The Probe!

The history of The Probe! goes way back to 1995 when a 'missing' poster was put up in the workplace by Kevin's friend, Pete Germon. It was a photocopy of a young girl's face and the poster read "The Probe wants to know - Has anybody seen this girl?" The photo was actually of one of Pete's employees in her younger days and he obtained covertly from her husband in order to 'celebrate' her birthday! Later in the year, for Pete's birthday, his wife bought him an Amiga 1200 computer and along with Kevin and a desktop publishing program given away free on the cover of CU Amiga Magazine, The Probe! was officially born.

Starting out with little events at work, they would twist the story with the smallest fragment of truth and the biggest fragment of our own imaginations. They developed a single page poster idea for birthdays or people leaving along with a smaller A5 size pamphlet which contained a probe story, jokes, cartoons, spoof adverts etc similar in style to a UK publication called Viz. Victims were even awarded a certificate to state they had been "Well and truely Probed!" As The Probe! progressed, their printers got better and the move to the PC in 2000 meant their work looked even more professional.

What hasn't changed is the way Pete and Kev work on each edition. Each would get ideas of their own and jot it down before meeting up to further develop the final product. Pete would often get ideas from the most mundane objects or events and write several pages of text. It would be imported into the publishing software, edited, illustrations drawn and photo's imported in order to get the idea across. The ideas would be bounced back and forth between them, each adding or changing a piece until they were happy. Their benchmark would be that if it made them laugh, it was good enough...

The Probe! became something looked forward to and also slightly dreaded (if it was your birthday!) The arrival of children for both Pete and Kevin meant that free time to work on it was not the luxury it once was however, The Probe! still lives on!

Coming soon! - Links to all of The Probe! back issues!

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