The magazine
Loaded, first appeared on newsagents shelves in the Uk in 1994. It was the brainchild of former
NME deputy editor
James Brown (no not that one!) and was to revolutionize the men's magazine marketplace.
Despite the many objections levelled at the magazine since its conception (sexist, laddish etc) there can be no doubting that it catered to the need of a genuinely new format of mens lifestyle magazine.
Up to this point all men's magazines had followed the advertising led, over stylised American formats (Esquire, GQ etc) with lots of style and little substance.
Loaded's style was witty, irreverant and hedonistic. The idea was to recreate the best, most fun-packed day out a 20 something red blooded male could hope to have and then translate it to print. Journalists went sky-diving in LA, went drinking with hollywood hellraisers, and played golf with Tiger Woods.
Rogues such as Ollie Reed, George Best, Hugh Hefner and Ron Jeremy were held up (ever so slightly ironically) as heroes for their outrageous behaviour, often heralded for their actions with the Loaded clarion call of 'Good work fella!'
Of course, the magazine courted controversy with its insistence on littering its pages with glamourous women in 'provocative' poses and in the process helping to create a moment in time in the mid '90's labelled 'New Laddism' where the PC 'New Man' of the early '90's was encouraged to bin his Athena posters and become proud of drinking 10 pints of lager, pulling women and watching football.
Loaded, along with its inevitable imitators (FHM, Maxim) grew and grew to a point where this new sector in the magazine marketplace was regularly attracting several million readers a month.
Although the market has settled down somewhat Loaded still attracts some 1.9 million readers a month in the UK and although it has lost ground to the slightly 'safer' title FHM it is still quite rightly seen as the magazine that launched an international publishing sensation.