Post by odm on Jan 24, 2007 23:08:01 GMT
Report from the Guardian.
Penthouse has relaunched - again - with added sport and cars. Former employee Lynn Barber takes a nostalgic look
Sunday January 21, 2007
The Observer
Fancy that - another 'new' Penthouse magazine. It seems to have had more incarnations than Madonna. I worked on the original Penthouse for seven delightful years almost from its inception, but by the time I left, in 1974, Bob Guccione had moved to the States to launch American Penthouse, and UK Penthouse was left to dwindle and die. He sold it some time in the Eighties, whereupon it plummeted downmarket to join the bottom feeders of split beavers and readers' wives. It changed owners and had another relaunch in the Nineties but by then even American Penthouse was in trouble, squeezed out by internet porn, so it is amazing to find a new UK edition bobbing up in the 21st century.
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The cover is exactly like Sixties Penthouse, even down to the coverline 'Germaine Greer won't suck.' Inside, though, there is a new arrival - clitorises. (Clitores? Clitoridae? Where are pedants when you need them?) We didn't have them in my day. It was a big decision to 'go full frontal' in 1972 but of course in those days girls had pubic hair so their clitoridossomuses were still hiding in the undergrowth. I had no idea they were so varied. There was a fashion in the early dungaree days of feminism for women's groups to sit akimbo with a mirror and familiarise themselves with the geography of their front bottoms, but somehow I never got around to it. Anyway, here they are - clitorotopopodomi in all their rich variety. It worries me, though. Do you remember - stupid question, of course you won't remember but you might have read - that the Victorian art critic John Ruskin fled in horror from his wedding night because he found his wife had hair down there? He had only ever seen nudes in classical statues, so he thought his Effie was hideously deformed. Will the schoolboys who read this Penthouse become like Ruskin and flee at the first wisp of pubic hair?
The new Penthouse has 15 pages on motoring, five pages on football and five on golf (the latter oddly headlined 'Golf Porn', though it mainly consists of a dull survey of Las Vegas courses). Guccione would not have approved: his Penthouse was an almost completely sports-free zone and football was considered strictly for plebs. But he was genuinely keen on culture - there were great wodges of pretentious arts coverage front and back, largely written by me - whereas the 'Department of Culture' in the new incarnation consists solely of a two-page interview with my old friend Howard Marks who confides that he is too busy to read books these days, but remembers enjoying Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre in prison.
The skin section is called 'Revelations', or 'Unmissable drama of the deliberately racy variety', which the editor defines as 'the chance to have a d**n good perv and not feel all twisted and seedy at the end of it'. It features 'Aussie stunner' Kimberley Hicks, who doesn't seem to know how to put a bra on - it keeps ending up round her waist - and 'smouldering' Lauren Pope, who looks old enough to be Kimberley's mother. Then there is Brea Lynn, who offers a close-up of her clitoris while confiding, 'I've always been shy.' It's a good mix - classy, terrifying and girl next door - though the absence of an 'exotic' girl would upset Guccione.
Who on earth will buy this new Penthouse? Sixties sentimentalists? Schoolboys? But even schoolboys, I would have thought, are more sophisticated these days. No, judging from the ads and articles, I think the only market is car salesmen, that Neanderthal rump who still believe that saying, 'Cor, look at the knockers on that!' is somehow tantamount to having a sex life. I had forgotten that such men existed until I had to buy a car recently and lo, there they all were on the garage forecourt - it was like running into a herd of woolly mammoths. Whether there are enough of them to constitute a viable circulation I somehow doubt. Give it a year, and roll on the next reincarnation.
I have included a bit about Penthouse just in case anybody gets a shock if Ais gets involved in pictures with them... Everything she does we should support her in though this Magazine is about lots of bits of the body and showing them off...lets hope that the relaunch of PENTHOUSE was just a great party that Ais went too. if not, then we should wait and see ..I heard somewhere else..NOT OA., that L.A. might figure here somewhere...as she is due to go to L.A. still presumably...
but unless we get official confirmations of anything...it aint official so its all heresay.
