Watching Brief

Some guy s have all the luck, warbled Robert Palmer, and he might well have been singing about Jeff and Larry. Executive Editor Jeff Cohen and Sales Director Larry Djerf are in Dublin with Irish born Playboy magazine model Tara King, to launch the company s new Lingerie Special Edition. Since they re here, they also plan to interview some Irish women who might like to pose for the publication. Auditions and preliminary photo shoots will take place over three days. I agree to cover the spectacle, on the strict understanding that I will not expect to be paid. Ever again. It proves almost worth it...

Jeff initially worked as a photographer before heading the Playboy Special Editions division. He explains that the magazine is basically Playboy without the editorial copy, but insists that he considers his product art.
We portray beautiful women in the best way we can, using light and image. It s an idealised image since everybody is beautiful on some level, but we re dealing with a photographic image and... not everyone looks great on camera. I ve had to tell some incredibly beautiful women that we re not using them simply because, for some strange reason, the camera does not capture them in that special, Playboy, way. It s actually a tough job...
Launched in Ireland amid much media furore in 1996, Playboy currently sells more than thirty thousand copies per month in Ireland, More than GQ and Esquire combined , as Larry proudly informs me. As we go to meet Tara, I ask what the guy s wives think of their job. We just don t tell em , says Jeff. Hell, my wife thinks I m a dentist, quips Larry, though it later transpires that his wife, former Playboy model Melody, is accompanying him on this trip.
Tara King is a spectacularly beautiful twenty-seven-year-old with a Birmingham accent that belies her Irish roots. She was born in Dublin 7 but grew up in the UK. What s a nice girl like her doing in a job like this?
Are you joking? , she laughs, It s because I m nice! Men like nice girls. I originally wanted to be a fashion model, but they said I was too curvy so I did a bit of glamour work and then I did page three in The Sun and then I was recruited by Playboy s London photographer Byron Newman. Like a lot of people, I m very vain if I m to be honest, and I love the way I look in the Playboy pictures. I ve got no problem with my body and the way I m portrayed in Playboy, it s pretty arty stuff, it s classy and I get to travel a lot and meet loads of people and do things like this.
The image that it s about men expoloiting women is ridiculous when you consider that the Playboy people co-ordinating the Dublin auditions are Mary Sylvester, Special Editions Chicago production manager, and Jodi Vander Woude, who s a Photo Production Co-Ordinator out of the Las Vegas office. Playboy get dozens of letters every day from women who want to pose, and it s important to make people feel comfortable with it, since it makes for a better photograph.
Why do so many women wish to pose for Playboy?
Well for a start it s a lot of fun, you get made up and wear fabulous clothes and go to exotic locations and you get paid for it, but also it can be a springboard to other things, modelling, acting or singing. I ve musical ambitions myself, I ve been recording tracks in London recently and it s an interesting sell if you can claim you ve appeared in Playboy. It can open doors. My stuff is like a cross between Madonna, who I love, and Jennifer Lopez, but it s also quite clubby. I ll send you a tape...
Tara departs to meet relatives in Dublin, and I descend to the lower bar where Mary Sylvester is organising tonight s press reception. Her phone rings constantly as women respond to flyers and radio publicity advertising the casting session.
We ve had around two hundred phone calls so far, Mary explains, and we ve got a great response from the women we ve been talking to, it should go really well. There s a huge Irish community in the US so we figure that including Irish girls should prove a big hit with our readers. I ve been hoping that The Corrs might contact us but so far nothing, she smiles.
Later that evening I m chatting to photographer Byron Newman, who looks more like a member of the Rolling Stones than a snapper for the biggest men s magazine in the world, when I m introduced to Olivia, an extremely pretty twenty-one-year-old Dublin girl who s here to have her photo taken as she can t make tomorrow s session. What attracted her to Playboy?
I just think it could be fun and exciting, she says. I work as a hair stylist in Dublin and Jodi asked if I d come down. I m a little nervous but I ve seen the magazine and I wear less than that on the beach, so... Mary has set up a studio in an upstairs room, and after ensuring that Olivia is okay with posing in her smalls, Byron and the ladies go to work.
Like I say, some guys have all the luck.