IN THE computer game Civilisation, where you modestly assume the role of God, the progress of “your” world is marked by sporadic announcements on the latest invention: “The wheel!” “Gunpowder!” “Time travel!” I’ve only made it up to “Deep-sea telegraph cables!” before having to go to bed, but I suspect if you could hang in there long enough, you would hear the announcement “The Only Fools and Horses DVD Collection!”
The Only Fools and Horses magazine plus DVD feels like a small, inevitable, £7.99 landmark in the onrush of history. Whole paragraphs are built around the overexcited use of the word “cushty” (“Subscribe now and get some cushty free gifts!”). The cover bears the thought “Lubbly jubbly — it’s 110% pukka!” Of its 15 pages, three are advertisements for the next issue, and two are advertisements for the magazine you’re reading, a proposition that vexes the concepts of both time and logic. As, indeed, does the idea of an Only Fools and Horses part-work at £7.99. You’ve already paid your licence fee, and the show is currently being repeated on BBC One (6.25pm, Saturdays). Who on earth would then leave his house to pay for the same product again?
But then, maybe that’s part of the skit — the whole thing is another hilariously half-baked Trotter money-spinner doomed to failure.
Of course, Only Fools and Horses isn’t the only TV spin-off magazine and/or part-work out there. I know – I also have the slightly classier StarGate: SG1 DVD Collection, which unbelievably reprints the dial-up sequence to allow the Stargate to open on Earth without a thought for the potential security implications. I also have one issue of the Ground Force part-work. Sadly it’s the last one, which has fully 20 pages of index rubbing in what I ‘ve missed (dogs, pet loos. Vacuums, garden. Water-feature, “The Terror Run”).
Production companies have realised that once you’ve done all the hard work of establishing a brand, spinning off merchandising – a cup here, a board-game there – generates relative peanuts compared with launching a magazine, which punters not only pay £3 and more for, but will also take lots of lovely specialised advertising. The A Place in the Sun magazine has ads for what must be every estate agent and property developer in Cyprus, Portugal and Umbria.
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“You will have walls so thick you’ll think the air conditioning is on, even when it isn’t,” one promises, threateningly, beneath a picture of a 90-year-old builder with one tooth who appears to be cutting slabs of rock with some string.
Far classier is the advertising in O: The Oprah Magazine — Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Sony. O, as a publication, takes all the best bits of Oprah — primarily very thin celebrities, and very fat normal people crying while Oprah says: “I know honeychild — I’ve been in that place you’re in and whooo-wee! It sure ain’t all that and a bowl of clams!” — and mixing it in with lots of pictures of Cath Kidston crockery. I love O. More warm-hearted loopy millionaires should launch upmarket magazines with crockery in.
If O is the publishing familiar of Oprah Winfrey, then Top Gear magazine is the equivalent for Jeremy Clarkson. It’s as if an ampoule containing his trouser sweat bursts as you open the first page, filling your mind with Shouty Hetero Gas. You read every word in his voice, even the adverts. It’s exhausting. And everyone on the magazine does it: James May (compares French and German cars: “Jerry’s plumbing is simply better than Jacques ‘, and so are his cars.”). Tom Ford (“There’s a point at Le Mans where you think ‘Why can’t you just shut up for a bit?’ ”). Even the readers on the letters page do it (“Definition of steering wheel: used for resting your arms or snack-bars on.”)
The whole magazine is possessed by Clarkson. His cadence is a virus. His emphases are spores. His seductively simple moral outlook (“Speed makes us cleverer. Speed bring peace”) makes writing a Clarksonesque feature as simple as using a stencil. Unfortunately, the stencil is just a huge picture of Clarkson.
Both Grand Designs and Gardener’s World magazines, on the other hand, suffer from the opposite problem — limpness without their mother-show’s presenters, Kevin McCloud and Monty Don.
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McCloud is one of the more compelling presenters of recent years. He can inhabit a pre-break link about double-glazing regulations as if he were Vronsky worrying about the future of the farmers. On last week’s episode, he looked as if he might faint if the house’s owners were given a no-go on the exterior cobalt blue finish. Without him, staring at a £2,000 ergonomic lavatory just isn’t the same.
Similarly, there’s no way I’m going to attempt to cordon my soft fruits (page 79) if the titanic Monty isn’t there to show the way. I’m not au fait with currant affairs. I can’t greengage these things. I might get in a right jam.