Pass notes' past, noted

The revived Pass notes feature in today's Guardian G2 section explains its absence by saying it was "sent to military prison for a crime we didn't commit". Monkey regrets to say that this isn't entirely true. In fact, Pass notes was kidnapped after the Guardian's Berliner redesign by the Times, where it appears to have survived for at least 206 instalments. This was only a continuation, however, of the column's previous wandering habits: it began in the magazine of the Sunday Correspondent newspaper (d. 1990), and by 1993 had a crowd of clones under titles including "One-Minute Guide To", "Crib Sheet", "Brief Lives", "All You Need to Know About" and "the Ten Commandments". Where did Monkey learn this? An old Observer column. It was called Keynotes.