Free men’s weekly ShortList will have ‘a noticeable absence of knickers and nipples [to] distinguish it from the troubled lads’ mag market’, according to Media Week. The story is illustrated by a dummy cover with Kate Moss coming down the stairs - in what looks like her underwear.
The title lanches on Septmber 20. Media Week TV also has a video interview with Soutar.
Italy’s Mondadori and Lagardère of France have both expressed interest in Emap’s consumer arm, according to the Times (though Mondadori has since denied it in the Liverpool Daily Post).
Such a sale would put the bulk of UK magazines in foreign hands. As Magforum points out, IPC (the biggest publisher in the UK), Conde Nast, National Magazines, HFUK, APC-NatMags, Rodale, Reader’s Digest, News Magazines and Bauer are all foreign-owned groups. If Mondadori gets Emap, 7 of the top 10 UK titles would be ultimately controlled overseas (5 already are). In the consumer marketplace, the biggest UK-controlled publishers would be BBC Magazines (a TV offshoot), Future and Northern & Shell.
However, Emap falling to Mondadori or Lagardère makes sense because both know Britain’s second-largest magazine publisher well. Emap’s Grazia - one of the most brilliant recent launches - is licensed from the Italian magazine publisher, which bought Emap’s French division last year. Also, Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister who controls Mondadori, has experience in buying English companies that goes back quite a way. Twenty years ago, he ran Olivetti, which bought BBC computer maker Acorn.
Lagardère ’s UK offshoot, HFUK, is run by Kevin Hand, the former Emap chief who lost his job over Emap’s calamitous attempt to enter the US by buying Petersen. Hands obviously felt hard done-by at the time, but got one back on Emap by taking away Elle (which is ultimately owned by Lagardère) and outbidding Emap for Red.
No doubt, he’d love to get his hands back on a big chunk of Emap.
Joan Collins is likely to be all over the media in coming weeks with the appearance of a biography by Graham Lord. Today’s Daily Mail starts a serialisation of the book, starting with her wild days in Hollywood (she went over there in 1954 at the age of 21). It reminds us that Fleet Street christened her ‘Britain’s Bad Girl’ and ‘The Coffee Bar Jezebel’.
There is a tale told about Collins at one of the health farms. It had a sauna used by the men in the morning and the women in the afternoon. The men refused to leave one day and a queue of women developed. La Collins appeared, pushed to front and shouted ‘You lot had better leave or I’ll drop my towel and come in there naked.’ The men all meekly trapsed out!
The cover above is of copy of pocket monthly Span from 1962 when she was at the height of her pin-up powers. The cover below is from 34 years later when editor Richard Barber (who had edited Woman’s Own, Radio Times and Clothes Show) chose her to front the first weekly issue of OK!.
Things to Look At has put up some spreads from Town magazine of the 1960s. A comment there reminds me that it was all done in hot metal, before the days of phototypesetting, never mind DTP. Another superb title in hot metal was Car magazine when it was FF Publishing. Paul Horrell, a sub I worked with at Redwood, went off to Car in about 1984 - when it was still published in hot metal. Soon after, the magazine was sold to Emap and leapfrogged photosetting to go straight on the Macs running Quark. How many many magazines did that, I wonder?
Vintage Motorshop is selling two collections of Car on Ebay. They’re both buy-it-now listings for £1,200 (408 issues) and £275 (40 early issues).
