by Mark Dapin
While Loaded was winning all the attention in the UK, a newer magazine, FHM, was clocking up bigger sales. FHM started life as a fashion freesheet given away in boutiques. It evolved into a not very good men’s magazine, three-parts Loaded, two-parts water. It was Green Day to Loaded’s Clash, Kylie Minogue to Loaded’s Aretha Franklin. It was less smart, less sophisticated, less culturally savvy than Loaded – but so were most men. FHM stumbled upon the real mass market: the hundreds of thousands who do not quite get the joke, but repeat it anyway. It quickly nudged men off the cover, replaced them with the B-list lingerie girls, and stacked its pages with girls, sex and sex advice, while simultaneously playing up its rag-trade roots with advertiser-friendly fashion features. In most men’s titles, the fashion legitimises the cheesecake, puts the ‘style’ into men’s lifestyle, distinguishes the magazines from pornography. FHM had fashion credibility, which enabled it to move downmarket. It became a very clever product. Like Loaded, it directed a furious, tabloid energy to its headlines and – especially – its captions. Like Loaded, it built its own lexicon – based on prudish crudity; British seaside postcard humour – in which women were always ‘ladies’, and while ladies might sometimes go out without ‘underthings’, no man would leave the house without his ‘beer hat’. FHM assumed its readers knew nothing about anything and – in its matey, witty way – set out to explain to them how to live their lives. It grew into a men’s version of Women’s Weekly, aimed not at the bloke who imagined he was cool, but at the man who thought of himself as ordinary.
Elements of FHM crept into ‘Burn Out’, which burned out before it was born. ACP publisher Richard Walsh had moved on to launch Packer’s magazines overseas, and the company’s Australian operations had been taken over by Colin Morrison. Nick Chan, a former classmate of Kerry Packer’s son and heir, James, had been second-in-command under Walsh, and found himself again second-in-command under Morrison – even though James was now managing the family company. Nick published an eclectic swathe of ACP titles, including The Picture and People, Cleo and Big Hit, Teletubbies and Bob the Builder. He wanted the new men’s title, but he was not allowed to publish motoring magazines.
Brad worked for Nick, and he needed ‘Burn Out’. Inside the company, Brad was only known for being good at smut but he knew more about magazines than anyone in the company. He understood why readers bought them. He could choose the photograph that would sell a cover, and compose the line that would sell the photograph. His flair grew out of a rare empathy for enthusiasts. He knew men loved naked women, but they also loved cars, cricket, jokes, dogs and power tools, and some of them even loved their dunny, especially if they built it themselves. Brad could translate into print men’s unconditional affection for life’s uncomplicated pleasures – an uncommon talent he shared with James Brown.
Brad had to expand out of porn because, in the end, porn is boring, it is too easy, and it gets no respect. He wanted to run all of the men’s titles at ACP, and the new magazine would be his first step. ‘Burn Out’ ceased to be a car magazine and moved closer to an Australian Loaded, which would more naturally be published by Nick, with Brad as editor-in-chief. The new direction demanded a new title. Jack Marx, now associate editor of ‘Burn Out’, lobbied energetically for ‘Jack’. Art director Chris Andrew wanted the strangely Chris-sounding ‘Chisel’. Brad was in favour of ‘303’, after the Australian rifle, or ‘Dingo’. Other suggestions included ‘Pistol’ and the brilliant ‘Murray Claire’.
The magazine was never going to be called ‘Ralph’. ‘Ralph’ was a joke name, a working title that stuck to the magazine like vomit dried onto porcelain. There are Ten Immutable Rules of Magazine Publishing. Number Five is: Never Call Your Magazine After A Bodily Function. Ralph might as well have been ‘Chunder’ or ‘Puke’ as far as advertisers were concerned, and no pouting soap star wanted to lounge under a looming, mocking ‘Ralph’ logo.
Nevertheless, ‘Burn Out’ was launched as Ralph mid-1997, with an advertising campaign devised by Sargent Rollins Vranken Terakes. The ads showed a woman in lingerie tidying up a filthy room on her knees, while her boyfriend sat with his feet up watching the television. The catchline was ‘What’s wrong with this picture. . .? He isn’t watching the footy.’
