HOT PRESS is 30 years old. The musical and political fortnightly has always been at the vanguard of liberalism in Ireland, and after ten years of good-time Ireland, it's sometimes difficult to remember how badly we needed that vanguard once upon a time.

"It's very hard from this perspective to recall just how bleak it was in Ireland in the 1970s, " says editor and founder Niall Stokes.

"There were a whole bunch of people who were disenfranchised, who didn't have a voice. The whole idea of youth culture was sneered at and frowned on. Rock-and-roll was seen as a minor sideshow to the bigger sideshow that was pop music. Musicians didn't have a voice or a platform, and at the time Ireland was hugely backwards in relation to sex and sexuality. You couldn't get a condom in Ireland until 1977. To be gay was to be locked into a closet. There was a really reactionary climate from the point of view of personal freedom."

So when Hot Press launched in 1977 (it was almost called "the Wicked Messenger") it instantly established itself as a focal point for musicians and liberals. Hot Press was designed for the people who had grown up with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who had liberal attitudes and who couldn't see themselves reflected anywhere else in the Irish press. The magazine was also fermented amidst the fiery energy of punk rock which was erupting with bands like the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Damned in the UK, and Irish versions such as the Boomtown Rats and the Radiators from Space.

There was a strong sense of a new generation that wanted to take the reins from a reticent and repressive old guard. Oliver J Flanagan had suggested that Gay Byrne introduced sex to Ireland, but the Hot Press writers actually sounded like they were getting some.

"We saw ourselves as a writer's magazine with people setting out to say something that had some sort of wider significance in the grand scheme of things, " says Stokes.

"We were influenced primarily by Rolling Stone [the American music magazine], but also a publication called Streetlife in the UK, which I think was edited by Richard William.

There was also a cluster of great writers at ren, Charles Shaar Murray, Ian McDonald and Nick Kent and then Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons. All these writers were picking up on the 'New Journalism'. There was a real energy about the language and the style and the position of the writer in the scheme of things. Hunter S Thompson would have been a hero for a lot of people and Tom Wolfe as well."

Hot Presswas always uniquely Irish, however, and its founders and writers were fighting against a more repressive culture than their British counterparts. They always did their best to present an irreverent attitude to the status quo. "Our first ad campaign was 'ban the Hot Press', " says Stokes.

"At the time there was a lot of hoarding up around Dublin and not a lot of buildings, so a few of us went out and spray-painted "ban the Hot Press" all over the place. We also had a very good radio ad with a kid saying his prayers and which ended with him saying "and please God ban the Hot Press!"

In 1981, Hot Press decided to launch in Britain. A customs strike went against them, however, and several issues didn't even reach the shops. The British version was abandoned and they licked their wounds and regrouped. In 1982 Carrolls Cigarettes approached them and offered them a commitment for a substantial amount of advertising if they would increase their production values, so a glossy cover was introduced for the first time. It also saw the magazine re-emerge as a potent political force. The lack of success in the UK allowed them to refocus their focus on Irish society.

"That was the beginning of the second phase of our existence, " says Stokes. "Around the same time John Waters came up to Dublin and we started doing the political interviews. Until then we were maybe emphasising the music to too great an extent. But then there was a series of interviews featuring people like Charlie Haughey, Bishop Eamon Casey, and Gay Byrne. We were also doing interviews with Northern politicians like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness when no-one would touch them.

It was an interview we did with Gerry Adams which made John Hume realise that there was scope for dialogue with Sinn F�in. I also remember one interview with [Sinn F�in's] Danny Morrison, where he was very emotional. He was saying "if you don't want us down there? tell us!" It was one of those moments of revelation which were very rare when it came to coverage of the North and which I think were very important."

Freedom of expression was everything to the magazine. They endeavoured to call a spade a spade and to quote people accurately and directly. "There was a deliberate unshackling of inhibitions, " says Stokes.

"We decided from the start that if somebody said 'fuck' in an interview, then it would be 'fuck' in print, because it reflected the colour of the language and the way people spoke it."

This caused a lot of controversy, particularly in 1984 when Charlie Haughey told John Waters that he wished he could cut the throats of his enemies and "push [them] off a fucking cliff."

