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SUCK - First European Sexpaper No. 1 (London: BCM/Joy, September 1969).

Newspaper format. 16pp. Ed. Bill Levy; associate editors Jim Haynes, Germaine Greer, and Heathcote Williams. Art direction by Willem de Ridder; photographs by Anna Beeke and Ed van der Elsken.

Centre pages printed in three different colours. Includes Alexander Trocchi's translation from "The Debauched Hospodar" by Apollinaire (originally published by the Olympia Press in 1953 under the pseudonym Oscar Mole).

Other contributors include Robert Crumb ("Joe Blow", full-page); Valerie Solanas ("The S.C.U.M Manifesto"); Alex Gross; and WH Auden ("The Gobble Poem"). Advertisers include IT, Time Out, and Andrew Loog Oldham's record label, Instant (a subsidiary of Immediate).

This first issue caused a sensation, especially in England, where Special Branch closed down the Postbox address and raided the Arts Lab in Drury Lane. The Suck team rescued about 9000 copies from the Dutch printer (Augustin & Schoonman in Zwanenburg) just before Scotland Yard arrived from England, and while they were distracted by tea and cake at Willem de Ridder's studio, Levy arranged for 1000 copies to be smuggled to London. A further 1000 or so copies were confiscated at the Danish-German border in the following month when de Ridder and Levy drove back from the First Copenhagen Sex Fair, most of which were later collected in Germany by Suck distributor Bill Daley.

Stamped with the Amsterdam postbox on the front cover; machine folded (as issued); o/w a Fine copy.

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