We f ind the (surprisingly respectable) artist who creates those horrid greetings cards and ask: What ARE you playing at?
BUYING a greeting card used to be a gentle, uncomplicated experience. You browsed the shelves and chose between a chocolatebox scene, a gaudy children’s design or, the safe middle-class option, a miniature reproduction of a famous artwork.
But all that has changed – and not for the better.
Today, shops have become a minefield of crude designs wishing recipients a Happy F***ing Birthday and much else besides. Masquerading as ‘edgy’ humour, they have turned card hunting – a small gesture of kindness or respect – into an embarrassment, particularly when with children.
No company works harder to promote these cards than Scribbler, a nationwide chain with outlets in some of our most desirable cities, including Edinburgh, Bath and Oxford. And a brief look at Scribbler’s shelves reveals that the crudest examples, using the ugliest language in the most eye-catching way, are the work of one man, who runs what amounts to a cottage industry of vile expletives.
So who is Dean Morris – and what on earth does he think he is playing at?
In fact, there is nothing remotely crude or sweary about the 44year-old when he opens the door of an immaculately kept Victorian semi in a pleasant, tree-lined suburb of Wolverhampton. Dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and socks, he seems utterly unruffled.
It turns out that the fine arts graduate is a fan of gardening and National Trust properties. And he doesn’t even particularly like the cards he produces.
On the contrary, he says. ‘I’m a huge fan of the kinds of greeting cards that are the polar opposite of the kinds of cards I sell.
‘My card box at home is always stocked full of lovely letterpress and hand-printed designs from some lovely publishers both here and in the USA. I think even my detractors would approve of these.’
But Mr Morris is also a man with a sharp appreciation of the balance sheet. And, as he puts it, whatever his personal tastes and background: ‘Smut, filth and swearing does sell cards.’
It certainly does, which is why The Mail on Sunday wanted to ask Mr Morris about the tide of obscenity infecting many high street card shops. Does he think it’s right to force that language down the throats of families looking to send a simple ‘thank you’ card? And what does he think of the effect on children of such crude sexual terminology?
Mr Morris is not prepared to answer these and other questions right now, he tells us, commenting only that, ‘I wouldn’t have a business if my cards didn’t sell’, before ushering us out with a cheery goodbye.
Card design is essentially a cottage industry fed by hundreds of one-man bands. A single design might earn just £150 from chains that make a 100 per cent mark-up, but it certainly seems to pay well for the prolific Mr Morris, whose company, Dean Morris Cards Ltd, is sitting on a cash pile of £236,000, according to its published accounts.
He can certainly afford to be a regular visitor to New York with his husband, a masseur, describing it as his favourite city. Not bad for scribbling ‘F***’ and ‘b ****** s’ on a folded piece of cardboard.
A designer since 1999, Mr Morris gained a foothold in the industry with the help of the Prince’s Trust.
Two decades on, he spends his days dreaming up mottos that are cruder and crasser than anything seen before. In this arms race of bad taste, nothing is off-limits.
There is no need to bother with anything so laborious as innuendo or the double entendres so beloved by fans of the saucy seaside postcards of Donald McGill. A single entendre will do.
Mr Morris’s stock in trade is to juxtapose filthy language with images mined from the 1950s and 1960s, of smartly dressed men and smiling ‘wholesome’ housewives with beehive hairdos. But when his muse escapes him, he has been known to simply fill his cards with expletives – and that’s it.
He started out in the business with rather more innocent creations, handsticking sequins and adornments to tastefully handcrafted cards.
Then he had a twin revelation: that creating printed card designs was much less labour intensive than making them one by one; and that the language of the gutter makes money. The market is huge. As a nation, we buy a world-leading average of 33 cards per person per year, and 85 per cent of buyers are female – mucky cards being far from a laddish preserve.
Although coy with this newspaper, Mr Morris is more forthcoming on his blog and company website.
‘I’m very proud of my place in the industry but I’ll always feel like the naughty young offspring,’ he says.
Customers, he suggests, have a better sense of humour than many of the retailers believe. He also says that more than half his collection – which includes the Keep Calm And Carry On series – is clean.
Mr Morris justifies his work by arguing that one person’s offensive greeting card is another’s display of affection, adding: ‘There are times where people want to push the boundary with their friends a little. It is important to remember that... while one card may be offensive to one customer, ten others may want to buy it.’
He does, though, admit there are some shops which see his creations as so disgusting they ‘have small lockable display cupboards with a notice to ask for the key’.
Even Scribbler, which has built its reputation on ‘adult’ cards, has sought to head off criticism by fixing PG (Parental Guidance) to some display shelves in its branches.
But they serve only as a fig leaf – the crude cards are mixed in with mainstream ones, meaning it is difficult for customers to avoid them as they move around the shop.
Scribbler was created by the husband-and-wife team of John and Jennie Procter in 1981, and employs
Smut, filth and swearing really does sell cards
220 staff. They divide their time between London and a beautiful, thatched Grade II-listed former parsonage near Lulworth Cove in Dorset.
Speaking in his sitting room with an open fire and black and white portraits of his children, where the windows look out across manicured lawns, Mr Procter is without a shred of remorse. ‘We don’t set out to be gratuitous,’ he says.
‘We like to think of ourselves as following in the great tradition of bawdy English humour, like the racy seaside postcard.
‘We don’t get complaints from anyone, young or old. If anything, we have rowed back from some of the stronger expletives.
‘I think humour is a great force for good and we could do with more of it in this world,’ he adds, stretching the definition of comedy beyond where some might see it. It might seem strange, then, that Scribbler’s own website discourages shoppers who want to create their own cards from being too crude.
Indeed, it seems anxious to protect its patrons from themselves.
‘We have an online duty of care to make sure that all our customers don’t receive unwanted content,’ the website says.
‘Therefore, any cards of a sexual nature... are not permitted.’
Scribbler reserves the right to reject orders if the design contains nudity, drug use, racism, violence or harassment.
It also reserves the right not to print anything else it deems inappropriate, which critics of Scribbler might say covers half its stock.
A source at one Scribbler branch told this newspaper: ‘Filthy cards have become more and more popular, particularly in the last three years. Everybody buys them – there is no specific age or gender to it. I would say they are about half of what we sell.’
American tourists buy the cards in batches, because there is nothing like them back home.
And Scribbler is now trying to draw in younger and more impressionable customers. Scribbler Kids, a new brand, involves dedicated bays in branches which display cards for the junior market.
But given the small size of some shops, these bays must inevitably be sited near the ‘adult’ stock.
Back in Wolverhampton, Mr Morris is busy working on his collection for December 2019 and its predictable star offering: ‘Happy C***ing Christmas.’
I’m a huge fan of the kinds of greeting cards that are the polar opposite of ones I sell