I’m looking at the magazine racks in Tesco, and I’m asking myself the following: Why can’t I find a men's magazine that's readable and that's not as embarrassing to be left around the house, as say, a copy of Mayfair would be? When did the men’s monthly magazine industry go literally tits up? Or should that be tits out?
"Men's magazine". Of course I mean something in the FHM market, not your one-handed art pamphlets. Maybe if I said “lad's mag” it would be clearer. Well, it wouldn’t, as I’m not a “lad” and that’s part of the problem. You see, these "lad's mags" weren't always this way. Once upon a time they were new, inventive, readable, credited its readers with an ounce of intelligence and didn't rely on a photoshoot of page three girl Sophie Howard's (impressive, I'll grant you that) breasts to sell it.
Yes kids, I'm off on one of my grumpy rants about things not being as good as they used to be (see my Q article from last year). But I’m right. You just read on.
Into the Tardis we go…
Prior to 1994, there wasn't such a thing as a "lad's mag". Yes, we had th
e likes of the aspirational GQ, Arena, and a formative FHM but these were full of expensive fashion, fads and fiction, and stuffy as hell. Great if you're on £40k a year working in the city, flying off every Winter for a skiing holiday in Switzerland and wearing Armani suits, but not really saying a great deal to me, a bloke in average job, who doesn’t give a shit what the best fountain pen is to be seen with. These were refined titles, without the broad appeal that is seemed to be so effortlessly achieved in Women's magazines. All that "New Man" bollocks didn't do it for me. There were newspapers for your sport and current affairs, the likes of Q, Select or the NME catered for your music, and The Face or Sky for anything else. Oh, and Viz. That basically was it. Unless you looked higher up the shelves in the newsagents.
There you had your shifty “reach furtively for the top shelf” adult pornographic mags such as Penthouse, Mayfair and Men Only (see above), which featured women in various states of undress, and some factual articles which nobody actually read, but you had to appreciate that they'd gone to the effort to make it look as if it wasn't all about masturbation. These mags were only for the under the bed library, oh and bushes (yes, why don’t you find discarded old porn mags in bushes anymore?).
So all in all an unsatisfactory business, but you had to put up with this situation.One day in 1994,
I read in the Guardian (look at me, all highbrow) that ex-NME editor James Brown was setting up his own magazine. I made a note to keep an eye out for that one, since I considered that Brown was a very good writer and his passion shone through in his articles, especially around the Madchester-era when his hedonistic outlook matched well with the subject matter. He could walk the walk and talk the talk. His creation, "Loaded" was that rare type of magazine - one that created a genre, and one that suddenly made the aforementioned men's titles that were around look very archaic indeed.
When issue one was released in May 1994, it's unselfconscious, irreverent style came to define a 'laddish' culture that was ground-breaking and was to make a lasting impres
sion on our consciousness for the next 5 years. This, if I might be pretentious for a moment, was the magazine that rode the zeitgeist, albeit whilst trying not to spill it’s pint. In the media, the same laddish element was increasingly seen in BBC TV programmes such as sitcom “Men Behaving Badly” and the comedy sports quiz “They Think It's All Over”, in music with Oasis, Blur, and the Britpop movement, and in the world of football, which was now fashionable again post-Hillsborough/Italia 90 and due to Sky and the Premier League, Nick Hornby and Baddiel & Skinner's Fantasy Football. These latter two were part of the new wave of 90’s comedians who often trod an un-PC line, along with contemporaries such as Paul Whitehouse, Steve Coogan and Vic & Bob.
Now, a good editor is, by nature, an individualist who tends to react badly to being strait jacketed. They will use their own language and terminology. Their attitude and style is often the difference between running a top title and an also-ran. James Brown brought in attitude by the crateload. In the first issue of Loaded, Brown set out his agenda, and wrote:
"Men's magazine". Of course I mean something in the FHM market, not your one-handed art pamphlets. Maybe if I said “lad's mag” it would be clearer. Well, it wouldn’t, as I’m not a “lad” and that’s part of the problem. You see, these "lad's mags" weren't always this way. Once upon a time they were new, inventive, readable, credited its readers with an ounce of intelligence and didn't rely on a photoshoot of page three girl Sophie Howard's (impressive, I'll grant you that) breasts to sell it.
Yes kids, I'm off on one of my grumpy rants about things not being as good as they used to be (see my Q article from last year). But I’m right. You just read on.
