Category: Industry Voices

What made you want to work with the publishing industry?

I was a media buyer for about 4 and a half years, which was eye-opening because it made me think about all the inefficiencies in the supply and demand model of media and publishing. In the last 2-3 years, with the diminishing of revenues in the media because of the Facebook and Google duopoly and the spread of fake news, my belief in the importance of creating a profitable, strong media and publishing ecosystem has been strengthened.

Could you chart your journey from where you started out to where you are now?

We started out trying to address what we thought 4 years ago was the biggest problem in affiliate marketing, which is data consolidation. We wanted to create a single point of access where all data can be analysed. Now we don’t just consolidate data, but we create whole layers of data which help publishers better monetise their content.

What is the most exciting thing on the horizon for tech and publishing?

I think digital publishing has enabled us to look at every singular piece of content as an independent and revenue-generating asset. Soon we should be trading on individual pieces of content as financial units. It is no longer the case that publishers monetise things by thinking about their whole brand as the product. You can have a website that has two articles in it which are generating 95% of the revenue and another 500 articles which are generating nothing. That change from looking at your publication as a whole to looking at singular units of content is very big and exciting.

How does being an associate member of the PPA add value to your company?

Ever since we joined the PPA we have started some fascinating conversations. Most of our clients are US based so it has enabled us to kickstart conversation with the big content players in the UK.

How do you handle your deadlines?

With lots of tea and coffee. Deadlines are a very difficult thing in tech. We work really hard and we try to be as process-driven as we can, but I think that just like any other company, the deadlines can get a bit chaotic.

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

How creative it is. You often don’t think about tech management being creative but most of my job is about solving complicated problems through creative thinking.

Would you be able to walk me through your typical day?

Israel is two hours ahead and most of our employees are based in Tel Aviv so my mornings would usually be dedicated to calls with Tel Aviv and my midday would be dedicated to any UK activity we have. In the early afternoon the US wakes up so the second part of my day will be dedicated to my US team.

What is the latest photo on your mobile?

My 4-year-old girl drew this. It was so good I had to take a picture of it. It’s our solar system.

What would be in your Room 101?

Cottage cheese and autotune

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Bill Gates

Introvert or Extrovert?

Extrovert

Optimist or Pessimist?

Extreme optimist

Film or TV?

I watch so many TV shows. Right now, I am watching Stranger Things and I have just finished Big Little Lies and Killing Eve

Sweet or Savoury?

I’m a food man so I’ll take both

If you were on a long train journey, what magazine would you read?

Wired

What made you want to work in the magazine industry?

We work with the magazine industry rather than being in it. There are so many great publishers out there, producing incredible content and our job is to help them bring this to the world in an easier and more beautiful way.

Can you chart your journey from when you started out to your current position?

I started out as a philosophy graduate who wanted to be a journalist. I got a bit of insight into the PR industry through working for a restaurant company after I left university which put me off journalism and I decided to go into tech. I met Pugpig’s co-founders 6 years ago and the rest is history.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

My boss is not the best-dressed person in London, so almost anything is better than him. Although I am beginning to wonder if he’s actually a secret fashion guru whose time is yet to come.

What do you turn to when you’re on deadline – tea/coffee/snacks?

Wine

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

A behind-the-scenes tour of the Natural History Museum after it closed, led by the museum’s lead coleopterous (beetle expert).

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

That I know nearly as much about PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) as I do about working with publishers to deliver great apps

Walk me through your typical day.

Some days I’m completely desk bound, others I’m meeting with publishers to kick off projects or discuss new ideas.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

The PPA gives us the opportunity to spend time with a broad spectrum of UK based publishers, sharing ideas on how we can work together to build the platforms that will power the future of magazine publishing.

If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day?

I’d fit in more meals.

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

A photo of the steak I had for dinner last night.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

90s girl bands.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Emily Eavis’s for guaranteed Glastonbury tickets every year.

What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

“Bleaching your own hair at home is a perfectly good idea” when I was 12.

What/where is your happy place?

A restaurant by the sea with a big plate of garlicky prawns, a cold glass of wine and some good company.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

I’m a HUGE cricket fan.

What would be in your Room 101?

Tinned tuna.

Introvert or extrovert?

Neither.

Optimist or pessimist?

Probably veer more to optimist.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

I’m binge-watching television at the moment, like the rest of the world it seems.

Sweet or savoury?

Savoury.

Morning person or night owl?

Night owl.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

Neither. Most used:

What made you want to work in the magazine industry?

Being a teenage, semi-depressed, music fan from the outer limits of East Yorkshire, who found the glamorous and exciting new world in the pages of magazines like NME, Sky Magazine and Empire. They seemed impossibly exciting and fascinating, and completely away from my world at the time. I desperately thought, "That's what I'd like to do" from quite a young age, maybe 12 or 13, but I had no idea that I could actually do it. It seemed absolutely impossible, but I've done it!

What have been your career highlights so far?

I would say becoming deputy-editor of NME was massive for me, as it was the foremost dream of those teenage years, especially interviewing Iggy Pop and David Lynch for NME, my two big heroes. Also, becoming editor of Shortlist, I spent five years there, veering from being a mediocre Editor to a crap Editor to an okay Editor, then a pretty good editor; all the various stages. But it was a very important step for me in terms of my career and a huge learning point for me.

My crowning glory would have to be the launch of The Book of Man, which is not just a magazine job but my own business. I founded it, it was my idea, I brought it to fruition and it's here now in the world, winning PPA awards! Everything has come together, all my learnings and excitement and passion for it has come together in this business. It's like my heart is out there, you know? And it's Googleable.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

I used to at various stages. I used to get some mild, "You should wear a suit and be powerful," instructions, so I wilfully go the other way. I mean I basically dress in rags, I'm just a disaster. I've got holes in my T-shirt at the moment. If I have a big meeting then I might throw on a suit jacket, but generally I’m pretty much dressed like The Dude on the day before laundry day.

How do you handle deadlines?

I like giving them out….

I'm not too bad. Of course, I’ll leave it until the last minute, but I'm not writing up to the last minute and having loads of extensions kind of thing. I'm pretty well disciplined when it comes to writing, which isn't to say that I get it right immediately or anything like that. It does take a lot of work and a lot of revision but one of my saving graces, I would say, is diligence, which is a much underrated, not very glamorous quality, but thankfully it's one that I possess.

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

Well, I was made up in drag a couple of weeks go for The Book of Man which was unusual.

