Goodbye, Boys. It's All Over Fo Odbye, Boys. It's All

2 1GT Thursday November 19 2015 | the times the times | Thursday November 19 2015 1GT 3 times2 times2 FREEK; HENRIK/CORBIS Goodbye, boys. It’s all over for lads’ mmaagsgs The lowdown 7 things Bill Murray I moan FHM and Zoo are the latest casualties The lad isn’t dead, about in the final throes of lads’ mag culture. he has just gone It was inevitable, says Phil Robinson to the gym (this egg ged 23, on a private demographic to a T). The only By Daniel Masoliver Learjet with the problem was me. I kept crying and for one) world’s biggest rock could no longer write about Britain’s o, is the office full of glamour band, Metallica, top 50 sitcoms. I checked myself into models walking around in I thought it would a depression clinic. I never went back. their underwear?” It was, Deborah be fun if we all stood Most of the readers felt just as jaded. without fail, the first thing in the aisle on take- By the time I left in 2000, demand ‘S anyone of either sex would Aoff. “Are you sure?” for lads’ mags had peaked and the ask me on learning that I worked at Ross shouted the pilot. “Just do it, man!” saturated market was about to be FHM. Er, No. Follow-up questions they shouted. The jet shot upwards fragmented further by lads’ weeklies were on a similar theme: is it just and we ended up in a pile by the toilet. such as Nuts and Zoo. As publishers blokes sitting around partaking in Or at least, not to me. In Yiddish when they amount to thinly Ninety minutes later, we arrived in fought for an ever diminishing market “witty banter”? No. Did any women Bill Murray is making a Christmas it even has a name, and that’s disguised boasts, as in “Bloody New York, locked ourselves into a share, the editorial defaulted to the work there? Yes, lots. spectacular for Netflix: A Very “kvetching”, as defined in The Joys neighbours drilling their super- biker club, argued about Jaws and lowest common denominator: boobs. It was a tedious line of inquiry, but Murray Christmas, also starring of Yiddish by Leo Rosten as “to fret, basement. When will the noise sniffed drugs off the bar. These guys Why would readers spend £4 on I could hardly blame people for asking. George Clooney. It only confirms complain, gripe, grunt, sigh”, but ever stop?”, which tells everyone were all posters on my wall at college. some pictures of starlets in tasteful Everyone remembered the high street what we knew all along. Murray is not, just so you know, necessarily in you live in a rich street. It was 1996 and I’d been working on lingerie when they could see nude honeys, Gail Porter’s derriere projected Christmas. that order. I tend to sigh first, and I don’t do social media much. I lads’ magazines for two years, having paparazzi shots at the click of a mouse on to the walls of the Houses of What? I thought Santa was nothing bad has ever happened to find its “pick me, pick me, pick me!” been hired after writing a short article and spend the cash on, say, scratch Parliament, the 100 Sexiest lists. Try Christmas, if anyone. me as a result. The skies didn’t culture too terrifying, reminding on George Best’s “birds” while doing cards? Without quality journalism as a succession of editors might to open and God didn’t come down to me of those sports teams at work experience. At the time, titles and funny writing there was no reason change the magazine’s tone, one thing Santa? An old man hanging around bang me on the head with a big schools, when not only was I such as FHM were being hyped to buy lads’ magazines. Those greedy they couldn’t change was those three children? No, Bill Murray can do hammer, for example. always chosen last, but at rounders endlessly by the BBC and Channel 4, publishers underestimated men. letters standing stubbornly at the top of that way better. Look at Lost in It’s in our blood and bones, this was made such an outside, outside who were obsessed with the rise of the the page. Everyone had an opinion Translation: his old geezer helped kvetching, and can even, I believe, fielder I was effectively beyond the “new lad” (old lad but in touch with about what FHM stood for and no one young Scarlett Johansson just when he New York be traced back to the Israelites in school boundary and playing his feelings.) It was all very patronising. I wrote about men was interested in hearing otherwise. In she needed it. Times has noticed the Old Testament. We’re hungry. truant. So I’ve saved