Advertising: For men who lunch
It's trotting out in the wet road, miniskirt up to there. It's put the hood up and it's sticking its little head in for a look at the engine. And the hood falls down again, of course, on her head. Laugh, we could've wet ourselves. Old Kevin's in the back there, not taking a blind bit of notice of his girlfriend making a mess of it. He's well away with his magazine.
And there's that Johnny Vaughan on voiceover saying: "Women don't expect any help on a Thursday."
Now is this a quintessential comedy moment or misogyny? Is this magazine a Loaded for the 21st century or Titbits with tits? It's a new weekly men's magazine called Nuts, presumably for men who think owning a pair of testicles is something of an achievement in itself, and certainly richly comic.
They show you, in a rather perfunctory way, what Nuts has to offer. There are girls, there are cars, there's footie and there are sharks looking Jaws-like. The music's that Colonel Bogeyish tune from The Great Escape. It's popular on the football terraces, but with terrible words added.
Two large magazine publishers recently decided there was a market for a popular weekly men's magazine, a world away from the shiny monthly milieux of GQ and Vogue Hommes Plus. Something for men who don't read "men's magazines" and don't have colour-coded wardrobes. Bits and pieces, nothing remotely poofy. Just the opposite, in fact: all Y chromosomes with the X factor taken out. (The other competing magazine is called Zoo Weekly because they've got a lively sense of fun. Zoo Weekly's advertising involves a lot of men running up a hill to a giant magazine featuring Nell McAndrew on the cover - her who "married" Dale Winton. And they've got Brian Blessed doing the voiceover. He was in Z Cars in the Sixties, you know. I think it's a spoof of a famous old commercial for dog meat, but I couldn't swear to it.)
So here's the male equivalent of a celebrity magazine for women, something the guys can flick through - a pacifier, something that will keep them quiet while the girls are getting on with the big stuff. Interesting to see if either's still going in a year.
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