Into the Tardis we go…
Prior to 1994, there wasn't such a thing as a "lad's mag". Yes, we had th
e likes of the aspirational GQ, Arena, and a formative FHM but these were full of expensive fashion, fads and fiction, and stuffy as hell. Great if you're on £40k a year working in the city, flying off every Winter for a skiing holiday in Switzerland and wearing Armani suits, but not really saying a great deal to me, a bloke in average job, who doesn’t give a shit what the best fountain pen is to be seen with. These were refined titles, without the broad appeal that is seemed to be so effortlessly achieved in Women's magazines. All that "New Man" bollocks didn't do it for me. There were newspapers for your sport and current affairs, the likes of Q, Select or the NME catered for your music, and The Face or Sky for anything else. Oh, and Viz. That basically was it. Unless you looked higher up the shelves in the newsagents.
There you had your shifty “reach furtively for the top shelf” adult pornographic mags such as Penthouse, Mayfair and Men Only (see above), which featured women in various states of undress, and some factual articles which nobody actually read, but you had to appreciate that they'd gone to the effort to make it look as if it wasn't all about masturbation. These mags were only for the under the bed library, oh and bushes (yes, why don’t you find discarded old porn mags in bushes anymore?).
So all in all an unsatisfactory business, but you had to put up with this situation.One day in 1994,
I read in the Guardian (look at me, all highbrow) that ex-NME editor James Brown was setting up his own magazine. I made a note to keep an eye out for that one, since I considered that Brown was a very good writer and his passion shone through in his articles, especially around the Madchester-era when his hedonistic outlook matched well with the subject matter. He could walk the walk and talk the talk. His creation, "Loaded" was that rare type of magazine - one that created a genre, and one that suddenly made the aforementioned men's titles that were around look very archaic indeed.When issue one was released in May 1994, it's unselfconscious, irreverent style came to define a 'laddish' culture that was ground-breaking and was to make a lasting impres
sion on our consciousness for the next 5 years. This, if I might be pretentious for a moment, was the magazine that rode the zeitgeist, albeit whilst trying not to spill it’s pint. In the media, the same laddish element was increasingly seen in BBC TV programmes such as sitcom “Men Behaving Badly” and the comedy sports quiz “They Think It's All Over”, in music with Oasis, Blur, and the Britpop movement, and in the world of football, which was now fashionable again post-Hillsborough/Italia 90 and due to Sky and the Premier League, Nick Hornby and Baddiel & Skinner's Fantasy Football. These latter two were part of the new wave of 90’s comedians who often trod an un-PC line, along with contemporaries such as Paul Whitehouse, Steve Coogan and Vic & Bob.Now, a good editor is, by nature, an individualist who tends to react badly to being strait jacketed. They will use their own language and terminology. Their attitude and style is often the difference between running a top title and an also-ran. James Brown brought in attitude by the crateload. In the first issue of Loaded, Brown set out his agenda, and wrote:
"What fresh lunacy is this? Loaded is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters. Loaded is music, film, relationships, humour, travel, sport, hard news and popular culture. Loaded is clubbing, drinking, eating, playing and eating. Loaded is for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasn't hung over."
In short "For men who should know better." which became the cover strap line for years.
Lazy journalistic slags misconception number 436: Issue one featured Liz Hurley semi naked on the cover... ahh, no it didn't. Sorry to rain on the parade of many a journo looking for an easy story, but in fact issue one had a distinctly non-sexy black and white picture of edgy actor Gary Oldman on the cover (as you can see). The scantily clad girl content in those early issues was actually rather low. The idea that you could actually come out and admit to enjoying looking at beautiful women was something Brown introduced as if it had never been thought of before, like it was a new concept in the magazine industry. And it did seem like a fresh idea.
In short "For men who should know better." which became the cover strap line for years.Lazy journalistic slags misconception number 436: Issue one featured Liz Hurley semi naked on the cover... ahh, no it didn't. Sorry to rain on the parade of many a journo looking for an easy story, but in fact issue one had a distinctly non-sexy black and white picture of edgy actor Gary Oldman on the cover (as you can see). The scantily clad girl content in those early issues was actually rather low. The idea that you could actually come out and admit to enjoying looking at beautiful women was something Brown introduced as if it had never been thought of before, like it was a new concept in the magazine industry. And it did seem like a fresh idea.
