£1,019 for a copy of OZ

Oz issue 1

That’s right. A grand  – £1,019.01 to be exact – for a copy of the first issue of OZ on eBay! That’s almost three times what one fetched in 2006 and pretty much double what a copy of issue 5 from July 1967 sold for (£561.30 on Ebay in May 2007). A February 1967 first issue sold for £560 in September 2007 and another for £360 in 2006.

Two years ago, a complete set of OZ  went for $5,700 in New York.

Jackie from Crazyaboutmagazines alerted me to this. But what other British magazine would fetch more?

Profile: underground magazine Oz

Collecting magazines

The best in magazines of the 20th century

Surveys of the best magazines are done pretty regularly, but they are usually limited in scope and time. But what happens when you open things up to ask who and what are the great names and titles of the 20^th century?

Names pop into the frame that you will never have heard of.

How many hands would go up for Stefan Lorant? Even two of the titles he founded – Weekly Illustrated and Lilliput – are now relatively unknown, despite being bestsellers in their day. You will have heard of Picture Post though, which he founded and ran for two years before going to the US where he disappeared without trace as far as magazines are concerned in 1940.

Mark Boxer will be more familiar. The PPA has an award named after him. He learned the design trade on Lilliput, before transforming Queen into a sixties swinger, launched The Sunday Times Colour Supplement and London Life, before dying young in harness as editor-in-chief at Conde Nast. And even his sideline as cartoonist Marc puts him in the frame of fame.

Tom Hopkinson took over from Lorant at Picture Post and, for a while, Lilliput. But did he ever launch a magazine? What did he do after Picture Post?

As magazine supremos, Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe), with Answers and Home Chat; George Newnes with Tit-Bits, The Strand and Wide World; and C. Arthur Pearson with Pearson’s Weekly and London Opinion, all belong to the 19^th century.

And what about William Ewert Berry? Who’s he? Lord Camrose. Who? He controlled Amalgamated Press, which published 73 magazines in 1951, with a total circulation of more than 14 million. But then most of that – Answers, Home Chat, Weldon’s Ladies Journal, et al – was bought from Northcliffe’s estate in 1926. And he would probably want to be known for his stewardship of the Daily Telegraph.

But these men left the magazine editorial floor for newspapers and created the world of press barons.

How about cartoonist Alfred Leete? Another new name? But his front cover for London Opinion is probably the most famous ever penned. Or Bruce Bairnsfather, whose Old Bill from Bystander lives with us today as the nickname for a policeman.

Another magazine title – London Life. For 10 years running up to WWII this was the apogee of art deco cover design for a weekly and it seems to have spawned every sexual fetish going, from high heels to maids’ costumes to artificial limbs – in its letters pages. Who was the editor? Haven’t a clue.

From the 1960s and 1970s. Town – Clive Labovitch and Michael Heseltine gave Tom Wolsey his head in designing a great-looking magazine, but it never made any money. Nova, another title that burned bright but leaked money. Harry Fieldhouse launched it and art editor Harri Peccinotti was there throughout in some capacity; David Hillman made his name on it; Dennis Hackett edited both Queen and Nova. Oz tried to blow the system apart and came pretty close – it gave Felix Dennis his first taste of magazines and he went on to launch the world bestselling Maxim. With Honey, Audrey Slaughter showed the way for the teen market and went on to edit Vanity Fair (where she was so outraged over the launch of Cosmopolitan that she went off and launched Over 21) and later Working Woman.

Ruari McLean – he designed the Eagle – and wrote Magazine Design, the world’s first book on the topic according to OUP, in 1969. John Parsons was art director of Vogue from 1948 to 1964, and had a stint at Queen.

And talking of Town, what about the magazine it was created from, Man About Town. John Taylor launched it as an offshoot of the trade journal Tailor & Cutter. He spent 24 years in charge of T&C and made it “the most quoted trade paper in the world”, according to The Times. Now, most great editors will receive such lauding at some stage in their careers, but how many have a portfolio of such quotes from the Daily Mail, the Guardian US weekly Time and The New Yorker!

More recent great names: James Brown certainly set the agenda when he moved from NME to launch Loaded, but he didn’t work out at GQ, and Jack and Hotdog never flew. Mike Soutar took FHM by the scruff of the neck – with a ‘funny, sexy, useful’ mantra – to murder Loaded in the sales stakes, did similar things with men’s magazines in the US, and came back to the UK to launch Shortlist. All that and a former beauty editor on women’s magazine Secrets to boot!

Dylan Jones has proved his credentials at The Face, i-D, Arena and GQ.

But what about the face itself; Vogue (1916 launch in UK); Woman (1937); Tatler (1903); Cosmo (1973); Dazed & Confused; Grazia (one of my favourites for its all-encompassing excellence from paper to design to the editors’ A-team); I’m going to have to stop here! It’s like the song lyric – And those I miss you’ll surely pardon. Your thoughts?