I found it… quite a curious experience. You know, I'm from the, I started by career at Maxim magazine when it was something in the early 2000s, when it was all about stunt journalism, sub-Hunter S. Thompson style journalism, so I'd done a few stunts and things like that. I had to dress as a goth for a story, which was one of the big breakthrough things I did and I've dressed up as a goth and gone to Florida and met astronauts and the governor of Florida, all done up, looking like Marilyn Manson in full make up, with hair extensions. That was incredibly unusual. I asked the astronaut, "When you left Earth in the shuttle and you looked back at the Earth did you think how small and pointless humans are?" And he said, "Yes, I did." And it turns out it's quite a common thing around astronauts, they get quite depressed and stuff afterwards, seeing how insignificant we are in the universe.

I found it a lot more embarrassing than I thought I would. I was quite out of my comfort zone as a man. Having make up put on and being made to look very beautiful is not something you ever experience as a man. I found it quite difficult but really interesting.

Part of what we're doing at [The Book of Man] at the moment is looking at new ways of being a man and trying to understand ourselves. Asking, why is it so embarrassing for us to put make up and to get dressed up and look like that? What's the deal there? For me, I think I just have a bit of a fear of exposure and performance, so the idea of having to perform as a drag queen made me very, very scared. But the brilliant drag queens who were doing me up said, "It's bad drag if you're trying to perform it too much. Just be yourself." Which was great, so in the end I did enjoy looking great however, wearing the high heels was a nightmare.

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

Maybe from the outside, you wouldn't quite realise how much I have to do on the business front, because it's a highly different skill for me, in that I'm having to run the business side of things and look after the financial aspects and the VAT and things like this.

While I'm lucky enough to Glastonbury and put on some panel shows and have our fun there, there is also a lot of trying to figure out how finance works and that is not a natural thing for me.

Walk me through your typical day.

Typical day: Wake up 7:00am with the kids and get them sorted out. I'd like to say that I don't check social media until I'm at work but that would be a total lie.

I probably start having a little look around at what's going on about half seven, just checking the news. I get the kids off to school around 9:00am, then arrive at the office around half nine in Peckham, in the Bussey Building.

Then it'll be a combination of writing stories, chasing up columnists like Professor Green, begging him to get his column in, and he'll say yes, and then it won't arrive. I’ll be chasing up copy, editing, getting our social media people in order, making sure that they've got enough to post that day. I’ll have about three or four phone calls a day with my colleague Mark Sanford who's the other Book of Man man and be working on partnerships that we have coming up and thinking about what new initiatives we can do and projects and campaigns that might make people really excited.

While all this is going on, I'm always at my desk with my headphones on listening to 90s grunge music. I eat at my desk as well, so I don't basically move for about eight hours. And then I'll catch up with my events manager, we'll talk about what we've coming up in terms of venues and how ticket sales are doing and bookings for our tour around the country, which is going on at the moment. Events are a huge part of what we do.

My office is close to my house, a benefit of setting up your own business is you can get rid of the commute. I’ll have a couple of hours with the kids and then get them back off to bed.

My evening shift starts at about 8:00pm and I'll work until 11:00pm, at least, dependent on how worried I am, mopping up emails and another writing shift. I’ll also put together our daily newsletter and hopefully at the end of the day, if all things have gone nicely, I’ll get some reading time in as well. Essentially, I'm working around the clock like a maniac at the moment, I thought it'd be just for the moment, but it's been nearly a year and a half.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

In my long career, I've been to a few awards ceremonies, got the occasional little nomination but I haven't really come close to winning. So, to actually win, Innovation of the Year for my own new platform was astonishing and it's had an immediate effect, actually.

It’s fun if people start approaching you and showing a bit of interest, we're quite lucky in that what we do has had attention. We do a lot of panels and media work anyway, just because of the new way we're looking at men. But in terms of actually having those three letters and then “award-winning” is something that we can take into our meetings now. It's that extra validation and authority that makes people listen to you a bit more. It's only been a couple of weeks, but I fully expect it to be a really transformative thing for us and is something that we are very proud of.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day? *

Without sounding like a total nerd, I would read, because this is imagining that my children are still asleep!

I've got stacks and stacks and stacks of books that I need to get through and I would totally do that. Or at least that's probably what I'd say… The idea would be that I would read, perhaps, all of Tolstoy and the other stack of books that I've got on my desk and really study hard and absorb as much as I possibly could because I love doing that.

In reality I'd probably watch the Alien quadrilogy, or whatever it is now, and eat cheesecakes.

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

It was a picture of The Book of Man team in the Glastonbury shed area, we took over an area within Shangri La called The Shed, which was a space of positive masculinity. I took a picture of us in there because it was a wonderful experience, even though it was extremely hot.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Love Island.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Iggy Pop.

What’s the best/worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The worst piece of advice I've had is, "Man up." Manning up has been the worst thing that I've tried to do in my past. Destroying myself as a man has been a liberation.

The best piece of advice I've had is, "Just do it again." Which I had early on my career writing. I like it because there's a real problem when you're a writer, that you think everything that you put on the page is genius. Especially when you've come from the music writing point of view, where everyone is convinced that they're a genius. Actually, writing it again and again and again is the best and the surest way to make sure that it is actually even passable. It's never that good when you first write it and I found 1000% of the time that the more times that you do it, the better it gets.

What/where is your happy place?

Just at home with my kids on the sofa, having a bit of a cuddle and eating some doughnuts.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

I think because of what I do at The Book of Man, people are now expecting me to be a very emotional and vulnerable new man in touch with all of his emotions; a meditating and clean-living kind of guru, which is totally untrue. I'm really the guy who really needs the _The Book of Man_ more than anyone else.

What would be in your Room 101?

Brexit. Just throw that in there, and anyone associated with it. Put beanie hats in as well.

Introvert or extrovert?

I'm introverted to a point of pathology, it's one of my most challenging aspects. It's been very good to do The Book of Man because I'm having to do a lot of panels and a lot of talking and it's really helping that side of things.

Optimist or pessimist?

I'd say I'm a natural pessimist. I'm Northern and just that way inclined, but I think I’ve surprised myself sometimes. I've launched a new business into a terrifying media world with all sorts of potential disasters and shrapnel flying around. I must be an optimist if I've done that, and I’m optimistic for men today as well. The key thread of The Book of Man is trying to do something positive and new.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

I prefer films. I'm totally locked into the TV golden era, but I'm beginning to resent the amount of time it's taking away. I recently saw Arctic with Mads Mikkelsen, which was great.

*Sweet or savoury? *

Sweet.

*Morning person or night owl? *

I'm a night owl. I like to work late, I like being up late when everyone else is in bed, I like watching late movies, I like reading late, I like writing late. That's what I've always liked to do.

Tea or coffee?

Tea. 1000%.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

I would say cringy, I still can't do them I'm afraid. This is one of the reasons why I'm not yet that really truly “new” man. I just feel like I'll get it wrong and end up sending the inappropriate ones like the dick emoji by mistake.

 

What made you want to work in the magazine industry?

