Retro Yakking Today – Illarterate.co.uk

Name: Retro Yakking
Founded: December 2008
Role: Founder, Editor, Writer
Pseudonyms: Harry Yack, Hindleyite, Dan Farrimond
URL: http://retroyakking.today.com (former), http://retroyakking.blogdog.com (former)
Status: Closed (mid-2010)

Originally published to glorify the complaint, Retro Yakking developed into a fully-fledged exponent of all kinds of northern humour. Featuring reviews, topical comment, breaking news and shameless plugs, it became something of a Lancashire hotpot of content written under the guise of serial moaner Harry Yack.

Harry Yack, my miserable and hapless alter-ego, constantly moans about how things were better in the past. I only let him out at weekends and holidays to go to the zoo. — From Retro Yakking’s About page

Perhaps best known for its parody news column, Retro Yakking peddled an outlandish brand of humour even Have I Got News For You couldn’t get away with. Well, it wasn’t quite so controversial, but did attract a fair share of mainstream attention in the form of a select few articles which served to boost the reputation of Mr Yack.

Could this be Jacko? — Probably not. It’s interesting to speculate, though.

Retro Yakking saw its biggest coup in June 2009, garnering much attention as the first outlet to report music superstar Michael Jackson’s death as an elaborate hoax, in the same way Elvis is supposedly still alive and living on a remote island somewhere.

So here’s the deal. Michael Jackson faked his death in an attempt to sell more records. Indeed, within hours of reports that Jacko had gone to rock and roll heaven, sales of his albums absolutely skyrocketed. Amazon.com had fourteen of MJ’s albums in their top twenty, with Off The Wall hitting the number one spot pretty soon after news filtered through. — Retro Yakking, “Michael Jackson isn’t dead: The age old rock star conspiracy”

Though the ‘article’ (still archived here as of April 2011) was written with due respect to a legend, the subject matter was always bound to court controversy. It became the most commented article in the history of the site, with more than 100 people stating their opinion on this ‘crazy theory’, and subsequent follow-up posts (“Prince of Pop Jack Michaelson dead at 50”, “Jackson still isn’t dead: irrefutable evidence emerges”) would see the saga run for a good few months.

The decision to retire Retro Yakking came when host Today.com sold up and closed the business. Some one and a half years after its launch, Retro Yakking was closed quietly and with it all content removed from the web. I’m not sure who currently owns the rights to my work, so the 500-odd published posts are presumably lost to the annals of time. Brief summaries of particular articles, the only remnants of Harry Yack’s great adventure, can still be found at British Blogs.

Howard Webb in a Manchester United Shirt — The image that launched a thousand smirks. Maybe.

This wasn’t the end of the Retro Yakking saga, however. January 2011 saw the site hit the headlines, albeit in anonymous fashion, thanks to Liverpool footballer Ryan Babel and social networking site Twitter. An image edit of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United shirt, originally made to accompany a Retro Yakking article on said official’s pro-United bias, appeared on the Dutch international’s Twitter page on 9 January. Babel received a hefty fine for his actions, ensuring the picture’s appearance in national newspapers for almost a week.

Until the start of 2011, I would have said Retro Yakking’s time had run. With elements of the site still lingering around the web, however, who knows what effects it might still have on popular culture? I certainly didn’t foresee Babelgate, so I’d prefer to term Retro Yakking missing, presumed deceased.