The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 35

INSIDE STORY IN THE LAIR OFTHE LOBSTER Stephen Dorril (left) and Robin Ramsay edit a left-wing journal that offers succour to conspiracy theorists and keeps the professionals on their toes. Robert McCrum met the men who spill secrets. Photograph: Sean Smith more Yorkshire. "We wanted the magazine to sound not pompous." As a teenager, he would invent names for punk rock groups. "Lobster" was just one of his favourites.

Dorril, 36, grew up in Kidderminster, the son of a British Telecom engineer. He is a smiling, thoughtful, self-styled "anarchist libertarian" with a taste for footnotes. (He has a BSc in Behavioural Sciences from Huddersfield Polytechnic.) In his crumpled navy blue suit, he could be the art director of a trendy advertising agency. Robin Ramsay, his collaborator, had taken a rather different route to that meeting on Hull station. Now 43, he is an extrovert, fast-talking Scot with jack-of-all-trades experience in alternative journalism, jazz music and the theatre.

He has the breezy bonhomie of a character actor or a pub comedian. Laughing, he describes himself as "a ghastly hangover from the and claims that his formative influences derive from "a gang of Beatniks I used to hang out with in Like Dorril, he loves footnotes. Lobster is "laden to the gunwales" with footnotes. In the latest issue, No 21, a 10-page article on the Moonies and the Korean CIA has a two-page bibliography and no less than 262 footnotes. This edition will, like all its predecessors, sell out its 1,500 copies (price 2) to subscribers from Kiev to Tokyo, from Westminster to Foggy Bottom.

Ramsay boasts that "we're the only left-wing journal to pay for itself." He adds, "Dorril's brilliant at seeing the connections between and Y. He's got a very good radar." Dorril chips in, "When you discover that something fits with something else, if brilliant If 8 not quite as good as sex, but nearly." They both seem to derive intense and enviable satisfaction from their work. Why do they do it? "Enjoyment," says Dorril. He looks a bit sheepish. "I really do believe in things like The Truth.

Of course you can't actually get to the truth, it's always elusive, but you can try to get to the bottom of things and enjoy yourself in the process." Ramsay had spoken in a jocular way, when we first met, about the simplicity of Freudian interpretations. Now he says, "My parents had this pretend marriage. They hated each other, but they pretended not to because of the children. As a marriage it was a charade, a facade. I've always been fascinated by people who say Here is official reality when I know there's something quite different going on behind it" The big break for Lobster came in for a CIA agent involved in the case." It was a joke appreciated by Robin Ramsay, waiting on the platform.

"We hit it off at once," he says. "I suppose you could say we were like spirits." Within a few months these "like spirits" had setup "a journal of intelligence, parapo-litics and state a whistle-blowing publication that asked the question, "Who controls Britain?" They printed 150 copies (price SOp) and called it Lobster. Over the years the name has attracted a lot of exegesis. Sartre, for instance, used a giant lobster as a symbol of paranoia. Dorril's explanation is TOWARDS the end of 1982, a young Huddersfield probation worker with a fascination for the dark side of American politics wrote to the editor of Echoes of Conspiracy, one of a dozen fringe publications devoted to the assassination of President Kennedy.

He asked who, in Britain, was the JFK buff with whom he could discuss his conspiracy theories? The editor's answer put him on a train to HulL For identification, he carried a card inscribed "Maurice "This was an in-joke," says Stephen Dorril, now a self-employed desktop publisher. "Bishop was the cover name 12 WEEKEND GUARDIAN SATURDAY-SUNDAY AUGUST 31 -SEPTEM BER 1 1991.