Books and magazines were an escape for me growing up. And magazines particularly, took me to a world away from my estate. I was a loner as a kid, but as soon as I picked up J-17, I wasn’t alone anymore: I was part of not just a gang, but the best gang in the entire world. My entire career has simply been trying to build that gang for myself with some of the best teams in the world and the best readers in the world, on some of the best magazines in the world.

What have been your career highlights so far?

I still remember the phone call from Phil Hilton telling me that I’d got the job as his PA and office editorial assistant on Later magazine. It still makes my skin tighten and tingle. Other than that, I’d say standing in the middle of Times Square in New York the morning we monumentally took out Time Out New York free (and trying to get suspicious New Yorkers to take a copy of the mag) and last year’s Empire Awards, when we were joined by Steven Spielberg who was accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award. I swear to god I almost fainted when he joined us on stage. And I have to say, just last week, in a subscriber focus group. To see, hear, the love they have for Empire moved me to tears. We’re still doing something really right.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

Anyone who knows me (or has seen me) knows that I wear vintage pretty much 24/7, so my go-tos would be musty, bright, old dresses with the hems falling down. It’s a L-O-O-K.

How do you handle deadlines?

I’ve got to be honest: I love pressure and the tick-tick-tock of the clock. It’s when I’m in my element.

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

Going undercover to ask plastic surgeons if they would perform (unnecessary) procedures on me. I had a dictaphone gaffer-taped to the inside of my handbag and will never forget the surreal feeling as they drew on me in black ink while sharing how they’d liposuction my then size 8, 23-year-old body. The only moment more surreal was then posing in my underwear for the story in Now magazine. The best bit: I wasn’t even employed by them; it was my test to get the job of Junior Writer! (I got it, thank god).

Walk me through your typical day.

I start the day with the biggest, strongest coffee I can get my hands on and then it’s straight into a day of screenings, studio negotiations, publishing meetings, editorial meetings, interviews, copy editing, commissioning and galley-reading. Then at night, if I’m not in a screening or at a dinner, my day often starts again when LA opens and studio teams and publicists that side of the sea come alive. In the last year, I’ve started to try and keep two nights free a week for seeing mates/my boyfriend/lying down on the sofa watching the telly. I’m 40 now. I need my rest. And honestly, working 24/7 doesn’t do you, your team or your magazine any good. I’ve come to this late, but balance is vital.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

The PPA gives myself and Empire a great platform to share ideas, concerns, audience and industry insights. It’s a place of innovation, support, but also community. I bloody love the PPA.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day? *

Writing, writing, writing.

*What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?  *

A screen-grab of Kat Moon from EastEnders screaming. It was the last picture in the Empire Team WhatsApp.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Nothing guilty about it, baby – Homes Under the Hammer.

What’s the best/worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best: “The readers don’t care about the process, about why you made the decisions you made, about everything that went wrong and went right, they only care about what they see on the page”. Phil Hilton, The World’s Greatest Mentor, when I was Editor of ShortList and frantically pitching a poor cover to him while telling him in excruciating detail about why we’d ended up where we had and everything that had gone wrong. It has stuck with me over everything else: all the reader ever sees is what’s on the page. Never justify a headline, a layout, a cover, with the story of why you had to do it like that. They don’t know, they’ll never know and they won’t care.

The worst: “I’d take the PA job. Journalism will be really hard, especially for someone like you”. The ‘advice’ given to me when Later _closed after I’d been in the job nine months and I was offered another PA role elsewhere in the company. I refused. They were confused. Little did they know that I’d decided I wasn’t just going to be a journalist, but an editor. And by the time I was 30. Thankfully, Mike Soutar swooped in and helped me get a job as Features Assistant on _Woman & Home. The rest is history,

What/where is your happy place?

Bradley’s Spanish Bar on Hanway Street. A warm weekday at tea-time, an empty top bar and a fistful of old pound coins for the vinyl jukebox.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

I was chronically shy for many, many years and my idea of hell was meeting new people, socialising and public speaking. I’m not quite sure what happened to turn me into the monster I am today.

What would be in your Room 101?

Talking/being on your phone/kicking my chair/eating/breathing in the pictures.

Introvert or extrovert?

An introvert in extrovert’s clothing.

Optimist or pessimist?

Keep the faith, always.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

Cinema is, will always be, my first love.

Sweet or savoury?

Domino’s Pizza.

Morning person or night owl?

The blackest of nights.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee. And size matters.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

The classic red love heart.  I’m a big softy really.

*What made you want to work in the magazine industry? *

I did a degree in Media Studies when it was a brand-new thing and there were only three courses in the country, and I quickly realised I wasn't suited to newspapers. 

I'm too much of a people pleaser to ask the hard questions that news journalists need to have the balls to ask. Magazines looked like they'd be more comfortable home for me.

I fell into nurse publishing right from the off, when an old friend from college had been asked to do some work experience with ahealthcare publisher and she couldn't do it, so she handed it over to me.

Apart from a minor break, I've been in nursing or healthcare publishing ever since and I've been at Nursing Times on a freelance or staff basis for about 20-odd years.

What have been your career highlights so far?

In 2015, we launched an improved Nursing Times online learning programme. We had run it on a very simple system previously, and after five years of lobbying, we finally got the company to invest in a much more sophisticated system with an online portfolio. Finally getting that launched was definitely a highlight, especially since we actually won the Great Leap Forward PPA award in 2016 for it.

Then back in the 1990s, some old colleagues and I set up a theatre magazine, which was a nice little diversion from health! Stage Theatre, rather than an operating theatre! That ran for about four years.

One thing we did find out that is the best thing to do is not invest your own money in launching a magazine, but it was good fun. 

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

I do tend to be fairly casual. The thing I don't do is heels, I cannot believe some women can wear stilettos all day! Just imagine what it does to your feet in the long term.

How do you handle deadlines?

I work right up to them. If I've got lots of time I just mess around, it's when I'm staring them right in the face that I think I do my best work, although other people might disagree.

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

I was thinking about this*; *nursing doesn't take you to too many unusual places, mainly hospitals and medical supply manufacturers.

I think I’d like to say something instead of a physical place.

We did a special issue for the centenary of Nursing Times about 15 years ago and I did the research for the first 50 years. So, it took me back to the past, and to paraphrase L.P. Hartley, it’s a foreign country and they really do things differently there. We had a full front-page ad, by OXO claiming that it cured flu, which was published during the 1919 flu pandemic that killed more people than the war. Then we had a story about a nurse whohad been recruited on the basis that she had a green feather in her hat, because the chair of the interview was short sighted, and she was the only one he could remember. This was obviously before the NHS, when hospitals were all independent or charitable trusts and could get away with things like that. There was also a spread with a picture of a row of hospital beds lined up on some seaside promenade with disabled kids in them with a headline “Cripples by the seaside”.

