Loaded

Staying sane in difficult circumstances

Whilst many of the office were barely conscious, I took photos. They’re in the BBC Arena documentary which airs tonight.

I walked into Loaded, a new mag "for men who should know better" and I was welcomed by seeing loads of writers drinking beer. I followed the Levi-clad arse of Michael Holden up the stairs to retrieve a print of a photo Hamish Brown had taken of me at the Heavenly Social night when the Chemical Brothers were still DJing as the Dust Brothers.

"Do you have any jobs going?" I asked Tim Southwell (pictured), the man in charge, in editor, James Brown’s absence.  They did, PA to James. I went off and learnt how to type - and got shortlisted down from a phenomenal number of applicants to the last two (i sent in Pulp Fiction faxes - holding guns to their heads). In the final interview they didn't give me that gig, but one as Trainee Writer.

What happens in the office, stays in the office - but it didn't.  Loaded infected the culture in the wake of the Criminal Justice Act (1994). It offered Laddism up from the football terraces to media - the class detonation of Loadsamoney Thatcherism and acid-house was the warm-up act. It was the most rock n roll office i have ever worked in. (Although there are some pictures by Kelli Ali, serving as my photographer to interview Irvine Welsh at the Creation Records HQ but that is another story). There are recordings of a lot of my past as I’ve dipped into the stories of others. As a journalist, i have attracted those who would like me to open the gates to the castles. (And my legs, not that I ever felt sexy in those environments, I’m not a model - and the superficial pressure to comply to ideals of beauty is a total fucker if you aren’t educated to understand that).

I was quickly working across the media as a teenager because Loaded 1994-1995 was winning awards every lunchtime with its brilliant journalism from some of the best writers i will ever work with AND incredible photographs.  The tits were something I ignored, I’d been having to before I walked into that office. Being really unpornographic-looking i was always a bit intimidated by the sexual portrayals of women - so i never fitted into that. I stunted at about 13, so Heroin chic was more my bag - and i saw it as owning my body to go out in sheer clothes given to me by brilliant designers like Mrs Jones and Marcus Constable. I’m glad women can (generally) express themselves without getting raped or murdered, it’s one of our true liberties of self-expression to use ourselves as pieces of art. But everything can go too far. My arse is on Instagram, for example. What has changed is it’s not a mono-media now, anyone can publish anything, and because of that there are far more sophisticated conversations now (if you can get past the flobs of homogenous, boosted trash). I don't think Only Fans is what i'm particularly comfortable with, and certainly wouldn’t have been then.

What amazed me about getting the negatives back on this particular story of my past, was alongside pictures of all the beer bottles in the office, there were teenage parties on the same roll.

I was not far off being illegal, but all of us were young.  James's trauma of his mum dying was a total secret, and we all had our secrets. There was no Wellness back then. Madness was stigmatised, there was no mental health, it was MENTAL MENTAL RAADIO RENTAL! We all had our self-coping mechanisms - and i very much respect Michael Holden's on-screen admission about his admission (to hospital). It serves as the midpoint to all the low-rent immitators that followed.

We were the real deal back then when I started, going to clubs like Smashing, and although I had no education in feminism, it didn’t really need to exist in the clubs I grew up in - we were all equal there, we were frontline class warriors. I still stand by the principles of acid-house, of peace, love and unity. Men were vulnerable to that too, and naturally wanted to reclaim themselves. Male consumer culture was not nearly as advanced as it now, homophobia was different - queers couldn’t really hug each other in the street like we can now. I had no idea about Christian’s struggle to be in that office until watching this film.

The media could be a cruel place for anyone who wasn't a straight white man - and I am so happy to see more diversity now - there were only three people of colour working at IPC Magazines back then, Dele Fadelle RIP, Neil Kulkarni RIP, and a security guard. If anything, this documentary shows that the white lad is dead, RIP. But instead we have super-bully-boys like Andrew Tate and Russell Brand and Trump. I just wanted to hug Gail Porter after seeing this.

Few stories were my own until I freed myself of establishment power and went back to uni, read a lot of texts, taught them, and slowly gained the independence to start DIYing - and i am so grateful to have had the privilege to be a part of so many worlds - because we are our experience and i am rich for all of them.

The 90s were unreal in a different way to now.  On LinkedIn it’s hard to explain Loaded and DJing with Howard Marks.

But what director, Gussy Sakula-Barry has done (on the pitch by producer Jessica Brady - whom I adore) is a brave take - it puts Loaded forward as the barely conscious tipping-point for the pornification of pop culture. Porn addiction was not why most people end up in therapy, we didn’t have therapy, like we didn’t have Spotify providing what Mark Radcliffe once described to me as a tap of music - Loaded heralded tit count normalisation, but that wasn’t really the point in Loaded. It was about blagging it as we could, going further and further - and for many that meant giving it all up for lent and beyond.

No wonder I get called punk, Loaded was wild, and it’s only now I can look back and see it as something which firmly belongs in the past. And my past. But it was fun, whilst it lasted.