In truth I didn’t have to apply for the editor’s job at the men’s magazine because they approached me (on a street corner...no not really, sorry, I just can’t help it). See, I’d launched the car magazine and then I’d been in charge of a whole group of them as well as some hifi publications. By then I’d got a pretty good reputation for taking magazines, rejuvenating them and then relaunching them, so I think they thought I could do the same with this magazine full of naked women. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Now, you might think – well some of you might think, the blokes mostly – that this would be a dream job, staring at naked women all day, interviewing rising young pornolettes and then deciding just how explicit they should be on any given page. But it’s not. It’s just like working on any other magazine. Actually perhaps it’s a bit different to working on Budgie World or Extruded Cement Monthly  (incorporating Flyovers) but really after a while you get a bit bored with all the vacuous pouty girls with large breasts, their long legs and short skirts, their revealing underwear and, yes, their naked flesh, and you just get on with the job.
I think the only people who don’t eventually get bored and always rise to the occasion are the photographers. As it happened, one of them (snappers, we call them) had worked with me on car magazines (he liked to say he’d swapped one kind of bodywork for another – tish-boom). His name was Bill.
Now, Bill was married to a very nice lady called Sophie and they lived in a very nice Victorian terraced house in Islington, so they were doing all right. The problem was, Bill found it very hard to keep his hands on his telephoto lens and it was a well-known fact across the industry that he usually ended up having a fling with the models. I guess the temptation was great, if you think about it. Here you have a girl who wants to take her clothes off in front of you because you are handy with a probing camera (most of these girls thought it a good stepping stone to page 3 of The Sun, such were their stratospheric ambitions...) and not too surprisingly one thing often led to another. The other thing was that all the snappers on all the magazines knew each other so the girls knew they could get work on other magazines too by being, how shall I put this, friendly and personable with the snappers.
Anyway, one day I’m sitting at my desk and the phone rings and it’s Bill. He’s shooting the main pictorial for the relaunch issue and as always in magazines, we’re running late. It’s vitally important we get the film off him asap.
“Hey, mate, can you get over the studio now?”
Bill’s studio was in an old converted warehouse near Canary Wharf, which at that time was just going up, so there were still plenty of old dockyard buildings. It looked a dangerous place to be, but in a strange way I liked it.
“Well,” I said quietly, looking with a magnifying glass at some pictures of a girl called Sadie who was destined for the next issue, “I’ve got my hands a bit full at the moment.”
“Look,” said Bill, “I need some trousers.”
“Trousers?”
“Yeah, and a shirt. Socks would be good. And can you bring some dresses or skirts and panties?”
“Bill, you’re supposed to supply your own props, you know this.”
“No,” said Bill, “you don’t understand. Get round here.”
I shook my head.
“Please, mate.”
“God, you’re so annoying.”
When I got there he opened the door a crack and when he saw it was me he let me in. He was completely naked. So were the three blonde girls in the bed.
“Bill, is this a joke?”
“Mate, Sophie came round.”
“Yes?”
They just looked at me.
No, no, no,” I said, slowly sitting on the edge of the bed.
So, Sophie had had enough of Bill’s antics. She’d come around the studio, used a key she’d got copied, entered, and found Bill in bed with the three buxom blondes. She’d gone, in his words, “absolutely mental” and stormed around, eventually snatching his clothes and the girls' clothes off the floor. I asked him why none of them did anything and he looked at me as if I was absolutely mental myself and said, “we were all naked and in bed, mate”.
“There is one other thing,” said Bill.
“There would be, wouldn’t there?”
“Yeah, she took the camera and the film.”
“God almighty, Bill. You’ll have to reshoot straight away,” I said.
The girls looked terrified.
“No way,” said one of them, “that woman is –“
“Yeah, I know,” I said snappily, “absolutely mental. Jesus. So, you have to go around there Bill and get that film.”
They all stared at me.
Half an hour later, by which time of course it had begun to rain, I was standing on the steps of a Victorian terrace house in Islington in my long raincoat, banging on the door. After a while I crouched down and opened the letter box and shouted, “Soph, come on. I need those pictures of the girls.”
“Go to hell,” she shouted back from down their echoing hallway. I could see her in there, camera in hand, eyes blazing.
“Come on, be fair,” I said.
“Yes, yes, be fair,” she shouted, “that’s what he’s being isn’t it, shagging all those slappers. That’s fair isn’t it?”
“I think he was just taking pictures of them. Come on, give me the film.”
“The film, the bloody film? You want the film of this animal of a husband shagging these slappers?”
“YES,” I shouted back, getting fed up now, “GIVE ME THE FILM OF THE BLOODY ANIMAL HUSBAND SHAGGING THE BLOODY SLAPPERS AND PLEASE GIVE IT TO ME NOW!”
And at that moment, thinking back, I remembered hearing the soft thunk of a car door and I turned around from my crouching position to see two coppers in their fluorescent yellow jackets coming up the steps. And as I slowly straightened up, my hair dripping rain into my eyes which by now must have looked wild and bloodshot, the tallest copper said, while reaching slowly for his truncheon, “Now then sir, what’s all that about then?”
I called Bill from the police station to come and vouch for me but he said he couldn’t on account of the fact I’d not taken any clothes around and besides it was raining and it was better he stay in bed so he didn’t catch a cold. The girls sent their regards.
Eventually the publisher came along and looked at me in the cell and raised his eyebrows and said in his plummy voice, “So the relaunch is shaping up well, I take it?”
A year ago, as it happens, I got a call from the US and the bloke said, “So, I hear you have something of a track record launching magazines? We wondered if you’d like to launch one for us in Australia. We think Playboy will go down really well there.”
I did think about it. For about a second.

to be continued...