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

Well, I suppose from the title of Practice and Learning Editor sounds like I’m at a desk editing heavy clinical things most of the time. Actually, both me and my job share partner, Kathryn Godfrey, work across pretty much all aspects of the brand. We cover events, team marketing, and sales, which is why I did the team entry for this year's PPA Awards, because we do work very much as groups with specific functions within one big team and we’re pretty good at working together across disciplines. Maybe people wouldn't expect that so much.

Walk me through your typical day.

Because I work across aspects there isn’t really that typical a day. There's obviously emails to sort through, and I usually do some of magazine or website production, like editing and proofing, but then I could be editing marketing copy or checking awards entries, or going out with our corporate sales team to a sales pitch, where I’ll talk clients through what we offer their nurses – I leave the sales team to talk money though. So, it's quite varied.

I think it's been 13 years, that Kathryn and I have job shared on this on this role.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

I think particularly over the last decade or so when the magazine industry has been going through such a hard time, it's organisations like this that help you to find ways through.  Especially with things like the move online, it’s good to be able to share best practice instead of seeing each other just as competitors.

I think we are getting there with learning how to make money out of online publications, and I think it is organisations like the PPA, that help industries to get through times like this. Hopefully we are, certainly Nursing Times, and the EMAP brands seem to be finding our way through.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day? *

I’d like to say something like I’d do yoga and lots of self-improving, reading the things that I always feel I should read or running. The truth is, I am very lazy, so I would probably waste it! And I actually love sleeping…

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

My mother in law on her 91st birthday with her cake.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Candy Crush Soda.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

My musical obsession, Nick Cave. Though it’s probably for the best that I don’t, as I’d just be burbling nonsense down the phone at him.

What’s the best/worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best probably would have been former Director of ours, who was about to leave the company, so she could be a little bit more frank, possibly, than she might have been. It was when Kathryn and I had a bit of a professional disappointment and she offered to talk us through it. She said, “You have to be clear with your employers about what you want and if you're not happy be prepared to walk away.”

What/where is your happy place?

It's probably just sitting in my flat with my husband. We're pretty boring but happy.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

That I’m a trained hypnotherapist. I trained while I was freelancing a few years ago and had a dry patch.

I'd been really interested to learn, as I'm very susceptible to hypnosis myself, so I did a course with the intention of sort of splitting between journalism and hypnotherapy; one's written word, one spoken word, they kind of complement each other.

Then journalism picked up again, and then I got a permanent job, so hypnotherapy took a backseat. I can always come back to it if I do a refresher course because it's really, really rewarding. You can do you can just transform people's lives, like getting rid of phobias and helping them break habits, that sort of thing.

What would be in your Room 101?

The greengrocers’ apostrophe, basically the inappropriate use of the apostrophe. They used to be called greengrocers’ apostrophes because on market stalls greengrocers, every product is pluralised.

Introvert or extrovert?

I think I'm probably more extroverted than introvert, but I do have my introverted moments.

Optimist or pessimist?

I'm an optimist by nature but I developed cancer a couple of years ago which knocks your optimism a bit, but I think I think I've got through it so more optimistic now.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

Television. I’ve just finished Years and Years and am starting on The Handmaid’s Tale.

Sweet or savoury?

Generally savoury, but I do need a bit of dark chocolate most days.

Morning person or night owl?

Night owl. I'm hopeless in the morning, I try to avoid any anything that requires more than 60% of brain activity before 10am.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee, especially in the morning. I need at least three cups!

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

Well, I use them, so I guess they’re not really cool, but they do help with the fact that you've got no nonverbal cues in texts and emails. I only use them with friends, I wouldn't use them professionally, apart from maybe a little smiley face. With my friends, it’s usually the puking one.

 

**
What made you want to work in the magazine industry? **

Nepotism, basically. I was sitting on my arse at home and my dad said, "You need to go to work, you lazy shit."

He said, “I've got a mate called Cyril Giddy who works for a company called Northwood Publications. I’ve been on the phone to him and asked him if he could give you a job and he said yes and you're starting Monday, so get out and go and start working." 

I'd never even thought about a career until that point, I was about 21/22 years old. I did a year in Australia and the Far East after university. Then I got home, and I was just a bit of pot-head to be honest, as people who do those things after university often are. 

There I was, just wishing I was in the Far East or Australia, rather than sitting at home in the cold, with a miserable looking Dad who was angry all the time. 

It makes me laugh when I find myself now, as a miserable man who's getting tetchy with my kids, but what goes around comes around!

What have been your career highlights so far?

In 1988, there was a so-called Ipex, which was the International Printing Exhibition in Birmingham and I was then editing a magazine called Litho Week, which was the weekly magazine for the printing industry. We decided to do a daily magazine.

The only way we could do it was by using all the technology that exhibiting companies had on their stands, including the printing presses. So we literally arranged with a type setter, a repo company, a plate maker, a film maker, a printer… to all collaborate with us on doing this exercise and we printed this magazine twice a day for the eight or nine days of the show, and it worked. It came out. It was an extraordinary experience, and it was talk about fly by the seat of your pants, but it was an amazing thing to do back in 1988. 

That said, the German running the MAN Roland stand, the mob who were printing the daily, took one look at the first issue and screamed at me: “I weel not print zis sheet!”

Next highlight would have to be launching XYZ magazine in 1990. The proposition of XYZ, was that the future of the world and the future of the creative world in communications, would be colour desktop computing. Moving from trade houses delivering end products to artists, creators, journalists and photographers building their own stuff. We launched the magazine specifically to promote that idea. 

I’d met a lady called Emilia Knight who was the marketing director of Apple UK, then a small company in Stockley Park off the back of Heathrow employing perhaps 30 people. This was after Jobs had been sacked and Apple was struggling to compete with Microsoft.

Emilia was desperate to get some Mac based systems to market and she agreed to supply the new XYZ with Macs, LaserWriters and full support for nothing in order to showcase the installation, one of the first of its type in the UK.

Everybody else at Haymarket was still using typewriters, faxes and Grant enlargers so this system was a sensation, frankly magical. It’s hard to imagine now, in the internet and smart phone era just how extraordinary that stuff was back then.

Other highlights: launching FourFourTwo under cover because “we don’t do hobby publishing at Haymarket” and doing all the magazines, including the incredible daily programmes, for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Oh and the X-Factor in 2010 – “yes we discovered One Direction”. Oh and working with Mike Ashley, which was oddly entertaining and successful.

Oh and sitting opposite the estimable Mike Lee in Nyon and being told: “Don’t f**k with UEFA”.

Do you have a go-to work outfit? 

I wear a pork pie hat, that's my uniform.

*How do you handle deadlines? *

Deadlines exist to be met at the last possible minute. If I know something is due a week today, the time to start thinking about it is a day before a week today. 

