Then, along came Loaded, an era-defining, working-class publishing phenomenon. Loaded basically threw a hand grenade into a room full of uptight PC-righteous new men and proceeded to cause chaos for the next six years. It was staggering how it landed with its audience. It wasn’t trying to explain itself in advance, which this new version seeks to do. It just happened, blew up and went on the rampage.
To evaluate whether a modern-day Loaded could work you have to go back to what made the original Loaded work. Timing is everything. In the mid-1990s men and women, whether they knew it or not, were pretty fed up with being told how to construct themselves in order to be politically correct. And this is mirrored in 2024 (you can’t say anything anymore!), so there does seem to be some symmetry in terms of the current social temperature.
The Loaded team understood one thing – being politically correct didn’t necessarily make you a good person, and having a glad eye for the ladies and a self-deprecating sense of humour didn’t mean you were a bad person. A narcissist is a narcissist no matter which side of the political divide you sit. And the same applies today. Just because you’re woke doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot.
I remember launch editor James Brown and I, his deputy, pre-launch in 1994, trying to figure out whether the mag would be a terrible failure or a big success. After all, what right did we have to expect anyone else to like what we liked? Loaded was basically a national fanzine, covering and celebrating all the stuff we loved: football, girls, clubbing, adventure, travel, hedonism. Covers in the first couple of years featured Kathy Burke, Elle Macpherson, Cameron Diaz and Kylie.