Kate’s royal baby gets Mail treatment

Poor royal baby. The Daily Mail devotes no less than its first 13 pages to the news of Kate and William’s  baby – and the poor thing won’t even be born for 6 months!

But then the Mail probably still has much to do to make things up with Kate. It was the  Mail’s Sunday sister that revealed the nickname used in posh circles for Kate and her sister Pippa – the Wisteria Sisters:

‘And according to one well placed source: “Kate and Pippa have already been dubbed the Wisteria Sisters - they’re highly decorative, terribly fragrant and have a ferocious ability to climb.” ‘

This was back in May 2007, just after Kate had split up with Wills.

Robin Lane Fox, the FT’s gardening writer, Oxford history don and dad to Martha Lane Fox, referred to the nickname in his column when he discussed planting two wisteria, named Kate and Pippa, to mark the royal wedding in 2011. So, no knighthood for him either.

Spectator speaks out on Press control

Spectator magazine cover

A day before the Leveson inquiry report is published, the Spectator has set itself against any statutory scheme to control the press apart from self-regulation:

‘If the press agrees a new form of self-regulation, perhaps contractually binding this time, we will happily take part. But we would not sign up to anything enforced by government.’

Magazines have been given little coverage in the controversy, but several were called to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, including Hello!, Heat and OK!

The Spectator has lived under government control – it was founded in 1828 – and Stamp Duty, which was used to control distribution of newspapers and magazines, was not abolished until 1855.

This change created a free Press, enabled expansion and a way of meeting demand for reading material from the public – it’s easily forgotten that the works of many of the great Victorian writers were first published in magazines, from Dickens to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. In the newspaper world, the Guardian went from twice weekly to daily publication.

The fortunes made by the magazine magnates – Alfred Harmsworth and Arthur Cyril Pearson – built on the invention of the New Journalism in magazines to found the popular daily press – the Daily Mail, the Express and the Mirror.

Sam Delaney, a former editor of Heat, has warned that Leveson could end up muzzling the celebrity magazines:

‘Brace yourselves. By 2013, every title on the newsstand may well feature a gushing profile of Nancy Dell’Olio, lounging on a chaise longue “inside her beautiful home”.’

As the leaders of the political parties pore over the six copies of the Leveson report that were delivered to parliament this afternoon, the whole of the media awaits the next stage of the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.

UK newspapers: Times readers run the country

Magazine timeline

Mayfair first issue fetches £434 on eBay

Mayfair men’s magazine launch issue cover from 1966 with Raquel Welch

A copy of the 1966 first issue of Mayfair has just sold on eBay for £434 with 43 bidders. The men’s magazine’s cover has a single cover line below a picture of Raquel Welsh wearing a pink leotard inside a male symbol (derived from the shield and spear of the Roman god Mars): ‘The incredible revolution of sex in the sixties.’ It was the year she appeared clad in an animal skin bikini in One Million Years BC.

Mayfair profile

Buying and selling magazines on eBay

Heroism behind romantic fiction

Romantic fiction in some people’s eyes (usually people who have never read one) is a lower form of literary life. But a 5-part series on BBC Radio 4 last week put the life of Mary Burchell, who worked as a writer from the 1930s into the 1980s in a new light.

Burchell was the pen-name of Ida Cook and in ‘The Righteous Sisters’, Jane Purcell told the story of how Ida and sister Louise not only campaigned for Jewish refugees but travelled around Europe as opera buffs to help smuggle money and goods and help people escape from the clutches of the Nazis in the years running up to World War II. The fees from Ida’s writing paid for their exploits.

In the 1950s, Mary Burchell’s stories appeared in Woman’s Illustrated and then Woman’s Day when the former closed. She wrote 125 novels for Mills & Boon into the 1980s. In an unusual move for the time, the magazine stories were illustrated by photographs, rather than illustration. It was always the same photographer – Follett. Anybody know who Follett was?

The Fantastic Fiction website lists her works and has a photograph. You can still hear the 5-part series on the BBC Radio 4 iPlayer.