I'm cavalier with deadlines, but I've always made sure that I have a fantastic production or managing editor close at hand, who is actually able to kick my arse.

*What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job? *

Being in a brothel. I went to a press reception, this would be back in the 1980s, in Bavaria. It was a German printing press manufacturer launching a new press and we went to dinner and then at the end of dinner the host said, "We're going to go on and have a few drinks." 

We went into this little place; it was a bit odd; it didn't seem like a bar and it was all a bit tacky – lots of velvet, ornate chandeliers and things and just something odd I couldn’t quite fathom. I was certainly very young, single and naïve, so I just sat there drinking. 

Then this woman came and sat down next to me and started chatting me up and I was sitting there thinking, “Jesus, my luck's in, this never happens!” 

Then one of the older members of our team nudged me and said, "You do realize where you are?"

So, I said "I'm in a bar being chatted up by a girl!" To which he replied, "No you're not, you're in a brothel and she's not chatting you up, she's about to take you somewhere." 

At which point I felt physically sick, got up and left and went back to the hotel very quickly…

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

Being Creative Director gave me a license to do things I could only have dreamt of 10 or 15 years ago but the surprising thing might be that I've become quite a big fan of data. 
The reason is obvious once you think about it. Because our business model is a paid content qualitative play, knowing your audience and understanding what stories they consume and how frequently they consume them, allows us to do better journalism. It means we can shift from an x number of stories per day model to focusing more effort and energy on the stories that matter.

*Walk me through your typical day. *

I suppose it's a day at the office. Get on the 281 bus, which is direct from just outside my house pretty much, to right outside the front door at the office. Always on the top deck, always sitting in the same places and it's enjoyable to see so many good looking people to brighten my mornings! 

Then it’s a succession of coffee, meetings, politics, sticking stuff on walls, blagging offices, nagging managers, arguing, singing to the canteen staff (passable Barry White), being super creative on the newly reimagined super creative Campaign and then home again.

I can't really say much more than that. The bus journey is the most interesting part of it, the 281 frames my day, and bookends the start and finish.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

I think that's really important because I'm passionate about the printed magazine and because I'm also passionate that there is a whole new audience of young magazine makers that are emerging. I've discovered a whole bunch of new ones when I was up in Edinburgh the other week, talking at the International Magazine Centre up there. 

I met a whole load of young magazine makers from Edinburgh and Glasgow who were in their own way inspirational. I think that Magnetic, as well as PPA, is really important because I think too many of us old-timers have come to believe that we shouldn't be talking about magazines. We should be talking about brands and we should be talking about digital and we should be talking about live. We should be saying that we're thoroughly modern and we don't think about print anymore, we've moved on from that. 

I think that's crazy, I think our brands are our brands and we must use all of the tools at our disposal, of which print is one, to have great conversations with our audiences. Yes online is our most critical channel, yes live is our fastest growing revenue stream but print allows us to set a tone and voice for our brands that other channels simply can’t match. 

Until they shove me out of the door or put me in a box I’ll continue to promote the value and joy of print done properly as poster sites for our brands.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day?  *

Watching football, Spurs to be precise. 

*What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why? *

The Champions League Final, before 30 seconds into the game when Liverpool scored.

*What’s your guilty pleasure? *

I quite like trashy TV, like Newsnight and Panorama in between the good stuff like Pointless and  Love Island.
Whose phone number do you wish you had? 

Phoebe Waller Bridge – comedy genius. Just genius. I've no dog collar so would sort her Fleabag misery for sure
  
What’s the best/worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Worst advice: "You have to experience your magazine on press" before spending a night at Thamesmouth in Basildon sitting in a room with a fridge, some tins of Carling Black Label, a portable TV, a Scrabble set and bugger all else. Finally gave up at 6.00am, drove down the A127 to Southend and tossed some stones into the sea.

Best advice: “If you believe, keep plugging away until you become boring. People will do anything to stop the droning, boring person.”

What/where is your happy place?

I do like to smoke, and I have a bench outside the front door of my house. I can watch the world go by and chat to the neighbours. The bench and the bath are my happy places.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

That I’m only three steps from John F. Kennedy. 

John F. Kennedy had the famous Doctor Max Jacobson (Dr. Feelgood) who basically sorted his back pain, kept him standing and walking and maintained his active sex life, by feeding him drugs.

So, Max Jacobson married my auntie Ruth (my mother’s foster sister) who is then connected to me. 

What would be in your Room 101? 

Lame punning headlines, like “Reach for the sky” for a story about planes, or “Get stuffed” for a Christmas food story. I hate them because they’re lazy and it's lame and they rarely tell the story. 

Introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert. Well oddly enough, both I think. Privately, I'm quite introverted but publicly I'm quite extroverted. Most people who know me would say I'm an extrovert, but actually I don't feel that way when I'm at home. 

*Optimist or pessimist? *

Optimist… except for football. 

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

Film. I can't wait for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that's going to be the highlight of my year.

*Sweet or savoury? *

Savoury. 

*Morning person or night owl? *

Morning person.

*Tea or coffee? *

Coffee. 

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

Cringey. I don’t.

What made you want to work in the magazine industry?

I always wanted to be a journalist, I was quite lucky in that regard and when I was a kid, I had it quite set in my mind. I'd read Official PlayStation Magazine, which I loved, cover to cover and then when I got to university, I did a lot of straight news. I found that there wasn't really opportunity to do lots of creative writing, an idea which solidified when I did work on local papers and BBC Stoke.

I got into reading FHM _while studying and I really loved the style of writing there, so I got it set in my head that I wanted to be Features Editor there. I was a bit of a generalist, rather than having a specialism like football or tech or something, but I'm interested in TV, movies and gaming, which fit in with the men’s magazines of that time, as they covered lots of interests. I managed to get an internship at _FHM straight out of university. Then I went into the digital side of magazines about 10 years ago, at FHM.com and I've never looked back from there, really.

What have been your career highlights so far?

I've had a few! I became Digital Editor at Heat Magazine at age 23, which I was really chuffed about at the time. I interviewed my childhood hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger when I worked at _Heat _Magazine as well. He loved my hair, which was a great ego boost for me. Also, I got to lecture at a number of universities, particularly City, University of London and Nottingham Trent a few times. That's been really rewarding, to help people come up. Then, obviously there’s winning PPA's 30 under 30 earlier this year. I also won the BSME's Deputy Editor of the year 2018, which was quite a big deal for me. And, of course, I became Editor of _Digital Spy, _the UK's biggest entertainment website, recently.

In terms of work and places, I always wanted to cover Glastonbury for work, and the Brit Awards. So that was quite nice too to cover Beyoncé at Glastonbury and do the Brits a few years in a row. It has been quite an honour for me.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

Generally, it ends up being something like a fisherman's jumper, or a heavy-knit jumper and jeans. It’s quite basic and I tend to fall into a habit of wearing a lot of black.

