Asian Image came about like a bolt out of the blue ten years ago. It was set-up by a couple of guys in their early twenties who decided they wanted to print a newspaper.

The team included, Amir Ahmed and Imtiaz Ahmed, Shuiab Khan, Zaffer Khan and Khalid Saifullah.

It took the team 21 days to print the paper from scratch. Something of a miracle as four of the team had no experience of printing a newspaper whatsoever.

The first edition of the newspaper only had 12 pages and was designed on a cheap computer with a very basic programme.

There was one desk and one chair. When someone had anything to type or wanted to design an advert had to give up his seat for the next man. Obviously there were arguments.

We also had no office and up until May 1998 it was published in a front room which did have one bonus in that there was always an endless amount of tea and samosas to hand!

Armed with nothing but an A4 sheet, adverts were sold to local businesses and retailers.

What many people do not realise is that the business did not take out a loan or investment from the very first day. The money raised through the first few adverts was used to pay for the printing and the computer.

Selling an advert to any business is tough but when you are selling what is essentially white space in something that doesn't yet exist - you are up against it from the very first second.

But low and behold the adverts did come thanks to some good salesmanship by Amir who even manged to get HSBC bank on board.

We finished the paper at 4.30am and then rushed to the printers in Huddersfield with the grid sheets (no discs!). The pages were scanned in and then printed in the early hours of the morning.

Then someone realised 8,000 is a lot of papers to fit in to one hatchback so another driver had to make the journey up the M62 to load the remainder of the papers.

Later that very same day it was distributed door-to-door to households across Blackburn. We began distributing at 7pm and finished at 5.30am for two consecutive days. It was raining, windy and very cold that night but it didn't bother us that much.

The hills of Blackburn really do come alive at 3am in the morning. None more so than Shear Brow and Bromley St.

One of the crew wore a balaclava so people wouldn't recognise him. The rest of us couldn't care less.

Within the first couple of months it became clear there was a huge demand for an Asian newspaper that reported news other local media were missing out on.

We could never really get used to the deadlines but even if it meant we had to stay up all night finishing the paper then so be it. Asian Image was printed on time as promised.

From March 1998 we began publishing a separate edtion for Preston, Pendle and Burnley. Again the newspaper was distributed at the dead of the night. It was something we continued to do until we found trusted paperboys and paper girls in the region. That took about six months!

It would have been easy to drop off papers in takeaways and community centres but then we found that you miss 80% of your readership.

After the first year the newspaper was making a real name for itself. It was not that we were printiing shocking stories but we were printing stories that people wanted to read.

Up until Asian Image was published many Asian publications had become bogged down by publishing the usual features and stories reinforcing the stereotypes that existed about Asian people.

But we started to explore the many different experiences of being a British Asian.

This wasn't picked upon by many national Asian publications until after September 11.

Asian Image was printed all in English and only ever translated articles or adverts when requested to do so.

There were articles about non-Asian people too and features concerning Britishness.

In 2002 Newsquest Ltd decided to acquire the title. Since then the publication remains the standard-bearer when it comes to Asian publishing in the North West.

Despite only being printed once a month the newspaper is frequently the first to print news and views affecting the Asian community.

We have tried to stick with the very same ethos we began with.

Any local event remains a priority and we will go out of our way to get a reporter and photographer there.

We found that these were the real reason picked the paper up was because it was different.

And till this day it remains so.p>