Magazine cover of the year

Jeremy Leslie is right, Time‘s top 10 magazine covers of the year are a pretty dull bunch – even repeating a four-year-old image. So he’s put out a call for you to suggest yours.

Der Spiegel gets my vote.

Cowles on magazine covers

Last lecture this year at the Editorial Design Organisation is IPC director  Andy Cowles on ‘Death by Coverline’. £20 on the door for non-members; Wednesday 16 December at Pentagram’s office. Cowles made his name at Emap before doing a stint in the US, running his own consultancy and starting at IPC in 2004.

Magazine cover secrets at Magforum.com

Oz obscenity film in 2010

The Oz magazine obscenity trial from 1971 is to be the subject of a film scheduled for release in 2010.

Hippie Hippie Shake, from Working Title Films, is based on a memoir by Richard Neville, who launched the underground magazine in London after having been found guilty of obscenity in Australia and then released – as was to happen in London.

Although IMDB gives a May 2010 release, the film is almost invisible on Working Title’s website, though an item from 2007 describes it so:

Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) will direct Hippie Hippie Shake in August. Starring Cillian Murphy, Sienna Miller, Emma Booth and Max Minghella, the film will take the audience on a psychedelic journey through the late ’60s in London, with Murphy playing Richard Neville, the editor of the famous satirical magazine Oz. The screenplay is being adapted from Neville’s book ‘Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, The Trips, The Love-Ins, The Screw-Ups: The Sixties’. Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Nicky Kentish Barnes are the producers.

Chris O’Dowd plays fellow editor and now multimillionaire publisher Felix Dennis. O’Dowd was also in Working Title’s The Boat That Rocked, loosely based on the 1960s pirate ship Radio Caroline – which was funded by Queen owner Jocelyn Stevens and run from the magazine’s office. I like to think that the Bill Nighy character Quentin was based on Stevens.

Hippie Hippie Shake at Amazon.co.uk

Razzle dazzle on eBay

A copy of Razzle is going on eBay with bidding at £21! What is going on? What can possibly be in issue 49 (probably from 1953)?

Copies of Razzle, a pocket men’s monthly, typically sell for less than £5 including postage. Its big feature was a ‘dream girl’ colour illustrated pin-up by George Davies on the centre spread, the rest was timeless, humorous articles and cartoons featuring leggy girls.

Razzle’s big claim to fame today is that it inspired the flipside of ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’ by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.  The lyrics to ‘Razzle in my Pocket’ (1977) are about trying to steal a copy of Razzle from a newsagent (Dury was born in 1942):

‘In my yellow jersey, I went out on the nick.
South Street Romford, shopping arcade
Got a Razzle magazine, I never paid…’

Could it be this is the issue he was trying to nick (he’d have been about 11)?

Like many of the big-selling men’s magazines of the 1950s, the title lives on as a top-shelf magazine published by Paul Raymond (since 1983).