THE STATE OF SOUND INTERVIEW

Rupert Bear with an enormous penis: how the Oz magazine obscenity trial inspired The Bookshop Band’s new EP

The Oz magazine obscenity trial of 1971 sent shockwaves across Britain. 60 years later, The Bookshop Band’s Ben Please tells us how it inspired their new EP.

28 February 2026

Artwork for Oz No. 28: the School Kids Issue. The issue was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK during the summer of 1971.

David Rea: Could you tell us about the inspiration behind your new EP?

Ben Please: A few years ago we were invited to go into the Oz magazine archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Oz was this sort of groundbreaking underground magazine, which started in the 1960s, and it addressed controversial issues like gay rights, the environment, the pill and things like that. At some point the editors were getting a lot of stick from their readership that they were not being radical enough, or they were becoming smutty rather than clever, so they handed it over to a bunch of teenage school kids to edit an issue. And that was called the School Kids Issue.

There was one picture in particular in that issue, a cartoon of Rupert Bear with an enormous penis. And [British conservative activist] Mary Whitehouse in particular took exception to this particular image. It wasn't anything else in the magazine, it was just that the kids had dared to put a penis on Rupert Bear. And she saw this as taking a wonderful, British icon and turning it into something smutty. And she actually famously showed this image to the Pope when she went to Rome as an example of the moral degradation of Britain.

“David Hockney and John Lennon and all sorts of famous people came out and produced art and music and there were big protests, but eventually the editors were sent to jail.”

Anyway, so this led to this big trial where the editors were faced with sedition and corrupting the morals of the youth. It is ironic because the editors on trial didn't actually edit the School Kids Issue. So there's this big trial which was really about who defines what is moral. Is it the government or is it the audience? Is it the people?

David Hockney and John Lennon and all sorts of famous people came out and produced art and music and there were big protests, but eventually the editors were sent to jail. But then very quickly it was overturned on appeal, because the judge had made so many errors in his summing up.

And I think what Beth [the other half of The Bookshop Band] and I got from it was the lack of communication between different generations, and different generations not really understanding each other, not being able to talk properly to each other. The School Kids Issue was a direct result of the editors being accused of losing touch with younger people. So they listened to that and handed it over to this group of teenagers to do it, which I think is the one really impressive thing. I think the lesson you learn from this sort of messy countercultural affair is that the editors actually listened to the fact they'd lost touch and tried to address that. The trial was all about how the judges and the establishment were not listening to the youth, not hearing what they were saying, not understanding and not having a proper conversation.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote two songs to support Oz magazine around the time of the trial: ‘Do the OZ’ and ‘God Save OZ’.

The EP came out on 20 February, and to go with it you've also published a magazine, in the style of the old Oz magazine.

Yes, our little magazine has been designed by Richard Adams, who was a designer for the original Oz magazine. Richard has put it together in a very Oz kind of way. There are some pages which are virtually unreadable, but that's very Oz, he assures me. We haven't got any new artwork commissioned, we've kind of just based it around photos from the time. And Richard has tried to lay it out and keep the ethos of Oz.

So it's a 24-page magazine filled with pictures, cheaply pressed. And it's got a narrative from Richard and a narrative from us. We did three songs and we talk a little bit about what in particular inspired each song. And then the lyrics are there and then there's a bit of summing up and we've got some of the court documents from the trial. Oz was a haberdashery of all sorts of bits and pieces, but our magazine is a kind of continuous story. It's a narrative of the EP.

Good luck with the new EP and thanks so much for talking to me today.

You're welcome!