my own My theory is that as Britain changed the end FHM was a victim of its success. Well, I suppose, but hanging out in a trend that it has We’re thirsty. He pinched me. kvetches, a few of which I will to a service-based economy, thousands twiddling nipples Still, the dying days of the lads’ mag Tokyo bars with a starlet isn’t exactly named “the Virgin Media, you said you’d be present to you today: of working-class blokes with student offered a young journalist like me the deeply moral message we crave microcomplaint”, up and running again in an hour. 0 To the person who just came loan-funded degrees were imprisoned like radio dials unparalleled opportunities. Three at this time of year. those complaints What’s happening? This desert up behind me at the road crossing in mind-numbing jobs in call centres. months into the job I found myself in about next to sucks. Are we nearly there yet? and pressed the button on the Lads’ magazines helped these men to By Flic Everett Medellín, Colombia, surrounded by Wrong: Murray embodies exactly Tnothing that And I am not just a kvetch at escape and forge a new identity. traffic light after I’d just pressed it: young women meeting middle-aged the Christmas message. It’s taken are being given prominence heart, but have been a kvetch what part of my pressing didn’t Each one served a different tribe. n 1996 I got a call from the editor Americans, as part of a report on the Lost in Translation director by social media. since childhood. I once wrote to you trust? FHM was like a women’s magazine for of FHM, who wanted me to write mail-order brides and sex tourism. Sofia Coppola just another 12 years It’s BT not coming when they Wall’s because my Funny Face ice 0 I have to say, this hard-boiled men, rooted in Thatcherite aspiration, a piece called “50 things you do Then there was a two-day mission to cast Bill Murray in the role he said they would, that person on lolly was not in the shape of a egg isn’t giving up its shell pub culture and, gulp, “high street wrong in bed”. “Only 50?” I said. driving a Mini full of staffers around was born for. The public have the train hogging two seats, the funny face — it was a splat, with without a fight. honeys’’. Loaded, for which I worked, II wrote about men twiddling the UK, trying every single known it deep down all along. flight that’s delayed and it may no eyes, which is what I would 0 Waitrose, if basil is now was a swaggering working-class fanzine, nipples like radio dials and giving rollercoaster in a bid to find the That Murray likes co-starring with even be Nigella grilling a lettuce look like in middle age, but I Majestic Basil and garlic is rich with northern club culture, full breasts pet names, and the piece was country’s scariest ride (the Big One at young blondes? I notice that in the because at this time of global didn’t know that then — and they Glorious Garlic, would you buy of girls in latex and pages dedicated to hugely popular. Blackpool Pleasure Beach). case of A Very Murray Christmas turmoil what we most need to sent me a token for a free one. my spit if I renamed it Sexy Spit? street writers such as William After that, I often rounded up the There was astronaut training in zero Coppola has cast him crooning know is: is it in fact a recipe? (As I then took to complaining to 0 Someone just ate the one Burroughs, fry-ups and fine tailoring. “girls on the couch”, a slot where gravity in Florida; a three-day voyage alongside Miley Cyrus. Cyrus wears a opposed to what? A grand piano? ice-cream companies generally, thing in the fridge I had my eye Young writers like me were suddenly women talked frankly about sex and on a dance music cruise ship in the tiny red dress. A long kiss in a doorway on a and I can’t specify how many on, as per. possessed of a golden ticket to go what men were doing wrong. FHM Caribbean in the company of Fatboy rainy afternoon?) free Fabs I got, but it was quite 0 What happened to Past Times anywhere to do anything. I once fielded genuinely wanted its readers to know, Slim; and the day I spent traipsing No. That people consider his However, while the prominence a few. I also once wrote to Etch and where am I now meant to buy a a call from a writer asking if he could so I’d ply the girls with chardonnay around Manchester Arena dressed in masterpiece, Groundhog Day, an of such complaining is a new A Sketch when a knob fell off..

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