History of "The QuFF".

The Quindley-Fluff Frontiersman is a publication with centuries of history behind it. Founded in 1624 as a means for the two estranged inhabitants of Quindley & Fluff to communicate without risk of sodomy, it grew in tandem with the respective populations of the two villages until by 1832 it had a total readership of over 14,000 people. However, after the great sodomy epidemic of 1833 the readership was again rendered to two, threatening the very existence of the by now iconic publication. Fortunately Horatio Wellington, the Archbishop of Trafalgar, took the paper under his wing, and so saving it from total oblivion.

By 1880 the paper, for the second time in it’s history, sold over ten thousand copies and drew the attention of the then Prime Minister and Papist ‘Benjamin the Israeli’, thusly named due to the international fame of his anti-semitic rants and acts. He bought ‘The QuFF’, as it had then become known, and changed the paper size and typeset to the hyper-quadro-broadsheet format as a solution to the housing problem. However, printing of the paper had to be stopped for a fortnight after it was discovered that Gladstone had eaten much of the printing machinery. The precedent set rocked the world as the luddites set about trying to ease their own unemployment problems by eating the machinery that had usurped their positions in the labour market. Thousands died of Chronic Bottom Evacuation Syndrome, yet again leaving the Quindley-Fluff Frontiersman with an available readership of only two. This act of mass sabotage and chronic indigestion brought Gladstone’s Liberals to their knees as D’Israeli (as he had become known on a recent trip to the Dodogne) described it as “G.O.M”, or “Gladstones’ Over-enthusiastic Mouth-eatings.”

By 1918 The QuFF was in jeopardy. Some historians claim that the readership at this time had shrunk to just the editor himself, although this fact is disputed due to his having been fatally wounded at the Somme. However, none other than Winston Churchill revived it in 1919 as an alternative to “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash”, although he stated his personal preference was for the latter. The shot in the arm he provided led the paper to become an essential depression-era read for many families, partially due to the fact that the paper it was printed on contained an average of 1800 calories and the ink 42, although the then editor, Fred Astaire, did insist upon covering one in every thousand copies with arsenic “for a laugh”.

In 1945 the front page of The QuFF was said to have won the war in the Far East with the famous headline:

“Emperor Hirohito Princess Margaret?”

Indeed, the role that The QuFF played in World War Two was acknowledged by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who recently played a commemorative four hour concert in the paper’s honour using only the note of E. This was due to it being the letter most often used in the paper’s reportage during the global conflict.
In modern times the paper consolidated it’s position as a niche publication by carrying eyewitness accounts of less famous historical events, such as all the days that Jack Ruby didn’t shoot Lee Harvey Oswald and Ted Heath’s birthday.

However, controversy was just around the corner. Some blamed The QuFF’s conversion to a normal broadsheet format as the primary cause of the LA riots, although generally this point is considered:

A) In Bad Taste and

B) Mad, due to the change happening in 2002.

In 2008, due to reasons divulged elsewhere, the Quindley-Fluff Frontiersman made the leap into the world of the internet. If there is hope for it’s future, it can be found in it’s past. Salvation is always around the corner.

Blither By: KPD, QuFF Society Historian.