Towards the end of the 80’s and the start of the 90’s, glamour and sex was something that the media wasn’t pushing, probably a legacy of the AIDS media madness from 1987 onwards. The nearest you'd get is a Vanity Fair photoshoot of some supermodel like Cindy Crawford, or film star such as Julia Roberts, tastefully done. And of course there was still Page 3 in "The Sun", which seemed to stand as a lone voice in those wilderness years, happily printing it’s glamour girls day in day out. Loaded didn't go in all guns blazing, but put a few toes in the water first, pointing out that there's nothing actually wrong with looking at gorgeous girls, and celebrating them. It was like taking The Sun’s cheery philosophy but doing it with knowing irony.
Thus each issue usually celebrated some up and coming starlet or model over a couple of pages. That first issue did have photographer John Stoddart's rather revealing black and white images of “actress” Elizabeth Hurley (see above), who we must remember at that point wasn't a big celebrity - yes she'd done "Passenger 57" and a memorable episode of “Sharpe”, but Hugh Grant wasn’t a star name then, and she hadn't yet made the appearance in that dress at the premiere of “Four Weddings”. Loaded was quite good at catching them early.
From early on, the whole playful ethos of the magazine permeated every article. Yes it might have a photoshoot of Kylie in swimwear (above), but it would balance it out in the same article with say, Lee & Herring in theirs. Yes, there would be a fold out poster of Kelly Brook, but with a badger on the reverse. A scantily clad model sat on a pile of biscuits. Model showing a bit of leg in a chippy. And so on. But it wasn’t all women…
…Three Lions, Statto, Kathy Lloyd, Rod Hull, “TFI Friday”, Zoe Ball, The Fast Show, stag weekends in Dublin or Prague, Trainspotting, They Think it's All Over, David Sea
man, Ben Sherman shirts, hard drinking women, Anna Friel, George Best, Pot Noodles, hedonism, Jo Guest, crisps, Phil Tufnell, havin' a LARF, “good work fella!”, sorted, Dodgy, large-ing it up, Keith Allen, Country House, Damien Hirst, lager lager lager, Champagne Supernova, Office Pest, Vindaloo, Dr Mick, bottled beers with complicated tops, Ian Wright, Fat Les, Des Lynam, Vic and Bob, Ulrika-ka-ka-ka, Alex Higgins, Beavis & Butthead, Michael Caine, 5 a side footy, Paul Calf, Louise Wener, Paul Weller, the Mini…
Loaded tapped into a four-year “moment” when Britain seemed to be on the verge of being “Great” again, and celebrated it. But b
eing British, it also took the piss out of it relentlessly – but we were in on the joke. You can’t beat them interviewing Kevin Keegan (see right) and telling him he’d be on the cover, which he was, only with a drawn on ‘tasche and glasses.., which they forgot to mention.
Old forgotten great actors-stroke-boozers like Leslie Phillips, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole were given the status of greatest living Englishmen (or Irish if you please!) and prominence was given to the rogues of their particular chosen fields such as Bestie, Dennis Leary, Jimmy White… Maradona even. Even when it was a rubbish issue there would be something to make it worth the purchase.
Of course, the success of Loaded meant most other men's titles looked very out of step, and one by one they had a reboot. Brown jumped ship to try and lift the circulation of fellow men’s mag GQ, and came unstuck very quickly, as his irreverent style didn’t seem to fit with the type of reader the management and advertisers seemed to want the magazine to be aimed at, and he soon left.
Loaded continued to be the market leader for the next 5 years under the helm of new editor Tim Southwell, and the other titles such as Esquire (above), GQ and the new kid on t
he block Maxim were playing catch up. However in 1996, FHM’s subtle update immediately got the formula right, with a fine balance of girls, fashion, celebrity, bad jokes and importantly, reports, working on a formula of "if our readers couldn't do it, we won't feature it". FHM’s core belief was that men are not noble or heroic, and are better off not trying to be. The idea that it was all right to be funny and self-deprecating about, say, failure in the pursuit of women came as an enormous relief to readers.
Plus, they hit upon the genius idea of the readers voting for the FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women each year, banishing male celebrities from the cover (we shall never see Rupert Everett and Mickey Rourke again! Hurrah!) and celebrating the biggest female stars of the day, usually by depicting them in states of half dress wherever possible (but not essential).
Less obvious figures of desire like Gillian Anderson became the face of 1996. Popstress Louise Nurding came out of the shadows of Eternal to become the hot babe du jour, and TV presenters like Gail Porter (below) went from Saturday morning kids telly to nationwide notoriety after flashing her bum on the cover. By the end of the nineties, FHM had overtaken Loaded in sales and became the top UK men's magazine.