IPC and the dangers of writing about Hitler

IPC has sent our press releases pushing the latest issue of NME, with the following at the bottom:

Please note, conditions apply to using the NME covers; the photographer and NME must both be credited, along with the copy ‘NME, on sale now’.

The company is on dodgy ground with such an approach. Who’s going to use the picture with that proviso? What happens next week when the issue’s no longer on sale?

The attitude of IPC was held up to ridicule after it claimed copyright over images of Hitler’s house from Homes and Gardens‘ November 1938 edition that the Guardian’s Simon Waldman had written about. IPC’s claims were exposed as spurious. The 1938 article, ‘Hitler’s mountain home’, by Ignatius Phayre describes the Berghof as ‘quite a handsome Bavarian chalet, 2,000 feet up on Obersalzberg amid pinewoods and cherry orchards’ with the funds coming from Hitler’s ‘famous book’ Mein Kampf, a ‘best-seller of astonishing power‘.

Ignatius Phayre wrote 5 pieces for the Catholic Herald in 1938-9 and did a profile of Edgar Wallace for Pictorial Weekly (‘Edgar – the amazing! A Henry Ford of fiction’, 16 Feb 1929). Amazon lists 6 books by that author, dating from 1911-33, with one being reprinted this year, America’s Day Studies in Light and Shade. The British Library gives his real name as William George FitzGerald.

Philsp.com has Phayre writing ‘War-Work of the King and Queen of Spain’ in The Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine in Oct 1916.

A company like IPC has commerical rights to protect, but its business is built on journalism – and the rights of journalists need protecting too.

IPC profile

Naked, booted Katy and the Dalek live on

Naughty girl: naked, booted Katy Manning – Jo Grant in Dr Who – wrapped around a Dalek for a Girl Illustrated cover

‘Katy Manning, a Dalek and a cup of cold sick‘ about an eBay sale of Girl Illustrated is one of the stranger headlines on this blog, but a popular one.  And, for the Dr Who actress who played Jo Grant, the image of her naked in boots and wrapped around a Dalek is never going to go away. The Radio Times has just done an interview with the Dr Who girl that refers to the Girl Illustrated magazine  cover. The post, ‘I’ve been a naughty girl‘ reveals that the boots were given to the young actress by Derek Nimmo:

I did it for a laugh. It was a lot of fun and it was my idea. Derek Nimmo [co-star in the West End farce Why Not Stay for Breakfast?] was furious because he’d given me those boots for my opening night. Then I wrapped them round a Dalek.

And she’s not the only starlet to have wrapped herself round a Dalek. Kylie did it for Dr Who magazine in 2007 when she appeared in the Voyage of the Damned episode. Kylie’s waitress costume worn in the Christmas special fetched £3,120 at Bonham’s in 2010.

Exterminate! Kylie Minogue with a Dalek to celebrate her appearance in a Dr Who Christmas special with David Tennant

Men’s magazines A to Z

Michael Caine and David Bailey in double act

The latest portrait of Michael Caine by David Bailey

Michael Caine is an icon – in part thanks to the photographs of David Bailey – and the pair interview each other in today’s Mail on Sunday Live supplement.

‘I don’t analyse,’ says Caine. ‘The trouble with being an icon is that you don’t know anyone who is an icon.  There’s no cafe where you can go and talk to other icons, there’s no lessons, evening classes or anything. You don’t know what to do, so I don’t do anything. I just relax.’

He does watch his stats though:

‘Jack [Nicholson] and I are friends and we’re the only guys nominated for an Oscar every decade for the past five decades. But he’s won three and I’ve only won two. So he’s beaten me.’

 

Mail on Sunday profile

 

Madonna on Vogue covers

Been hammering away on the book I’m writing about the history of magazine design and looking through some old Vogue covers. How’s this for the first cover (May 1989) of Madonna in the US edition:

Anna Wintour was told this Madonna cover would not sell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fashion Indie notes that editor Anna Wintour says she was told ‘[Madonna]’ll never sell’, but, in fact, newsstand sales rose 40%. Strange that Wintour hadn’t checked with Liz Tilberis, her successor at the British sister magazine – ‘Brogue’ – which had run this cover in February:

British Vogue beat the US edition in having a Madonna front cover four months earlier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first cover under Liz Tilberis was of Naomi Campbell – her first appearance on the front of Vogue.

