The press
New London cries
Paul Johnson
When I'm in New York, almost my favourite reading is that fat, noisy weekly, the Village Voice, which I suppose started in Greenwich village, but which now covers entertainment and other events in the whole metropolitan area. It looks a little like a newspaper and in some ways is one, with some excellent city reporting. Not all its tales stand up, however. And I don't like its politics, which are gritty radical chic. Apart from the fact that it obviously coins money, you'd never guess it was owned by Rupert Murdoch. It hates Mayor Koch, who is the pin-up .of Murdoch's evening paper, the New York Post. What I enjoy in the Voice is its occasional high-quality writing, which makes the New Yorker seem terribly epuise, and the way in which, unlike the pallid New York magazine, it manages to convey the smells, sweat, rage, speech and grotesque eye-popping sights which make up the worm-eaten but still juicy Big Apple. It has a feature called 'Famous Real-Life Funnies', based upon the weird appearance and obiter dicta of New Yorkers, which is the best strip I've ever come across. Why can't we have the same kind of thing here?
There are in fact at least five magazines now competing for London's entertainment advertising, and offering comprehensive guides to 'what's on'. Time Out, having shed its rebellious employees, is back again with a new staff. The rebels have started City Limits, now on its second issue, and a further competitor at the trendy end of the market, Event, which is in its third issue. At the conventional end there is Where to Go, in its 16th year, and the old stager What's On in London. Apart from Time Out, Which is 50p and Where to Go, which is 30p, they all cost 40p.
None of them comes within a mile of the Voice. Time Out looks the most professional and all-inclusive. It's the one I'd turn to if I wanted ideas for an outing. It also has the clearest print. But the editorial lacks bite. An article on male pin-ups lived up to its title, 'Bare, Bald and Boring', another on Soho porn-politics was predictable, and a huge chunk of the magazine was devoted to Japan, linked to the Royal Academy 'Great Japan Exhibition' and based on the dubious proposition that 'London is really turning Japanese'. The interest lies more in the small advertisements from 'incest/paedophilia non-judgmental counsellor', 'older lesbians', 'Ageing Liverpudlian wishes to compensate for garlic', to a mysterious error: `Spitalfields Farm wishes to make it clear that Inter Action's Ed Berman is not their spokesman'.
City Limits is the left-wing one. It made the mistake, in my opinion, of sending out brochures giving photos and curricula vitae of all 46 of its staff. One's first thought: why the hell do they need so many? Second: what a gruesome collection. Were all these snaps taken in a BR photomat? Third, on reading the small print: there seems to be an awful lot of 'lectured on media and communication', 'appeared on TV media discussions', 'lectured on women's politics', 'active in women's movement'. One is 'dedicated to establishing a radio culture'. Another lists: 'Favourite food: BTLs. Favourite Magazines: The Sex issue of Heresies and the Tatler. Theory: Althusserian. Practice: Hypochondria.' Where the magazine is strong is on the leftwing arts scene. Thus, I see that the American 'Fourth Wall Company', which has 'researched the guilty secrets of the nuclear power and arms industries with nerve-racking results', is showing its 'musical comedy with a difference' at the Thames Poly, the South Bank Poly and the Central London Poly this week. This is the paper if you want to know where the taxes and rates are going on the 'progressive' brainwashing.
It's also the paper, of course, which is getting £100,000 from Ken Livingstone. Leaving aside whether it's proper for him to use ratepayers' money to subsidise quasipolitical publications, just as he fancies, it seems to me that taking the cash rather destroys City Limits' credibility. The Voice's impact comes in great part from its vigorous criticism of city government. What the GLC does or doesn't do ought to be a major interest of a radical London weekly, and the antics of Livingstone himself are an important part of the whole subject. How can the magazine take little Ken's handout while subjecting his regime to the beady-eyed scrutiny it undoubtedly merits?
Event has also been launched by former Time Out people. I would rate it the sharpest of the trendies. It, too, has some stuff about Japan but not too much of it. It prints a hair-raising series of quotes about the Thatcher family, purporting to come from the Managing Director of Saatchi and Saatchi. There is a very nasty and damaging feature about Private Eye. I don't know whether either story is well-founded. The paper's gossip column certainly didn't inspire confidence. But the magazine has a bite which the other two lack. Much arcane information, too: 'For heterosexual pickups try the King's Cross and Balham station areas . . . . The male homosexual market is on the corner of Old Brompton Road and Earl's Court Road'.
Of the oldies, What's On features dowdy makeup and Fifties-style columns like 'In and Around Town', 'Show Business Whispers' and 'Westminster Week' (`The conference season is over at last . . ..'). It is polite. Even Mr Livingstone is merely referred to as 'ineffable'. Where to Go I'm not so sure about. Its Editor writes: 'My name is Ruth Ling. Two nice, short, simple, onesyllable words. One Hebrew, one Swedish — although most people assume I'm a little Chinese girl!' Her paper includes a clippedin 'Adult Guide' of 'Sauna and Health Establishments' and 'Miscellaneous and Escort Services', such as 'Exhausted gentlemen in need of relaxation in luxurious private surroundings. Also available: a more strict and stern approach to massage'. Plus telephone number. Miss Ling notes: 'There's more to this job of being Editor of Where to Go than meets the eye'. As she may discover.
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