He joined the civil service in 1912, and gained a reputation as a wit and a writer of light verse. In 1922 he was invited by fellow civil servant and cartoonist Charles E. Kelly to write for the humorous magazine he and fellow cartoonist Arthur Booth were planning. This became Dublin Opinion. Booth was its first editor, but after his death of pneumonia in 1926, Collins and Kelly jointly took over the role, and became joint directors of Dublin Opinion Ltd with Booth's father-in-law, Major Robert J. Baker.