Smash Hits The Fan

The feeling is comparable to your once favourite band finally announcing that they're splitting up. You couldn't be too upset but that sentimental attachment will always be there. And Smash Hits magazine is to close after 28 years, publishing company Emap said, causing a generation to cry into their Marti Pillows...

Smash Hits was first published in September 1978 with Belgian one-hit-wonder Plastic Bertrand - real name Roger Jouret - on the cover. Of course, I haven't read/bought it since 1989. And that's where the problem clearly lay with "our" age group - who didn't give up after the Kylie and Jason cover (it sold a record million copies)? Was it me but I always enjoyed the printed lyrics far more than the posters? Especially when they made them up. I once visited the offices as part of my work experience on The O Zone for a Spice Girls special. I expected the writers to be discussing the hot pop acts of the day but, alas, nothing. I really think I lost my media innocence that day: from witnessing Michael Winner's demands to be shot upwards to hide his chins to the sheer cynicism of publicist Max Clifford (profiled in last weekend's New York Times, no less), it was quite the introduction. But it did result in my first ever TV credit (BBC2, August 1998 on a Friday, if you're wondering).

I must give SH credit for formally introducing me to punning (well, it went hand in hand with James Bond, Carry On and Marx Brothers movies) and anything launched by Mark Ellen and David Hepworth is always worth reading. And I trust their legacy carries on with Q (20 years strong this year) and The Word magazine. This is an actual memo Hepworth sent to the music industry way back in 1981 and says more than I can...

"It is my intention to reverse the entire direction of popular music publishing in favour of entirely doing trivia....We want to know the colour of your artists' socks."

I guess today, the colour is black...