Prostitute Trading Trumps - How Prostitute Trading Trumps Was Invented
Prostitute Trading Trumps was invented by accident - a happy accident, but an accident nonetheless. It all happened a bleary Sunday morning at the 1997 UK Comic Art Convention. As we (myself, Matthew, Pete, Andy Luke, Rik Hoskin and more) assembled to man Pete's BrumCAB stall and hawk our comics wares to a less than rapturous buying public, we discovered that our public had, in fact, abandoned us. Or at least they hadn't turned up yet. We filled in the time the olde fashioned way, by inventing our own entertainment.

Pete had turned up with his pockets stuffed with cards advertising prostitutes, which he had gathered up from the phone boxes in Russell Square. Naturally, we ribbed him about it, especially when he declared they were for his flat mate. He collects them he argued unconvincingly.

We passed them around, pointing out the cards with pictures obviously stolen from magazines or video, the ridiculousness of printing Genuine Photo across the model's face, the silly slogans and so on. Consensus has it that I suggested that some of the cards had has much information on them as Top Trump cards, but it was Dave Morris (generally a good and God-fearing man) who said that in that case we may as well play them like Top Trumps.

So we did, and that was more or less that. Prostitute Trading Trumps was born!

Pete recalls it in slightly less detail.

At some point Jez and me invented Prostitute Phonebox Card Top Trumps with the hundred or so cards I'd manically grabbed the night before which proved to be very playable. Matthew kept winning. Jenni Scott didn't seem at all impressed. At one point a young boy with mother passed the table and we all hid our cards in shame.
He had been up more or less all night, so he was bound to be a bit vague. (Extract from Pete's UKCAC 97 report)

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Jez Higgins