Well, fuck me. That’s a bit of a surprise. A whole new look Hot Press. And a new logo to boot! Somebody must have spiked my stroganoff with magic mushrooms…

There we were in the eye of the storm. The Hot Press drugs issue – itself a mammoth production – was about to hit the streets. The PR team were busy cranking up the media interest. Our TV ad highlighting the desperately contaminated quality of the illegal drugs widely available on the streets of Ireland was starting to make headlines. There was a dual message behind the ad: (a) snorting cocaine is a bad idea because in Ireland in 2008 you really don’t know what the fuck is in it or even if it contains any cocaine at all; and (b) that, in part at least, is because the drug is illegal and therefore in the hands of people who really do not give a shit how contaminated it gets.
Some wiseacres, it transpired, didn’t like the online version, which contained elements deemed unsuitable for viewing by the relevant authorities. Of course they missed the point: there was a deliberate hint of Reefer Madness about the whole thing. Made on a very small budget, it had a premeditated B-movie quality. We were having a bit of a laugh ourselves, while also making a serious point that badly needs to be made.
In this slot last issue, I referred to the elephant in the room. As Conor Montague demonstrated in his fine investigative piece inside the Hot Press Drugs Issue, having tested some 19 batches of cocaine, what passes for coke in Ireland is almost always shit. In fact, the drugs that are on sale in Ireland – especially cocaine but also cannabis, ecstasy and other drugs – are packed with all sorts of toxic detritus.
So, more often than not, it isn’t the drugs per se that are damaging or killing people. It is what is added to them (and the fact that this pushes users to consume more, and more, in search of the cocaine ‘high’). A lot of people had intuited this – but no one was saying it and so the whole debate was lopsided. We wanted to see if we could at least begin to rearrange that.
There was a lot of interest in the issue within the music industry (where, let’s face it, a fierce load of ‘coke’ is consumed), the media (ditto) and on the streets. Hardened underworld sources made contact with Jason O’Toole: they thought his interview with the big dealer was great. Radio all over the country wanted to hear more. Some of them planned to give us a hard time, but that’s OK. We sent a variety of troops out to bat and they more than held their own. Texts flew in. There were phone calls and emails from strange and unusual places. Even retailers got in on the act, demanding more copies.
An editorial in The Sun congratulated Hot Press and Olaf Tyaransen – who’d written the script for the 30 second commercial – for making the kind of ad that was needed to drive home the risk of using illegal drugs here. It was all a very long way from the last time I’d written an editorial in Hot Press suggesting that what they classify in the UK as Class A drugs, including heroin and cocaine, should be legalised: back then I’d appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror under the immortal headline: HAS NIALL GONE MAD (my first reaction, and I’m sure that of readers all over Ireland, was to wonder what crazy japes Niall Quinn had been getting up to).
All told, it’s been a whirlwind two weeks and the top is still spinning, with Stuart Clarke scheduled to go head-to-head with the Minister on Seoige and O’Shea tomorrow, after we finally go to press. That should be fun to watch.
And, here’s the rub. While all of that was going on, the plot that had been hatched when we put the Hot Press Annual together back in December was also being brought to fruition. That special issue confirmed that our printers could deliver the kind of quality we wanted in the improved A4 size you’re holding in your hand right now. Having done it once, we knew that we liked the look, the feel and the shape of the magazine in that format. The word on the grapevine was hugely positive too: Hot Press readers loved it. From a design and editorial point of view, it offered a whole new set of possibilities. The time felt right for a fresh adventure. And so we had decided to go for it. Now the countdown was in progress – and not a child in the house was washed…
Well, you’re holding the result of another brilliant collective effort on the part of the Hot Press team in your hands. For my part, I just want to say a huge thanks to everyone involved, for the magnificent, tireless dedication and the superb teamwork that’s been involved, over the past month in particular. Nothing less would have allowed us to publish a couple of classic issues of Hot Press – one after the other, just like that. Hats off to the lot of you. It’s been a hell of a ride.
Hey, you’ve got it now, dear reader – let’s know what you think…