While sitting in the dental surgery this morning, being kept waiting longer than I would have liked as the distant sound of a drill cut through my very soul, I got to flicking through GQ magazine.
What a load of toss.
Once you get through acres of high-end homoerotic adverts, featuring boy-men clad in mauve plus fours and bolero fur gilets with nothing underneath, while Kate Moss poutily holds a puma on a lead in the background, then the real fun begins.
Silly interviews in which Clive Owen - who in my experience is a chain-smoking, tensed-up dullard who grudgingly grunts back at you - talks about his stage craft while moodily modelling astronomically expensive suits in bronze gaberdine, or Rio Ferdinand, never out of the pages of GQ, leans menacingly against a bare brick wall in some inappropriate outfit made of leaves or something, talking about - yawn! - football and his image. GQ man seems to a cross between Jeremy Clarkson and Orlando Bloom, a metrosexual boor.
Then there are endless pages of exclusive gadgets that would make James Bond baulk, non-accessible fashion shoots in exotic locations for Harrington jackets that are a grand a pop, pages of 'must-have' pointy shoes and this season's essential voile scarves that you can just about make out in the shadows, sixth form standard op-ed pieces about little of interest, the obligatory interview with Tory popinjay George Osborne, wordy travel features touching on whatever's concerning the world at this juncture, just so it doesn't look too frivolous, a page to help you get those summer abs and lots of dull guff in between aiming at everyone from fans of Nuts to readers of The Spectator. And everything appears to be written by the same three people, who are snapped looking serious and intellectual in the contributors to this issue section.
And don't even get me started on the Editor's letter. Here, prize tit Dylan Jones recounts his trip to a football match in Milan (pronounced Mee-laahn) as guests of Dolce & Gabbana. He makes the world's most unconvincing footy fan. How does he have time to edit a magazine? I'd love to know.
I think this mag sells around the 100,000 mark, which is not to be sniffed at, and the advertising is top notch, but who do they think their reader is? Someone who lives this rarified secret agent style life, or someone who works in the Carphone Warehouse in Rotherham and dreams of one?