I’m sure Sargent Rollins Vraken Terakes followed ACP’s inappropriate brief to the misogynist letter, and the ad won an award. The TV voiceover asked: ‘Tired of political correctness? Then pick up a copy of Ralph. Because inside every sensitive new age guy, there isn’t one.’
‘Political correctness’ was a tender, inflamed topic in 1997, the year Pauline Hanson launched One Nation. The previous year’s election had seen the end of the Keating Labor government, and both Liberal leader John Howard and National frontman Tim Fischer had condemned ‘political correctness’ in their campaigns. To them, ‘political correctness’ was a peculiar form of dishonesty – saying what you do not believe so as not to cause offence to people you really do not like (this used to be called ‘good manners’). The beneficiaries of political correctness were minorities – usually Aboriginals, Asians or gays – who could no longer be criticised. The victims were straight, white and usually male, and had been robbed of the language with which to express their prejudices. They could not call a spade a spade anymore, or a coon, a nigger or a boong.
Howard counterfeited political capital by characterising the whole Keating political culture as ‘PC’, and smeared his attempts at reconciliation with the noxious grease of commonsense racism. The subtext to the sneers was always, ‘Nobody really likes Abos/slopes/queers – so why pretend?’ The campaign against political correctness became a One Nation policy platform.
Radio advertising on Triple M had to be dropped. SRVT’s Kim Terakes said the campaign was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, that it was so over the top it was funny, that it was ‘almost’ taking the mickey out of men. It was supposed to be ironic. Irony has its place – it sits well in Greek tragedy, for instance – but that place is not in advertising. Worst of all, nobody who saw the first ads for Ralph would have had any idea what was in the magazine.
The magazine was ‘pre-launched’ in Sydney at a classic-car showroom called the Toy Shop, with a funny speech by Libby Gorr, who claimed ‘Ralph’ was an acronym for ‘Reliable and Lovable Piss Head’. At the later Melbourne pre-launch, Nick read out the same speech. What sounded warm and witty from the mouth of a busty, vivacious woman looked like the wrong words had been dubbed into a movie soundtrack coming from Nick.
Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine concluded: ‘My straw poll of a dozen 18 to 45-year-old men had sad results for Ralph. Most said the magazine failed to emulate the British counterparts because it was too ‘smutty’ and not witty enough.’ It was an uncontroversial assessment. The editor-in-chief of Ralph was Brad Boxall, who was also editor-in-chief of The Picture. The first editor of Ralph was Geoff Seddon, who had been chief sub at The Picture. His associate editor was Jack Marx, who had been chief sub at The Picture. When Jack imploded, he was replaced by Tim Scott, who had been chief sub at The Picture. Ralph’s first chief sub was Scott, and its second was Simon Butler-White, who had been chief sub at The Picture. The grog writer was Pete Smith, a sub at The Picture. Other contributors included Paul Toohey, then chief sub at The Picture, Roger Crosthwaite, a sub at The Picture, and Boris Mihailovic, editor of the Category 1 Picture Premium. The eventual deputy art director was Tony Rice, a former designer at The Picture. The junior designer was Danny Bourke, who came from Sextra, a defunct offshoot of The Picture. The former editor of Sextra, Tony Lambert, wrote Ralph’s internet column.
All the journalists were good writers, some of them exceptional. Jack has written two fine books, and Paul Toohey won the Journalist of the Year award in 2001 for his writing on Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and a Walkley in 2002. Some of them had arrived at The Picture from newspapers, looking for a place to exercise their sense of humour – but it was inevitable that Ralph would inherit something
of The Picture’s pornographic sensibility. This was not the background of the journalists who launched the UK ‘lads’ magazines’. They came from the music press, and grew up on the New Musical Express’s uncompromisingly socialist Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill. Memories of the Anti-Nazi League’s use of pop culture in the fight against the fascist National Front ran deeply through UK music and style journalists. Their counterparts in Australia had, for the most part, no involvement with street politics. They drew the lines in different places.