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

Martin Sharp and Oz at it again on Ebay

Oz 3 poster by Martin Sharp

A copy of the third issue of Oz – the underground trippy title that brought Felix Dennis to fame – from 1967 is zooming up the Ebay charts with 10 bids reaching £122 – with 6 days to go. Expect a flurry at the end.

This issue has a three panel fold out poster by Martin Sharp and Souvenir Century, the seller, lists the the contents as:

Revlon Invents Wet Lipstick on the reverse. Beautiful Breasts competition. Mike McInnerney graphic, and ‘Tripping and Skipping They Ran Merrily After the Wonder Full Music…’ – Warren Hinkles on Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and the Acid Tests. ‘Last Exit to Brewer Street’ – article on publisher John Calder. ‘Why Politics is Giving Everyone the…’ – girl-on.-toilet-on-Parliament 2 page photomontage, and ‘An Address to politicians’. Protest Postcards to politicians. Pop and Drugs sections. ‘In Praise of Ugliness’ by Colin MacInnes. Magnificent Failures. Frisco Speaks – Sharp cartoon.

They don’t make them like that any more.

Dennis builds on digital Monkey success

No monkeying about

While Conde Nast is having a hard time in the US, Dennis, it seems, can do no wrong with its digital magazines in the UK. This year’s launches, iGizmo and iMotor, are both attracting more than 100,000 readers an issue, and lad’s weekly Monkey has registered four successive rises.

The ABCe now credits pioneer Monkey with 283,541 readers a week; iGizmo has 101,785; and iMotor, 108,622. All use Ceros technology.

A look at the Digi-Zines website shows the growth in the sector – with Exact Editions alone now pumping out 75 titles.

History of digital magazines

Sea change for journalism

Just got round to reading the FT‘s Life & Arts section from the weekend. If you missed it, catch up with FT editor Lionel Barber‘s front-page feature on the state on US journalism:

The sea change was palpable at the Democratic national convention in Denver in August. Hundreds of bloggers were present, many enjoying for the first time much-coveted seats inside the convention hall. Close by, the bloggers were installed in a “Big Tent”, a 9,000-sq foot, two-storey structure devoted to new media and offering free massages. The mainstream press, one top New York Times journalist sniffed, were obliged to register as visitors before being allowed inside.

There’s also an interview with Felix Dennis – who was featured in the FT not so long ago with his pants down -  though there’s little new in this. And Maxim being ‘one of Britain’s best-selling men’s magazines’ is wide of the mark (at 43,000 its sales are a third of even GQ‘s, never mind FHM‘s 280,000).

Motor Play for car buffs

Motor Play has beaten Dennis to the launch of a digital car magazine. The new title is a free monthly ‘with over 200 pages of beautifully produced articles on cars,’ says publisher Jason Owen. He sees it as ‘open to a wide audience, not only to boy racers and car fanatics’.

Dennis to launch digital car magazine

Dennis is to launch its third digital magazine on July 17 with free motoring title iMotor. The magazine will be sent out by email each fortnight with content based on test-drive videos, photographs, articles and reviews. The  target readership will be ABC1 men aged 30 and over.

Dennis was able to sign up more than 100,000 subscribers for the March launch of consumer technology digital magazine iGizmo by marketing it to its database of 1.5 million male readers. Digital men’s monthly Monkey has ABCe figure of 245,404 copies a week (Jan-Jun 2007).

Dennis profile

Monkey profile

Oz set sells for $5,700

Larry Viner of the Advertising Archives tells me that the Oz complete collection went for $5,700 in New York (estimate $4,000-$6,000). So anyone who paid the £9,999 asking price for an Ebay buy-it-now over here would be feeling really hard done-by!

Collecting magazines

Hippies come out of the underground to buy Oz

The hippies are really coming out of the woodwork as the media celebrates 1968 and all that. Prices for underground magazines such as Oz are going through the roof. A copy of issue 5 from July 1967 sold for £561.30 on Ebay in May last year. A February 1967 first issue sold for £560 in September (one cost just £360 in 2006).

In December in London, a complete run made £3,600 and an almost complete run of International Times, fetched £3,000. That looks cheap compared with what’s on offer on Ebay at the moment – £5,999 starting bid for a set of Oz, £9,999 for a buy it now – and he wants £29.95 for the postage!

Probably better to fly to Bonhams in New York, which is auctioning a complete set on May 16 with a guide price of $3,000 – $6,000 (that’s about £1,500-£3,000, so for £10K you could bag the lot and have a good holiday).

It’s part of a collection put together by fashion designer Peter Golding. It’s worth taking a look at at his Inspirational Times 3D exhibition.