Okay, FHM, Loaded and the others undeniably objectified women, in that they wer
e shot, lit, made up, clothed and photoshopped to the nines in order to make them make them more appealing to look at, but in the midst of the heady days of Britpop and New Labour, society had now deemed such images acceptable, and the buying public were lapping them up. There was a clear difference back then between what FHM and the others were doing and what you needed to resort to the top shelf for, and similar images were commonplace in advertising, film and television, music videos, even women's magazines. The acid test seemed to be “could people read it openly on the bus”? At this point, yes.
By the turn of the 21st Century though, it would appear that increasingly the Internet, multi-channel TV, mobile phones, video games, MySpace, instant messaging and the rest has taken huge bites out of the time formerly allotted to magazine reading across the board.
Mass-market men's monthlies, which once stood in such thrilling contrast to everything that came before, are now thought of by a new generation of readers as last year's model, as exciting as a black-and-white movie. Other media have plundered their best ideas, diluting their originality further. The Americans have had their first major casualty, as their once successful version of FHM was laid to rest in December 2006, due to “difficult trading conditions". Yet it’s website lives on, which is telling.
Celeb culture also became dull. It didn't use to matter whether actors and actresses were talented or not, but it did matter that they were interesting. Publicists now make sure that a glimpse of any stars weirdness is a rare occurrence. An interview with a sportsman like Beckham or film-star like Matt Damon is just PR puff, with nothing to be learned about such celebs and no insight into what makes them tick (if they do at all). They can’t be seen to spoil the “brand”. And if you did get an article that might be of interest it’d be
so dumbed down it’s practically unreadable.
At some undetermined point, men's monthlies in this country made, in hindsight, a potentially fatal error in an attempt to shore up flagging circulation when they decided to show bare breasts. Lots of them, especially in the newer mags such as Front (right). Okay, there may have been bare breasts displayed in the magazines and papers before but this was different, far more blatant, and almost a desperate move to keep readers interested. All done without the humour that would have made it half way acceptable a couple of years earlier.
Almost overnight, it became impossible to defend against the porno accusation. The magazines no longer passed the bus test. Circulation and advertising figures dropped.
Worst of all, the increasing indecency meant that the big celebrities would never return, and no one sells magazines like big stars. Porn stars, glamour girls and z-listers moved in to fill the void. Goodbye Kylie and J-Lo, hello 7th person to be evicted from the Big Brother house and Michelle Marsh (above).
The great men’s magazine bubble had well and truly burst.
Loaded is now almost unrecognisable from it's former self, being little more t
han a tit mag for someone with the attention span of a gnat. And sadly, most of the others are the same. This hasn’t been helped by the arrival in 2004 of the lads weeklies; Nuts and Zoo were the product of feverish market research, based on a hybrid of the girls ”Heat” mag and the lad’s monthlies, with all the sport, bizarre photos, and topless lovelies you'd normally get plus a “Heat-esque” TV guide and more up to date "news". Although they won’t admit it, the publishers seem to be aiming these at the 14 to 22-age bracket. Basically, schoolboy porn. And this again hit the circulations of the monthlies badly. Their reaction? To try and compete with the weeklies, rather than offer an alternative. Hence an already dumbed down men’s magazine market became mostly barely readable semi-porn.
I'm now 37, and I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting a little perturbed at wh
at can be found on the middle shelves of your local newsagent. The line between porn and lad's mag is now a very fine one. There are still a few magazines I can tolerate such as Esquire (right), which is still very much aimed at the £45k income man, but the articles are good, and Arena (below), which for years was a bit up it’s own arse, as you’d expect from a magazine from The Face’s Nick Logan, but although it’s one of the lowest selling men's mags, it's now actually the best.
Yes it's got the usual fashion for people who like to spend £1590 on a shirt and articles on how to find the best bars in Singapore, but it does have really good articles and the obligatory babes don't look too gratuitous - all very classy. It sometimes walks a fine line but is really quite readable. But it seems to be alone.
All I want is a magazine that's not afraid to treat it's readers with some intelligence, that will feature a 6000 word article without having to use "Boxouts" and that shows a little more respect to women, like the early mags used to. It used to be a bonus to have beautiful women in the magazine, not compulsory. Is this too difficult? I fear so. For much of what we can buy now seems, to these eyes, not much more that glossy mysogyny.