The Ralph team was unclear what kind of a magazine the publisher wanted. They leaned towards an ‘Australian Loaded’ idea – with a dash of FHM – but Ralph was far cruder than Loaded. Subheadings and breakout quotes throughout the first issue included the words ‘bastards’, ‘bastard’, ‘cock’, ‘prick’, ‘blow job’ and ‘focked’. A commercially catastrophic feature story, entitled ‘Posting a dark parcel’, was illustrated by a stripper with her buttocks in the air, about to fart onto a torch. This single page included the words ‘pry nuggets from his bum with their fingers . . . browneye . . . shat in his pants . . . took a dump . . . chronic, uncontrollable farting . . . talking shit and taking the piss . . . major bodily discharges . . . typical log . . . let fluffy off the chain . . . cut the cheese . . . drink cow urine . . . . caribou dung . . . urine of young girls . . .excretory . . . farts himself to death . . . golden shower . . . turds . . . defecating and wiping himself . . . ‘lick my shit’ [a quote from James Joyce] . . . copography, pederasty and defecation . . . skid marks . . . cat shit’.
Two years later, advertisers still cited the story as the reason they would not buy space in the magazine.
When I was not gripped by some hysterical obsession, I reverted to the calm person I used to be. Nothing much bothered me. I lived in a closed world of books, pubs, gym and bed, rarely reading the paper and never watching TV. D once said, ‘You’re so laidback, you’re almost dead.’
Louisa Road was beautiful and soothing, and I was going out with Claire, who was also beautiful and soothing. She was twenty-two years old, one of my former students from journalism school, and she could ride a horse. She grew up in Sydney’s far north-west, among orchardists and fruit farmers. Her dad had seven sheds. The men in her life had all been quietly spoken, mechanically competent, spatially gifted people, who could mend broken things and reverse-park sedans. Claire had never met a man who could not drive and she had never eaten Thai food. I introduced her to the exotic, philanthropic pleasure of driving somebody else to an Asian restaurant.
I was still taken by thoughts of a New Mark, a more polished, urbane guy who could do up a shirt without missing two buttonholes, and go out for a drink without ending up undressed in Wales. The New Mark chose not to drive because of his total immersion in the world of nineteenth century literature, not because he could not simultaneously walk and whistle. In pursuit of spiritual peace and weight loss, I became a vegetarian. This lasted about six weeks, since I do not like vegetables. I then read Madame Bovary, by the end of which, I figured, the transformation was complete.
I never smoked again after the Maldives. I gave up on 3 October 1996, and I counted the days for five years (counted them incorrectly, in fact, since I have always believed I gave up on 30 October, but my passport calls me a liar). I could not have got through my dad’s funeral without cigarettes, or my break-up with Jo. As soon as I split up with D, I started smoking in bed. I reached for my Winfield Blues the moment I opened my eyes, because I loved to wake with that kick in my throat, that jolt in my blood. I had a second smoke with my first cup of tea, another after my shower, and a fourth as I left the house for work.
Smoking reminded me of everything. It was an arm around my shoulder, a smile in the winter, a taste of schoolgirls in summer, but I did not need it anymore. When I jogged in the mornings, it grabbed at my lungs. When I travelled on smoke-free transport, it pulled on my heart. When I hit the heavy bag, cigarettes hit me back.
I was content to forget the feeling of smoking, but it saddened me to lose the resonances, the memories, another link with the past.
I did not go to the pub much with Claire because I did not have a pub anymore. The AFR crowd had split up, and St Elmo’s had closed down. There were nice hotels in Birchgrove, but I did not know anyone inside.
The New Mark had his roots in the Old Mark. I tried to get back to what it was like when I was a kid, when I did not need a drink to keep warm inside, when I could spend an evening doing nothing in a park – shadowboxing and jumping between stones, laughing and telling lies – and come home thinking I would never want to do anything else, live anywhere else, be anyone else. I was searching for the kind of peace you have before anything has happened to you.
Claire moved into a loft in Surry Hills: not a New York-style loft apartment, but an actual loft – the chamber below the roof, where Mum stores your old train set and Dad hides his collection of True Blue magazines. Her bedroom was not big enough to stand up in, so we spent a lot of time in Birchgrove. We ate in the kind of restaurants I imagined the New Mark would frequent – restrained, would-be trattorias, with starched white tablecloths and flickering candles. I paid $20 for pastas I could have cooked myself for $2, and never brought a case of Foster’s as my BYO, as Chris and I had when we first came to Australia. I drank red wine, because I strongly believed red wine was for boys and white wine was for girls.