Magazines are generally a bit more casual, but now that I'm Editor and there's more commercial meetings, I think I’ll need invest in a few more suits.

How do you handle deadlines?

My ethos on deadlines is generally that I try and get whatever I have to do out the way early. I don't like leaving things until the very last minute because I don't feel, a lot of time, that I've done my best work if I leave it until the last minute.

When I'm leading a team, I try to be very clear and concise about what we want to do. Against a deadline, things can get very murky and you can have too many cooks, that sort of thing, so I think being very clear and direct about what we're trying to do is key. On the whole, I think I can deal with deadlines well, despite going quite prematurely grey.

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

I'm stuck between two. The first was when I was working at FHM and got to go on my first ever press trip after I'd done some good work on the mag, and I went to the EXIT festival in Serbia. I ended up with the guy that ran the EXIT festival, at his house, which was actually an old wooden train they'd chopped up and built a house out of.  It was up on this hill overlooking the river in Novi Sad and the sun was going down and the star of Serbian Big Brother turned up, who’s this huge, portly old man who everyone was going crazy over. Then some Serbian basketball players turned up and we had Serbian Barbecue and, quite like the festival, it was just very surreal.

The other one was just last year. I went to Italy to go to the world's deepest underwater rave. We were basically at the bottom of a diving pool, there's a tube going through the water where there's a DJ set going on and people were watching in the tube and you kind of rave under the water. They have music playing through your headphones. And then there's people that could deep dive who were diving next to you in neon stuff and giving you glow sticks and things. I'll probably never do that again!

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

Probably that at the moment, we don't have a daily news meeting. We did have one for a long time, and it's kind of a thing we've constantly tried to evolve. I think sometimes, meetings can drag on, so our new system currently is working really well, a lot of the daily news meeting’s elements are replicated digitally and we schedule a meeting on a weekly basis to have a look back and forwards about what we're doing for news.

Walk me through your typical day.

I think it depends on the day of the week, but the sort of things that I'll normally hit are the news meeting, which I said previously was daily, but at the minute we are experimenting with a weekly. I have a lot of one-to-ones with my senior staff scattered across different days of the week.

Depending on which day we're on, I'll be talking to one of them and catching up about their workload, what they're doing, their priorities, anything I need to flag.

Then lots and lots and lots of emails. I've never been an inbox zero person, so I'm constantly battling emails that are coming in, like press releases or internal emails or ideas that I need to catch up on.

I'm also working quite heavily with the video side of things. That was a big part of my role that still carried on from when I was Associate Editor, then Deputy Editor. We recently hired a Video Editor, so at the minute I'm catching up with the video schedule for the day, what edits are we doing, what we're filming that day, the deadlines and embargoes, going back and doing a lot of video producing, and checking the videos, and occasionally I do get a little bit of video editing myself. Presenting can be a big part of it as well, as in presenting video.

We just finished a bunch of Game of Thrones live streams, which we were doing after the show every Monday from 10PM onwards, until quite late at night. In fact, I’m relieved I have my Monday's back, even though I'm sad the show is over.

There's a lot of commercial work and commercial briefs can drop at any time and invariably they're short lead times, but we're trying to come up with good ideas for them, or ideas for junkets and creative solutions.

Training, I guess, is the other thing. If I go on training sessions with social, internal company training, I have to do a lot of presentations and a few more events. As of late last week, I was in Manchester, and I've been running a 20th anniversary quiz of Digital Spy, where we did a big TV, movies and entertainment quiz for a bunch of agencies which went down really well.

The other thing that comes up all the time is event planning. We've got ComicCon coming up so we're going to get together and plan for what we're doing for that.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

Digital Spy won the PPA Digital Content Team of the Year award in 2017 and 2018. We’re nominated for the PPA Team of the Year award this year as well, so fingers crossed.

What was really great about that was giving Digital Spy the credit it deserved. It's always been a great, well-performing site and I think one of the things we tried to do in the last three years is make it more consumer-facing and really build it to as big as it can be.

So, it's really great for the team to win that award because there’s a lot of hard work from those people that goes in. It's not one individual.

Obviously for my own personal viewpoint, winning a 30 under 30 was also great, that I managed to squeeze it in just before I was too old. It's really great for the PPA to have the ability to pick out these up-and-coming people and established people, and established teams, in all sorts of different fields, to give them the credit they deserve.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day? *

Oh. I'd love to say I'd spend it expanding my mind and reading or becoming a drummer like I've always wanted to… but I think I'd probably end up binging on the TV that I need to watch and playing PlayStation, actually.

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

It's a card that my Nan sent me to congratulate me on becoming Editor of Digital Spy, she'd handwritten me the card and I went to see her the weekend. I don't get a chance to see her very much and she said, “I'm not a writer like you, but I've put pen to paper to say congratulations." It was a really big thing.  

What’s your guilty pleasure?

I actually love power ballads; my girlfriend absolutely hates them.  I love “Kiss from a rose” by Seal because I remember it was on the Batman soundtrack when I was a kid.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

What’s the best/worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

It was from a lecturer of mine at Staffordshire university, John Rafferty, he used to say, "Be a pump, not a drain." I think by that he meant, be a positive person. Pump the water. Get people gee'd up and don't be a drain on things.

Thinking back to people I've met in my career, some of the people that perform best and do best are people persons that connect with people and get on well with people. If you can work well with someone, that's most of the battle.

What/where is your happy place?

Glastonbury is amazing, and unfortunately, I won't be there this year. I'm usher at my friend's wedding, and he's booked it on Glastonbury weekend! I've always been so happy whenever I'm there. Either that, or Max's Sandwich Shop in Finsbury Park because that place is incredible. There are great sandwiches and it's just around the corner from my girlfriend's house. If not Glastonbury, then you would probably find me there on the weekend.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

Maybe that I can't really ride a bike, I never really learned. I've tried to learn a few times over the years, and I blog about it. I can just about wobble along, I’m not great at turning, which is quite a key thing to riding a bike. Or that I was bitten by a dog on my face when I was in my early 20’s. Looking at my face you’d never know, so I was quite lucky in that regard.

What would be in your Room 101?

People who wear sunglasses on London Underground. It's quite a specific thing that annoys me. I don't know if it annoys anyone else. Obviously, I don't mean people that need a prescription or something like that. But if you're just wearing fashion sunglasses underground then why on earth are you doing that? You can barely see. Take them off, you poser.

Introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert.

Optimist or pessimist?

Pessimist.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

I think TV generally, I think it's generally better. I do like just dipping into film because you can complete it and it's done with. I’m binge-watching Killing Eve season two at the moment.

Sweet or savoury?

Savoury.

Morning person or night owl?

I think probably more of a morning person.

Tea or coffee?

