The Editor s office at Loaded is exactly how you imagined it would be. Heinous stains on the carpet. Tatty posters and ranting, scrawled messages on the walls. Buckshee liquor piling up on the table and numerous publishing awards plonked in the spare corners.
And there he is: the boss man, Derek Harbinson, his feet on the desk, lunching on a Scotch egg and fancy cakes. A young lad, on the right side of 30, happily established in London at the top of Britain s biggest publishing phenomenon of the 90s. He wipes away the crumbs, sparks up a cigarette and outlines some of his core attributes for the job.
It s about being provincial, and not coming from London, he rasps. Especially being from Northern Ireland, there s a certain distain for pretention. You can t get away with stuff there. If anybody walked down the street dressed funny, it s like, Oi! Fuck off! Which is pretty much what a lot of Loaded has always been about. Straight down the middle, no ponciness.
He comes from the Knock area in East Belfast, just down the road from Stormont. His ad hoc career has involved a spell in Israel and 18 months at home on the dole ( which was fantastic, I loved it ). Deciding to try journalism, he took a gig at The Ulster Star in Lisburn, and spent time in Sydney with The Daily Telegraph-Mirror. Back in Belfast, he sent his CV to the Loaded offices in November 95 and the Chief Sub called him on a Friday. He was on the squad by Monday.
It s fucking great fun, this job. You get paid to enjoy yourself. Plus, it s always been a really brilliant team on this magazine, that s the thing that makes it. No matter what anybody else might think, it was never a one-man band.
He s referring to his predecessor, James Brown, a sporadic genius and occasional asshole from Yorkshire who devised the mag after quitting NME. The new publication was thrown together in the gonzo spirit, a style popularised by Hunter S. Thompson, who in turn was inspired by JP Donleavy s The Ginger Man.
James Brown is now in a well-salaried position at GQ, and the sales of Loaded, though high, are starting to level out after their hurtling progress through the New Lad era. Also, the circulation of FHM, which hijacked much of the spirit of Loaded, is now the market leader. But Derek doesn t seem to be bothered by these perceived pressures.
Sales have never been the driving force, he reckons. Which is why, in a market that is obsessed with putting semi-naked women on the cover, we ll still put Ian Brown and Dennis Hopper some 62-year-old bloke on the front. You take a sales dip, but so what, you still retain your own identity. To me, it s an act of confidence, that you can do that.
So what about the laddish content of the magazine? Where do you draw the line?
The lines we don t cross are drawn by ourselves. It s down to instinct, really. It s never been done from a cynical marketing exercise.
And what about the Platinum Rogues table of misbehaviour: does it bother you that wife-beaters have figured in there?
It s always been the policy, and still is, that the Rogues chart doesn t have that. Beating up a woman isn t big or clever at all. Assault, sexual assault and drunk-driving never appear in the chart. Somebody like Paul Gascoigne may be in the chart for one bit of behaviour, but you ll not find him in there for beating his wife. It s obviously extremely foolish and ridiculous behaviour. You should be flogged for doing that sort of thing.
And future plans?
I ve never really had a career plan. You can t really top this job. Maybe in the future, I ll have jobs that maybe pay more money, or that are different. But this is the best job in publishing. If I could get a New York salary, I d be more than happy.