feature in this category was Richard, friend of DNA, co-founder of h2g2 and son of the author John Creasey. His first feature, one of my top 9 picks, concerned his friend John Ridgeway and the next took us all to spend
New Year in Russia. He was one of the contributors to Memories... the h2g2 staff written after the sad death of DNA and then gave us a little insight into how h2g2 came to be in Douglas' Vision. Then the lure of the Edited Guide proved too much and he was lost to The Post.
Abi used her Features section to keep us informed about meets . Mina entertained us with her Inside the Towers occasional items including The World Cup gripe in 2002 and visited the cinema in Whaddya Mean, 'Which' Movie? Tch! . Ashley introduced us to Five Ladies and the Tower of London then gave an amusing view of the frustrations of dealing with hoards of DNA fans in Editing the Guide. Cartoons were Jimster's domain and he contributed a total of six including his farewell Applications for an h2g2 editor.
Of course all these contributions were extremely welcome, but the biggest impact the italics made had to be their continued support of The Post. They fought our corner to bring The Post onto the original .com site, let me in to the BBC site a month before the official move to put all the editions and archives back and provided us with our own smiley and named entry. This support continues as they allow us to use graphics and take time out of their busy day to upload them, set every edition to click over, give us a Front Page link every Post day and support the Aviators. They may not write or draw for us very often these days3, but I suspect without them the wonderful Post Team would find the going a lot tougher.
Thank you, Italics
to give us good/bad news.2The original nickname of the old
building in which the h2g2 staff offices were then housed.3I should also mention that the 'other' Italic, Derek, wrote Be Lucky just for us shortly after he joined the site. Ed.