The ironic thing is that the once classy perv mag Penthouse has been relaunched, but aimed at the middle shelf rather than the top. And even more ironic is that despite the skin, it looks like a copy of FHM from the mid 90s. How times change. The porn mags look classy and the lad's mags look like Mayfair.
Not that I’ve read it of course. I found it in some bushes.
Thus each issue usually celebrated some up and coming starlet or model over a couple of pages. That first issue did have photographer John Stoddart's rather revealing black and white images of “actress” Elizabeth Hurley (see above), who we must remember at that point wasn't a big celebrity - yes she'd done "Passenger 57" and a memorable episode of “Sharpe”, but Hugh Grant wasn’t a star name then, and she hadn't yet made the appearance in that dress at the premiere of “Four Weddings”. Loaded was quite good at catching them early.
From early on, the whole playful ethos of the magazine permeated every article. Yes it might have a photoshoot of Kylie in swimwear (above), but it would balance it out in the same article with say, Lee & Herring in theirs. Yes, there would be a fold out poster of Kelly Brook, but with a badger on the reverse. A scantily clad model sat on a pile of biscuits. Model showing a bit of leg in a chippy. And so on. But it wasn’t all women…
…Three Lions, Statto, Kathy Lloyd, Rod Hull, “TFI Friday”, Zoe Ball, The Fast Show, stag weekends in Dublin or Prague, Trainspotting, They Think it's All Over, David Sea
man, Ben Sherman shirts, hard drinking women, Anna Friel, George Best, Pot Noodles, hedonism, Jo Guest, crisps, Phil Tufnell, havin' a LARF, “good work fella!”, sorted, Dodgy, large-ing it up, Keith Allen, Country House, Damien Hirst, lager lager lager, Champagne Supernova, Office Pest, Vindaloo, Dr Mick, bottled beers with complicated tops, Ian Wright, Fat Les, Des Lynam, Vic and Bob, Ulrika-ka-ka-ka, Alex Higgins, Beavis & Butthead, Michael Caine, 5 a side footy, Paul Calf, Louise Wener, Paul Weller, the Mini…
Loaded tapped into a four-year “moment” when Britain seemed to be on the verge of being “Great” again, and celebrated it. But b
eing British, it also took the piss out of it relentlessly – but we were in on the joke. You can’t beat them interviewing Kevin Keegan (see right) and telling him he’d be on the cover, which he was, only with a drawn on ‘tasche and glasses.., which they forgot to mention.Old forgotten great actors-stroke-boozers like Leslie Phillips, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole were given the status of greatest living Englishmen (or Irish if you please!) and prominence was given to the rogues of their particular chosen fields such as Bestie, Dennis Leary, Jimmy White… Maradona even. Even when it was a rubbish issue there would be something to make it worth the purchase.
Of course, the success of Loaded meant most other men's titles looked very out of step, and one by one they had a reboot. Brown jumped ship to try and lift the circulation of fellow men’s mag GQ, and came unstuck very quickly, as his irreverent style didn’t seem to fit with the type of reader the management and advertisers seemed to want the magazine to be aimed at, and he soon left.
Loaded continued to be the market leader for the next 5 years under the helm of new editor Tim Southwell, and the other titles such as Esquire (above), GQ and the new kid on t
he block Maxim were playing catch up. However in 1996, FHM’s subtle update immediately got the formula right, with a fine balance of girls, fashion, celebrity, bad jokes and importantly, reports, working on a formula of "if our readers couldn't do it, we won't feature it". FHM’s core belief was that men are not noble or heroic, and are better off not trying to be. The idea that it was all right to be funny and self-deprecating about, say, failure in the pursuit of women came as an enormous relief to readers.
Plus, they hit upon the genius idea of the readers voting for the FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women each year, banishing male celebrities from the cover (we shall never see Rupert Everett and Mickey Rourke again! Hurrah!) and celebrating the biggest female stars of the day, usually by depicting them in states of half dress wherever possible (but not essential).
Less obvious figures of desire like Gillian Anderson became the face of 1996. Popstress Louise Nurding came out of the shadows of Eternal to become the hot babe du jour, and TV presenters like Gail Porter (below) went from Saturday morning kids telly to nationwide notoriety after flashing her bum on the cover. By the end of the nineties, FHM had overtaken Loaded in sales and became the top UK men's magazine.