Tea. Absolutely.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

I think cringey most of the time. I think it's between either the thumbs up or the grimace. I use the grimace quite a lot which I think I was misunderstanding as a smile for quite a long time. But now I just keep using it as the grimace, just like, "Ugh."

What made you want to work in the publishing industry?

I’ve always enjoyed journalism, and funny thing, it actually started with Eurovision, in 2005. That’s how I broadly got interested in current affairs and politics, because of all the drama that happens there with boarders, flags and generally speaking, politics. As I looked deeper at the time, I found out that there was a song by Portugal in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest that was used as the alarm for the troops during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, called E Depois do Adeus, on the day they brought down the dictatorship. I ended up writing about that during an internship at Channel 4 News in 2012.

However, originally, I did intend to study architecture with the dream of becoming a skyscraper designer. I came to London in 2011, and after not getting onto an Architecture course, I decided to pursue journalism, and completed my degree at London Met. I enjoy it so much I still don’t really see it as a job! I’m fortunate to say that I still get out of bed every day and want to do my job, and it’s rare that a day drags for me.

What have been your career highlights so far?

I'm a perfectionist, so I’m always looking for more and how to make things better. And I think that’s how you develop brands anyway. I really enjoyed doing an investigation for The Daily Mail while I was there on placement in 2015. A news story had been broken about five Portuguese jihadists who had gone to Syria. The Daily Mail asked me to look into it because I spoke Portuguese, so I did quite an in-depth investigation. While I was there, I got offered my first full-time position in – tech – journalism, but if I’d been there for two weeks, maybe a month more, I might have found Jihadi John, the Chief News Reporter at the time later commended me for my efforts.

Then, definitely launching Data Economy, which is now nearly three years old. At the stage that we’re reaching now, where we’re breaking records every month, revenues are going up and we’re proving that print is not dead; it proves that having the right mindset, the right niche and the support to do something can be successful.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

Out in the field, for interviews and videos especially, it will be a suit and tie but if it’s a normal day in the office jeans and a t-shirt will do. I’m very easy, my wardrobe is organised so I can just put on a t-shirt and go. I don’t want to waste time in the morning looking for clothes.

How do you handle deadlines?

I’ve learned to relax more and manage my time much more efficiently. Instead of breaking my time into hour blocks, I now break it up into 5 and 15-minute blocks. That way, if a task takes 45 minutes, you aren’t wasting those extra 15 minutes you would have, had you allotted an hour. Managing the day, by writing a things down and utilising a couple online apps, helps to make it easier because you know how many slots you have. The key is to not panic. I’m also a fan of stress cleaning, as my workmates will tell you. If there’s a big deadline, I’ll often get out the vacuum cleaner!

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

I accidentally walked onstage once during a presentation because I was looking at my phone and opened the wrong door! Other highlights have included the time I ripped my trousers in public or that other time I had a stalker…

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

The amount of work and time that I put into the role. To an outsider it might look glamorous, but they don’t see the other side. It’s a lot more work than it appears and social media definitely doesn’t show the whole story.

Walk me through your typical day.

If I’m working at the office, I usually get up between 5.00am and 5.20am, I check my emails (normally around 400 a day, so I don’t get round to replying to all of them or else I wouldn’t get anything else done!)

I head to the office and then I manage that day’s news and coverage, liaise with printers, designers, finance, managers, sit in several meetings, sort anything that needs solving (from editorial to managerial), competitor analysis, essentially making sure the brand is working and keeping up.

Usually there will be meetings for upcoming trips and events, of which we run between 12 and 15 currently, and ticking things off the to-do list. I don’t think I could get everything done in one single week, so it’s more about managing what I’m doing and what needs prioritising. I go through phase, but I normally work about 75 hours a week which can easily go to 145 hours plus for a few weeks throughout the year (I only sleep an average of 4 hours a night anyway…).

Some nights I’ll head to the gym. Then it’s home to read some more emails and check the news, prepare for next day which by that time is already in motion in APAC anyway.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

Having our logo on the PPA website has given us an official status amongst the media sector and our readers. It was also nice to be recognised with a PPA 30 under 30 award earlier this year.

If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day?

I’d keep working to try and get things done. That said, I’d probably try and go out more as well. The first eighteen months of this job, I was basically living it 24/7 for it so now I’d probably take some time out and reconnect with friends.

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

Niagara Falls, Toronto.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Sugary things like ice cream, Coca-Cola, those are my go-to things at the moment. Also shisha…which doubles as an excuse to go out.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Either The Obamas or Mark Zuckerberg.

What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

To cut your wings and say that something can’t happen for you. If you dream big, you can achieve enough to be happy. You have to allow people to think and be free.

What/where is your happy place?

Being from Portugal, I love to be close to the water. A beach for instance, with the sun beating down and listening to the ocean is a pretty decent place to wind down from the busy media life.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

That Eurovision inspired me to learn about politics and history which drove me into journalism and brand building.

What would be in your Room 101?

Bureaucracy, delays and wasting time. Just get on with it!

Introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert.

Optimist or pessimist?

50/50 balance.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

Television, I like What/if, Dead to Me, Lucifer and The Alienist, etc. I love Sci-Fi and horror especially, and a bit of cartoons doesn’t hurt… keeps the inner child happy!

Sweet or savoury?

Sweet.

Morning person or night owl?

Night owl.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

Cool, if you know how to use them. I’m always using the facepalm.

What made you want to work in the magazine industry?

What I love most about magazines is that the focus is equally on visual impact and crafted storytelling.

What have been your career highlights so far?

It has been a highlight to be the Editorial Director on Homes & Gardens in its 100th year. I relaunched the brand in January (Feb 2019 issue), with a completely fresh look and a new website, and we are now entering a summer of celebrations, with engaging reader and industry events. It has been fabulously exciting to take a legacy brand and reinvent it for today’s audiences.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

Not really. I wear dresses, jeans, skirts, shirts… I do love to wear colour, particularly a bright coat or hat.

How do you handle deadlines?

Pretty calmly. I just sit quietly and work. Which is handy as I’d say that we’re pretty much always on deadline now!

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

That today’s editorial teams also need to think commercially. I passionately believe that, for the future of brands and magazines, we need to have a collaborative relationship with clients and partners.

Walk me through your typical day.

One of the best things about my job is that there really is no typical day. Some days will be all about collaboration, and I’ll have editorial meetings with content creators and strategy brainstorms with my brand team. Others will be more focused on copy and picture editing. Others will involve external meetings with clients or PRs. It’s a big mix. The only thing I do every single day is sit down with the creative director to run through the in-progress magazines and any other collateral or brand work.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

Network and conversation are two very powerful things, and the PPA facilitates both of these. And as the magazine and wider publishing industry evolves at breakneck speed, connection is particularly valuable. We also need to look outside of our own world and see how other creatives are innovating.

