cards

if you have been to central london you have seen the tart-cards. if there is a phone box in central london there are three things you can almost guarantee 1] it will have these cards in them, 2] it will smell of very stale piss and 3] it will eat your money up and not work.
i have been interested in the tart-cards for many years now; i have been collecting them since the early 90s. i think the first one i picked up was even early than that, i got it as a joke for my ex as the she shared the name and hair colour of the girl on the card, (i have a sneaking suspicion that i never gave her the card – as i knew that 1] she wouldn’t find it funny 2] she would read something into it that was not there and 3] i wasn’t keen on spending another night on the couch.
so i have trudged the streets of london going from phone box to phone box collecting the tart-cards. i have walked along oxford street, up edgware road over to baker street in the hunt for new cards. i have been in thousands of phone boxes and probably walked hundreds of miles in my search for new cards. i have seen them go from simple black and white cards to glossy colour cards, i have seen dry informative cards and i have seen witty and clever cards that would thrill a copy writer working for saatchi (mind you it probably was a professional copywriter getting a discount for a pithy hook line). i have been a fan of this urban art form.
i remember being excited when i discovered that brighton also had a tart-card culture, sadly it only has a poor selection on display whenever i go there now. i was thrilled when i found 1 card in manchester, and when a friend sent me one from cardiff (cheers ms woods) and then there was the bonanza pack of cards and fliers from tokyo given me by a colleague (cheers rob).
over the years there have been a couple of books on the subject of the cards, there has been an exhibition of the card art, there have been fake cards and there has been merchandise based on the cards (postcards and t-shirts) but never something as wonderful as this.
frankly my words can’t do this card justice – the image may be from the abu garb torture sessions and it offers you “more of the same” and a number to call. the number is the labour party’s northern call centre… as the go here and see some of the places the card has been seen.

while on a jokey political subject go