Okay, FHM, Loaded and the others undeniably objectified women, in that they wer
e shot, lit, made up, clothed and photoshopped to the nines in order to make them make them more appealing to look at, but in the midst of the heady days of Britpop and New Labour, society had now deemed such images acceptable, and the buying public were lapping them up. There was a clear difference back then between what FHM and the others were doing and what you needed to resort to the top shelf for, and similar images were commonplace in advertising, film and television, music videos, even women's magazines. The acid test seemed to be “could people read it openly on the bus”? At this point, yes.
By the turn of the 21st Century though, it would appear that increasingly the Internet, multi-channel TV, mobile phones, video games, MySpace, instant messaging and the rest has taken huge bites out of the time formerly allotted to magazine reading across the board.
Mass-market men's monthlies, which once stood in such thrilling contrast to everything that came before, are now thought of by a new generation of readers as last year's model, as exciting as a black-and-white movie. Other media have plundered their best ideas, diluting their originality further. The Americans have had their first major casualty, as their once successful version of FHM was laid to rest in December 2006, due to “difficult trading conditions". Yet it’s website lives on, which is telling.
Celeb culture also became dull. It didn't use to matter whether actors and actresses were talented or not, but it did matter that they were interesting. Publicists now make sure that a glimpse of any stars weirdness is a rare occurrence. An interview with a sportsman like Beckham or film-star like Matt Damon is just PR puff, with nothing to be learned about such celebs and no insight into what makes them tick (if they do at all). They can’t be seen to spoil the “brand”. And if you did get an article that might be of interest it’d be
so dumbed down it’s practically unreadable.At some undetermined point, men's monthlies in this country made, in hindsight, a potentially fatal error in an attempt to shore up flagging circulation when they decided to show bare breasts. Lots of them, especially in the newer mags such as Front (right). Okay, there may have been bare breasts displayed in the magazines and papers before but this was different, far more blatant, and almost a desperate move to keep readers interested. All done without the humour that would have made it half way acceptable a couple of years earlier.
Almost overnight, it became impossible to defend against the porno accusation. The magazines no longer passed the bus test. Circulation and advertising figures dropped.
Worst of all, the increasing indecency meant that the big celebrities would never return, and no one sells magazines like big stars. Porn stars, glamour girls and z-listers moved in to fill the void. Goodbye Kylie and J-Lo, hello 7th person to be evicted from the Big Brother house and Michelle Marsh (above).
The great men’s magazine bubble had well and truly burst.
Loaded is now almost unrecognisable from it's former self, being little more t
han a tit mag for someone with the attention span of a gnat. And sadly, most of the others are the same. This hasn’t been helped by the arrival in 2004 of the lads weeklies; Nuts and Zoo were the product of feverish market research, based on a hybrid of the girls ”Heat” mag and the lad’s monthlies, with all the sport, bizarre photos, and topless lovelies you'd normally get plus a “Heat-esque” TV guide and more up to date "news". Although they won’t admit it, the publishers seem to be aiming these at the 14 to 22-age bracket. Basically, schoolboy porn. And this again hit the circulations of the monthlies badly. Their reaction? To try and compete with the weeklies, rather than offer an alternative. Hence an already dumbed down men’s magazine market became mostly barely readable semi-porn.
I'm now 37, and I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting a little perturbed at wh
at can be found on the middle shelves of your local newsagent. The line between porn and lad's mag is now a very fine one. There are still a few magazines I can tolerate such as Esquire (right), which is still very much aimed at the £45k income man, but the articles are good, and Arena (below), which for years was a bit up it’s own arse, as you’d expect from a magazine from The Face’s Nick Logan, but although it’s one of the lowest selling men's mags, it's now actually the best.Yes it's got the usual fashion for people who like to spend £1590 on a shirt and articles on how to find the best bars in Singapore, but it does have really good articles and the obligatory babes don't look too gratuitous - all very classy. It sometimes walks a fine line but is really quite readable. But it seems to be alone.
All I want is a magazine that's not afraid to treat it's readers with some intelligence, that will feature a 6000 word article without having to use "Boxouts" and that shows a little more respect to women, like the early mags used to. It used to be a bonus to have beautiful women in the magazine, not compulsory. Is this too difficult? I fear so. For much of what we can buy now seems, to these eyes, not much more that glossy mysogyny.
The ironic thing is that the once classy perv mag Penthouse has been relaunched, but aimed at the middle shelf rather than the top. And even more ironic is that despite the skin, it looks like a copy of FHM from the mid 90s. How times change. The porn mags look classy and the lad's mags look like Mayfair.
Not that I’ve read it of course. I found it in some bushes.