"We approached those interviews the way we'd approach an interview with a rockand-roll singer, " explains Stokes. "I mean, we would spend a lot of time thinking about the questions, but we were really just applying the same principle to an interview with Haughey that we applied to an interview with Elvis Costello. My assumption is that what was happening elsewhere was that Charlie was saying 'fuck' all the time, but the interviewers were just leaving it out. I could never understand that. We believed that if you inhibited the way people expressed themselves that you lost some of the force and some of the eloquence of what they were saying."

There was a huge need for that uninhibited voice in 1980s Ireland. People with a liberal mindset were starting to feel trapped.

Unemployment was reaching its high watermark and divisive referendums on divorce and abortion were leaving liberals feeling alienated. "There was obviously a very high level of unemployment in Ireland, and people were emigrating as a result, but there were also a huge number of people who simply said 'hold on a second, I just don't like this fucking place', " says Stokes. "A lot of people left because they just didn't like it anymore. There was a sense that nothing would ever change. There was a huge sense of disillusionment. And from the point of view, for people who were committed to being here it was all the more important to continue the struggle."

So Hot Press continued their offensive against the sexual repression of the Catholic Church. They produced a supplement on AIDS when it was still taboo in 1987. Michael McCaughan went undercover with controversial pro-life organisation Youth Defence in 1992, much to their annoyance. And there was also plenty of irreverent humour. Stokes remembers particularly fondly Liam Fay's series of religious-themed articles in 1995/1996 (they were later compiled in his book Beyond Belief), in which, amongst other blasphemies, Fay spent some time impersonating a priest. Much of this raised the ire of the Irish religious establishment.

"One Christmas we had Jesus Christ filling in the Mad Hatter's questions, " says Stokes. "Liam Mackey wrote it and he was very sharp and very funny. A guy took a blasphemy case against us! It didn't go anywhere because I think he'd taken a case against some other newspaper first and that had failed. Some people really did resent us."

That sense of being part of a bigger fight served Hot Press's writers well, and the magazine's alumni are a 'who's-who' of Irish media. John Waters, Liam Fay, Liam Mackey, and Niall Stanage all honed their skills at the magazine, and it was also the birthplace of Ireland's premier comedy export Father Ted (writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews both met while working for the paper). And they are still producing insightful writing on music and film from the likes of Peter Murphy, Tara Brady and Shilpa Ganatra, not to mention ever-challenging missives from Eamon McCann, Bootboy (Dermod Moore) and Stokes himself.

Ireland has changed, but Hot Press can still stir the pot when it comes to our attitudes to religion, sexuality and drugs. David Rooney's cartoon of a masturbating priest ('the Good Priest') got Joe Duffy's phonelines hopping with complaints in 2005. And in the last few months Hot Press interviews have seen Fianna F�il's Brian Cowen admit to youthful marijuana use, and Ian Paisley Junior expressing archaic views on homosexuality. Stokes clearly relishes such controversies. Although pleased with how Ireland has changed when it comes to sexual freedom, he dislikes the suggestion that there's nothing to fight for now and he cites racism, abortion, inequality and the erosion of civil liberties as key issues for the Irish people. He also thinks that our political system is eerily similar to that of 1977.

"I was looking at our first issue the other day and it was published just before the election that ended Liam Cosgrave's government, " he says. "I had written a piece saying that it was a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Imagine having to choose between Liam Cosgrave and Jack Lynch!

And we've just had a similar choice between Bertie and Enda, so in some ways little has changed."

Of course on a personal level things have changed a lot for Stokes. There was always a bit of a family atmosphere in the magazine (at the outset his brother Dermot and his wife Mairin were involved) but now they're also joined by his son Duan, who is responsible for www. hotpress. com. Did he predict this in 1977? "Mairin's been here since the start so we carry the burden of not being able to not think about it, " he says. "Now we don't have anyone to talk to who isn't involved. Duan was always involved one way or another. He also understands the ethos of the place and our objectives as well as anyone can."

Stokes does find it all quite amusing when he looks back. He never foresaw himself working at Hot Press long enough to see a second generation of Stokes in the building.

"I'm involved in running a business, " he says. "Which is something I never imagined back in 1977? The truth of the matter is, I was a musician and a songwriter at the time we started all this. And to be perfectly honest, I saw myself setting the magazine up and then buggering off and getting back to writing songs and playing music? I guess I just haven't gotten around to it yet."