History of women’s glossies

British Vogue cover archive - search on date, model, photographer or editor, but not all covers are up

Shulman steel beneath Vogue’s nice girl veneer

Ferguson portrait of Alexandra Shulman in the FT

Next weekend marks the first Vogue festival at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington with the likes of Stella McCartney, Diane Von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, Nigella Lawson and Kirsty Young chatting before the magazine masses.

It’s an idea led by the fashion magazine’s editor Alexander Shulman, who also has a book coming out.

That’s why there have been profiles of Shulman in the Observer Magazine last Sunday and today’s FT, where Carola Long, the FT’s deputy fashion editor, has lunch with the Vogue editor.

Shulman is portrayed as down to earth, almost girl next door, with both profiles putting across the image of a woman ‘happy in Vogue’.

‘…her hair is an untamed mishmash of outgrown highlights. Her clothes are discreetly fashionable but unintimidating: a navy-blue cardigan, a knee-length patterned skirt and comfortable-looking Anya Hindmarch heels. And – shock, horror! – she eats’ gushes Elizabeth Day in the Observer mag

But the articles are so similar that you wonder whether the interviewers have just swallowed the PR line.

There are hints, though, that more is afoot. The FT piece starts talking about the choice of restaurant:

Alexandra Shulman was also expecting a little privacy but the editor of British Vogue is scarcely going undercover by nipping round the corner from her Hanover Square office to this smart new steakhouse. In bounces well-connected foodie Tom Parker Bowles (‘Is this your new haunt?’ he asks), followed by restaurant critic AA Gill (‘Hi Adrian’, ‘Hi darling’). ‘Rather more people here than I expected,’ Shulman says, jaw tense, voice dropping to a near-whisper

But does it look like a navy-blue cardigan below? She leaves the Observer interviewer and seems to change into a grey cardigan that looks, to my non-fashionista eye, like a designer job.

Alexandra Shulman. Photograph: Julian Broad for the Observer

She tells the FT:

‘I’ve got to the point where I don’t judge myself [on my appearance] because that way madness lies,’ she says, convincingly. ‘I know so many people who are upset about not looking as good as they used to but you’ve got to realise that’s what happens and find something else to be interested in.’

All very nice and reasonable. She does have a go at someone, however. In the Observer:

In fact, the most pronounced change she has noticed during her time at Vogue is … the increased control exerted by PRs and celebrities. ‘Somebody like Jennifer Aniston will only do an interview with copy approval and picture approval,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had anybody on the cover, ever, who’s had copy approval and picture approval. I just don’t think it’s a proper thing if you do.

‘It’s this thing of people just basically treating you as if you’re bound to be doing something that is in some way going to be insulting to their client. I just find that so offensive.’

Who could disagree with that. But then why pick on Aniston? Could it be that the Friends actor was the preview launch cover choice of weekly fashion rival Grazia?

After reading these two pieces, I’d be wary of the PR gloss and cut to the FT quote:

If she could have her time again, she says, ‘I would have got rid of the people who didn’t want to work with me, sooner.’ It’s a hint of the steeliness that must have helped keep her at the top in a fickle industry.

What I do like, though, is the FT  portrait by James Ferguson. His cartoons always have an edge to them. In this one, she’s got her heart not just on her sleeve but all over her top. The drink is the £5.50 Virgin Mary she has at 34 Restaurant. And there’s no attempt to flatter. It’s as if he’s taken her words to heart: ‘I’ve got to the point where I don’t judge myself [on my appearance].’

Vogue profile

Nigella and Jolie take to magazine covers

Angelina Jolie pours salted caramel over her head for Stylist

Nigella Lawson resists the caramel option for the cover of Newsweek