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USEQEQWEB23

Thank you, thank you, everyone, settle down now!

Ahem.

One year ago, at the birth of the Motley Fool UK on AOL, we had one or two ideas about what might happen to us in the course of the first year of our existence. Thankfully, none of these has come to pass. We have not been "eliminated" by a letter bomb sent by a consortium of the Wise (click here and scroll down to Part 2, "Wise Words, Indeed" to see why this possibility crossed our minds). Neither have we yet been closed down by the Financial Services Authority and slapped in irons in the Tower (or banged up in Wormwood Scrubs) as an affront to all that is worthy in the world of finance and investment. In fact, we think things are going rather well:

• Use of the Internet, the most democratic of any medium we have come across, continues to grow exponentially from month to month.

• We have a strong following of fellow Fools (that's you) whose interest, like ours, is to cut through the avalanche of blather, flavoured with whiffs of deception and near-fibbing, that characterises the propaganda put out by the financial services industry.

• We believe that our message of sense and Foolishness in investment and the power of the little bloke to triumph where the giants consistently fail is coming through loud and clear, and that never before has this country been so alive to the need to learn to look after one's own investments.

• Whatever you think of the economics of the single European currency -- and opinion in Fooldom is frankly divided on it -- we believe it is going to radically change the way we look at investing over the next five years and open up many opportunities for the private investor.

• Finally, our jingling jester caps are at last starting to rise above the parapet of visibility and we are beginning to receive increasing amounts of attention from the traditional media.

So, yes, things are going well, but as part of this birthday/state of the nation address, I would like to make an announcement concerning my shameful conduct with a young intern who spent this summer working for us at the Fool UK and would just like to say how deeply sorry and ashamed I am that... [No, no! You've got the wrong speech. Tell 'em how we started up. Stupido! -- Ed.] Oh, sorry, yes, many people email us to ask just how it was that we got going, and how the US's favourite -- and most irreverent -- personal investment forum was transplanted across the Atlantic. It went something like this:

In early 1996, I ran across the Motley Fool's website and thought, "#*$*$*£*£*@*#*!!!". Soon, I started writing the odd Fribble and posting occasional messages on selected boards (it took me a day of tinkering and adjusting and then another day to pluck up the courage to go ahead and actually post the first few). Finally, one rainy Westcountry afternoon, I sent an email to David and Tom Gardner suggesting that what was needed was, well, a Motley Fool UK. Incredibly -- and this is a testament to both the accessibility the Internet provides and to David and Tom personally -- they answered. Pretty soon, I was on a mission to Fool Global HQ, just outside Washington DC, and in between spells on the pinball machine (now sadly deceased), the plan was hatched. At around this time, too, I was put in touch with a regular poster in the Rainforest Cafe message folder (and whatever happened to that stock, Bruce?!) with a ".co.uk" email address, by the name of Bruce Jackson, who now bears the screen name TMF Googly. Over a couple of months, Bruce and I set about creating the backbone of the site you see today, and we launched it on AOL on September 23rd last year.

Those first few days were insane! The message boards were frenetic. As soon as Bruce or I had responded to a message, up would pop six more... and all from David Gardner. Things settled down a little after that, when David found a new hobby as a certified frog spawn inspector in his native Virginia, and the Fool grew slowly but steadily, with both Bruce and I as utter part-timers. In other words, at that time we both had full-time day jobs, he as an accountant and me as a hospital doctor. Early on in the Fool UK's existence on AOL -- who, I might add and not simply because I'm a career greaser, have been exceedingly helpful throughout -- we came across Nigel Roberts. Or rather, Nigel the Steelman hit the Fool at something approaching the speed of light and we couldn't do anything but take him on. Since then, as TMF Nigel, he has been churning out Foolery in the form of countless, countless message board posts, a weekly Daily Fool (Nigel's day is Friday) and his regular Monday StockFoolery slot.

Further additions to our roll call of TMFs came in the spring of this year in the form of Mehmet Varol and Yvonne Ravenhall. Mehmet was posting on the AOL area under the name of CapPickard (Captain Picard, Star Trek? No, you're not a Trekkie? Oh well, forget it.) His message board postings were utterly Foolish and this most faithful disciple of HRH Warren Buffett came on as TMF Coffee, the message board stroller. Yvonne, on the other hand, set about producing a stream of Bribbles so prolific that we couldn't help but sit up and take notice. Since becoming TMF Yvonne, she has taken on the task of a writing a weekly personal finance piece we term the Compleat Fool. It appears on Thursdays and is characterised by what can only be termed sheer Ravenhallery. Don't miss it! Our most recent addition is James Kraft, TMF Jam, an American living in Britain with a flair for high-tech startups. James is with us to build the business into our next phase of world domination (maybe he should have taken the name TMF Smersh).

Back to the online area. Things moved on and by late February we were ready to roll out the website. From a slowish start, the website has now overtaken the AOL area in terms of traffic, both on the boards and in terms of numbers of people viewing pages. Just recently on the website, you'll have noticed we took on our first advertiser, Citibank. (You want to give us a birthday present? Click on that ad ten times, no, a hundred times, and open accounts for yourself, your spouse, child and hamster.) Occasional visitors to the US site will have realised that this whole shebang is fundamentally financed by advertisers, so from now on you'll be seeing them throughout the UK site. (They love us at Fool USA, yes, but not enough for us to fritter their money away forever.) Our pledge, though, is that the Fool will remain free at the point of delivery for as far forward as we can see.

What else have we got planned for the future? OK, brace yourselves:

• The Motley Fool UK Investment Guide, published by Boxtree, comes out on November 2nd amidst a fanfare of publicity. David and Tom Gardner are coming over for a week or so and will be doing bookshop signings (with my humble self) in London, Birmingham and Manchester, along with the usual round of book-plugging interviews, comfy sofa TV shows and radio appearances. Watch out for excerpts of this mighty tome appearing on the website in October, and around the end of October we'll be asking another favour of all you Fools, countrywide. It has to do with nipping into your local bookshop and turning copies of our book face outwards, rather than spine outwards -- but more on that then. This first book will be followed by up to six (six?!) more next year.

• An InvestUSA area will shortly be opening up, containing the US stock market news and information about how to invest cheaply in the USA from over here.

• A UK taxes area is in the pipeline, with regular articles on the basics -- real basics -- of taxation and a message board where you can ask questions that will be answered by our own Foolish tax expert.

• UK quotes will very shortly be available on the site.

• Portfolios will follow quotes in short order, we hope.

• A Footsie Workshop is being planned, extending the scope of Beating the Footsie to other mechanical investment approaches.

• Look for some interesting developments in the Qualiport over the next few weeks.

• More individual company message boards on the web, as requested by your good selves.

• Anything else we happen to think of, or which you happen to suggest to us, and which strikes us as something that will further the cause of the Foolish investor, or simply a good idea at the time.

Oh yes, the competition -- almost forgot. The five best e-mails telling us what they like about the Fool UK and, most importantly, how they think the Fool UK should develop in the next few years, will win a brand-spanking new, super-deluxe, black, go-faster, FOOL baseball cap. All entries must be sent to TMF FoolUK by September 30th. Any really good entries will be published on the site, and if there are loads of good ones, we may give out more baseball caps.

That's my lot for the moment. I just want to say thank you to everyone: US Fools, without whose daily toils our site would not appear every day; British Fools (that's you, again), without whom there'd be no life or bounce in the site at all; AOL UK for hosting us and, finally, the whole of the financial services industry for being so utterly hopeless as to require the Motley Fool to exist in the first place.

Foolery forever!

David Berger (TMF FoolUK)