Around this time, things started to look promising for my movie about my grandad. I had a script and a star. I had had dinner with Warren Mitchell, and a couple of producers had expressed interest in the project. I was writing exciting stories for classy publications. I had no boss and no routine. Life was like a massage.
Gradually, I became invaded by a sense of ennui. It was the first time I had been touched by a French feeling of any kind. I was disturbed by the thought that I had wasted time in the past. I revisited school and university and Coventry, over and over again, trying to identify turning points. Mentally, I drafted half a dozen alternative autobiographies, which had me winning a journalism apprenticeship at eighteen, or taking up boxing at fourteen, or joining the British army or the Israeli army, or, oddly, the Gurkhas, a regiment of Nepalese volunteers.
I re-examined my motivations for every action and inaction. I wondered if I had done nothing because I was scared I might fuck up if I tried something, if I had deliberately taken a pointless degree because more useful study would have been too rigorous, if I had stayed with my girlfriends because no other woman would have wanted me, if I had remained a worker because I would not cut it as a manager, if I had become a socialist because I could not make it under capitalism.
I was always disturbed by what I was doing; whatever it was, it did not seem right. How could I make up Pet Lines for Penthouse, or caption fashion spreads for the AFR Magazine, or even write features for Good Weekend, when there was a world to be won?
My months in the SWP had shown me I was not very good at winning the world, and perhaps should devote my energies to something else, but I had no faith in the value of anything else. I was drinking with Chris one night in the 1980s, when I began to say, ‘As you know, I deeply respect and believe in . . .’ and he finished the sentence for me ‘. . . absolutely nothing and absolutely no-one.’
Until then, I had not realised that was true, or that it was so obvious, like a yellow curry stain on my white shirt. In Australia, I tried to tuck my politics into my trousers, and not to let them show.
I had to stop boxing, because I injured my thumb on Kon’s head, and I got bored. I became overly rational, continually weighing the benefits of one course of action over another. I spent much of my time finding reasons not to leave my unit, because it was so comfortable. I cut down on seeing friends, and I waited for Claire to visit me.
I did not have a job, a mortgage or a wife. I had shed responsibility for everything. I did not even have a pet (our cat, Captain, had gone to live with D). There was nothing I had to do, beyond write enough to eat and drink.
This was how I had hoped things would turn out. Now they had, I wanted something else. As usual, I felt I had something to prove: this time, that I could be a better boss than any of the people I had worked for. As usual, it was D who had implied that I could not, that I did not understand the pressures they were under, that I had too high an opinion of myself, that I was – just perhaps – a thundercunt.
I decided I would have to edit a magazine. The title I had in mind was Rolling Stone.
SEVEN In which I become editor
of Ralph, and am almost eaten by
Kerri-Anne Kennerley
Whereas Loaded’s journalists played the role of cheery, beer-guzzling louts, Jack Marx was a genuine problem drinker. He dressed, drank and shaved like a romantically dishevelled 1950s newshound, or an embittered private eye. He wore a dark suit, suspenders and a trilby, and all the troubles of his chaotic world on his shoulders. Homeless after being evicted from the office where he was living, he began treating Ralph as his hotel room, complete with minibar. Each issue of Ralph had two pages of ‘Grog’ reviews, but the grog had to get past Jack before it could be tested. When a case of Lemon Ruskis was sent in to be photographed, Jack came back from the pub and drank it all. Seddo was forced to ring Stoli and say he liked the product so much, he had finished it off, and promised to say so in the review if Stoli would provide him with another case immediately. When the replacement case arrived, Jack came back from the pub and drank it all. He woke up in the morning, horrified, and furiously filled all the little yellow bottles with water.
Jack was sacked three times in the first seven issues, always for being drunk. He came to feel disgruntled about continually being fired. He felt he had been hired as ‘Drunk Guy’, and thought he was playing a demanding part with a certain aplomb, but his method journalism was ravaging his health. An early Ralph feature stole from Loaded the idea of having a journalist (Jack) stage a piss-up in a brewery. The night before, Jack had been in rehab at Rozelle Hospital. The week after, he was back in rehab.