*If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day? *

I’d spend more time with my little girl (as long as in this imaginary world she doesn’t need sleep either!) If she was asleep, I’d read fiction. I used to devour a novel a week and at the moment it takes me something like a year. Oh, and I’d also do a History of Art Masters.

What is the last photo you took on your phone (at time of interview)? Why?

We just spent a glorious long weekend in Puglia – and this is at the gorgeous Masseria Potenti.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

I don’t really have one. I suppose I love dark chocolate ginger biscuits and fruit pastilles. But I don’t feel that guilty when I eat them!

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

I have all the phone numbers I need.

What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t worry about it.

What/where is your happy place?

With my family. In the sunshine. Travelling somewhere new.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

I like to be in bed by 9pm and up at 5:30am.

What would be in your Room 101?

I would always have said bananas. But I’ve kind of had to get over it now I have a toddler.

Introvert or extrovert?

Both. Depends on the circumstances.

Optimist or pessimist?

All-out optimist.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

I can’t really say either. We don’t have a TV, but we do use our projector to stream specific series, like Killing Eve, Big Little Lies or Handmaid’s Tale. I’m a pretty useless person to watch a movie at home with – I sometimes don’t even stay awake past the opening credits.

Sweet or savoury?

Sweet.

Morning person or night owl?

Morning person.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

I don’t have strong views on emojis. Which do I use the most? Probably the lightening bolt, heart and girl shrugging. And the blue spiral – that’s a good one.

What made you want to work in the publishing industry?

I started my career in marketing at Procter & Gamble (P&G). I enjoyed the marketing aspect of it, but I found the FMCG side quite restrictive and a little bit sexist, if I’m really honest. So, I left and went to join a small contract publisher as Business Development Director and I discovered that I enjoyed working on the other side of the fence, as an agency, rather than as a client, which I’d been for six years.

After three years I left and set up my own company; it wasn’t as much about being my own boss as it was about magazines. In those days, about twenty-five years ago, in 1994, magazines were still very much a growing medium. I think they still are in certain vertical sectors, but there is a slow decline in general. I find creative people inspiring, and I really enjoyed working with clients.

Can you chart your journey from when you started out to your current position?

I got a degree in English, which doesn’t really qualify you for anything other than being a librarian. I then went to P&G for sales and marketing for six years. I left and went to a small contract publisher called Publishing Team for about three and a half years, where I met an Editor who became my business partner, and we set up River.

We grew quite rapidly, and we subsequently sold the company, bits of it and then all of it four and a half years ago. Then I bought it back in December 2017.

I’ve never had one hundred per cent of the business before, I’ve always had a proportion of it, like 50 per cent of it, 25 per cent, 30 per cent, but now I’ve got 100 per cent.

I’ve had it back for nearly a year and a half, I’ve set up a share scheme, so the senior managers now have shares, which has never happened before. I think we’re now the biggest independent Content Marketing Agency in the UK and we’re still growing.

Do you have a go-to work outfit?

Gosh no, my work a day outfit is jeans, with either a shirt or a t-shirt. If I’ve got a client meeting, it’ll be a smarter version of that or a dress. Usually a dress.

What’s the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in because of your job?

I did a pitch once where we used slide carousels and the carousel had a technical fault. It started going the wrong way and all the slides started whizzing out, and the Chief Executive – who is still the Chief Executive of one of the companies we work with – and the client were catching them from the air.

What would people be surprised to know about your job?

How much client contact I have even though I’m CEO. To produce great content we really need to understand both the commercial and marketing objectives of the brands we work with. I’m often still strategic lead with long standing River client accounts.

Walk me through your typical day.

River is in its 25th year, so we are trying to raise £25,000 for charity, which means that myself and the majority of the rest of the team are doing a variety of challenges. We’ve had cake sales and beauty sales, skydiving, and are hiking the three peaks. I’m cycling 125 miles in a day from The Midlands to Wales in July, so a typical day for me is to get up and go out on my bicycle, which is my most hated possession, for six miles in the morning.

Once I’m done with that, I get ready for work, drive to the station with River’s dog, as he comes to work with me. When I get to work it’s a combination of meetings, conference calls; we have a lot of international clients, so we do a lot of Zoom video calls. On a typical three days out of five I will have a client lunch and at least two nights a week I meet clients for dinner, so I spend a lot of my personal time with clients.

River are really good in that we tend to keep clients for a long time; so, we’ve worked with Holland & Barrett for 24 years, Superdrug for 17 years, Weight Watchers for 13 years, Co-Op for 12 years, and invariably you become, there’s obviously a line, but you do become quite friendly with some of your clients. It’s great for business development, as when they move, quite often they take you with them. I work with people I like. River are picky about new business and work with organisations and individuals that they like and respect. We wouldn’t work with a brand whose values we didn’t respect.

How has being a member of the PPA helped you/added value to your brand?

Though I’ve got history with CMA, having been one of the founding members, River are a bit different in content marketing terms and we have been for 15 years, because we publish paid for magazines on the newsstand in the UK and overseas.

If you didn’t have to sleep, how would you use the remaining hours in the day?

I’m a terrible sleeper, it’s a hereditary thing, so I only get about four or five hours sleep a night. I read books and watch TV when I wake up. If I had a 24-hour day I would probably get really fit and try and do long distance challenges. I used to do marathons in my twenties!

I’d also do a bit more charity work, at the moment I’m only a trustee of one charity, because it’s been so busy, and I’ve got other businesses too; a skincare beauty company that we’re just about to launch as well as property company.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Fizzy Haribo! I had a very posh country wedding and my very posh country wedding planner was very concerned that next to the “made on the stomachs of virgins” chocolate truffles, I was having big jars of Haribo and bottles of limoncello. She wasn’t very impressed.

Whose phone number do you wish you had?

Bill Clinton.

What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

When I set up River, my mum said to me, “Why are you leaving a very safe job at Procter & Gamble? Don’t do it”.

What/where is your happy place?

At home with my kids.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

I’m quite religious; Catholic. My kids both went to catholic school, but because I swear a lot and drink a lot people don’t think about it. I find a lot in my faith, and I love being spiritual.

My favourite book is The Secret and it’s about gratitude to the universe, like if you want to be rich, give your money away. It really does work.

What would be in your Room 101?

I’d put poverty in there. It annoys me that you can walk past homeless people and others just ignore them. I really respect The Big Issue as an organisation.

Introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert.

Optimist or pessimist?

Optimist.

Film or television? What are you binge-watching at the moment?

Film – I love horror and pick ’n’ mix at the cinema.

Sweet or savoury?

Savoury.

Morning person or night owl?

Morning.

Tea or coffee?

Tea. I drink about fifteen mugs a day.

Emojis – cool or cringey? Which emoji do you use the most?

Cool – the heart emoji.