Penthouse has relaunched - again - with added sport and cars. Former employee Lynn Barber takes a nostalgic look
Sunday January 21, 2007
The Observer
Fancy that - another 'new' Penthouse magazine. It seems to have had more incarnations than Madonna. I worked on the original Penthouse for seven delightful years almost from its inception, but by the time I left, in 1974, Bob Guccione had moved to the States to launch American Penthouse, and UK Penthouse was left to dwindle and die. He sold it some time in the Eighties, whereupon it plummeted downmarket to join the bottom feeders of split beavers and readers' wives. It changed owners and had another relaunch in the Nineties but by then even American Penthouse was in trouble, squeezed out by internet porn, so it is amazing to find a new UK edition bobbing up in the 21st century.
Article continues
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cover is exactly like Sixties Penthouse, even down to the coverline 'Germaine Greer won't suck.' Inside, though, there is a new arrival - clitorises. (Clitores? Clitoridae? Where are pedants when you need them?) We didn't have them in my day. It was a big decision to 'go full frontal' in 1972 but of course in those days girls had pubic hair so their clitoridossomuses were still hiding in the undergrowth. I had no idea they were so varied. There was a fashion in the early dungaree days of feminism for women's groups to sit akimbo with a mirror and familiarise themselves with the geography of their front bottoms, but somehow I never got around to it. Anyway, here they are - clitorotopopodomi in all their rich variety. It worries me, though. Do you remember - stupid question, of course you won't remember but you might have read - that the Victorian art critic John Ruskin fled in horror from his wedding night because he found his wife had hair down there? He had only ever seen nudes in classical statues, so he thought his Effie was hideously deformed. Will the schoolboys who read this Penthouse become like Ruskin and flee at the first wisp of pubic hair?
The new Penthouse has 15 pages on motoring, five pages on football and five on golf (the latter oddly headlined 'Golf Porn', though it mainly consists of a dull survey of Las Vegas courses). Guccione would not have approved: his Penthouse was an almost completely sports-free zone and football was considered strictly for plebs. But he was genuinely keen on culture - there were great wodges of pretentious arts coverage front and back, largely written by me - whereas the 'Department of Culture' in the new incarnation consists solely of a two-page interview with my old friend Howard Marks who confides that he is too busy to read books these days, but remembers enjoying Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre in prison.
The skin section is called 'Revelations', or 'Unmissable drama of the deliberately racy variety', which the editor defines as 'the chance to have a d**n good perv and not feel all twisted and seedy at the end of it'. It features 'Aussie stunner' Kimberley Hicks, who doesn't seem to know how to put a bra on - it keeps ending up round her waist - and 'smouldering' Lauren Pope, who looks old enough to be Kimberley's mother. Then there is Brea Lynn, who offers a close-up of her clitoris while confiding, 'I've always been shy.' It's a good mix - classy, terrifying and girl next door - though the absence of an 'exotic' girl would upset Guccione.
Who on earth will buy this new Penthouse? Sixties sentimentalists? Schoolboys? But even schoolboys, I would have thought, are more sophisticated these days. No, judging from the ads and articles, I think the only market is car salesmen, that Neanderthal rump who still believe that saying, 'Cor, look at the knockers on that!' is somehow tantamount to having a sex life. I had forgotten that such men existed until I had to buy a car recently and lo, there they all were on the garage forecourt - it was like running into a herd of woolly mammoths. Whether there are enough of them to constitute a viable circulation I somehow doubt. Give it a year, and roll on the next reincarnation.
I have included a bit about Penthouse just in case anybody gets a shock if Ais gets involved in pictures with them... Everything she does we should support her in though this Magazine is about lots of bits of the body and showing them off...lets hope that the relaunch of PENTHOUSE was just a great party that Ais went too. if not, then we should wait and see ..I heard somewhere else..NOT OA., that L.A. might figure here somewhere...as she is due to go to L.A. still presumably...
but unless we get official confirmations of anything...it aint official so its all heresay.
{=}http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/Hsalc/Fakers/Where.gif{/=}
(hands up all who know what they are lol)
do you want to see mine?
