My recent appearance (resplendent in a dazzling white linen suit, Panama hat and two-tone shoes and standing in front of the new Rolls Royce Phantom) on the front cover of the Sunday Times award-winning Lifestyle section caused some fellow journalists to question whether a newspaper or magazine should feature a member of their own staff so prominently. Doesn’t it smack of the worst sort of vanity?
Despite suggestions to the contrary, my appearance on the cover of Lifestyle was not my idea; it was the editor’s. I have to do what I’m told at the Sunday Times and that includes dressing up like a cast member from Scandal and posing in front of the sort of car that Cyril Ramaphosa probably wouldn’t buy for all the wrong reasons. Not that I objected. Quite the opposite, in fact. As a shameless self publicist I can’t think of anything better than a front page pic in the best read section of the country’s largest selling newspaper; particularly as it didn’t cost me a cent.
The following morning I received a pile of hostile emails criticising my dreadful choice of tie and the fact that I was apparently smoking a cigar in a Rolls Royce. In deference to the eventual owner of the Phantom, the cigar had been lit and allowed to go out, which merely gave the illusion that I was smoking it – but that was good enough for the anti-smoking brigade. I went shopping the following day in Sandton and people stared and whispered to one another as I walked by. I doubt whether the majority of those staring had even read the accompanying article; it was enough that my photograph had appeared. I had finally achieved what my worst enemies suspect I have always hankered after – celebrity status in return for doing absolutely nothing. Now, if I could only persuade the Sunday Times to run a weekly photograph of me in a prominent position I wouldn’t have to bother with all that tedious and time-consuming writing.
This same thought already seems to have occurred to one or two other people. The most famous perpetual cover girl is Oprah Winfrey, she of the fluctuating waistline. For some reason she seems to feature on the cover of every edition of her magazine O. That was fine in the days when “O” was still young and everyone thought it stood for orgasm, but surely we’re now due for a break with tradition. After all, nobody could accuse Oprah of needing the extra exposure of a magazine cover.
My fleeting acquaintance with magazine cover stardom was intended as a joke and most people took it as such. Whether Top Billing magazine intend their covers as a joke is another matter entirely. I’m told that no-one should admit to watching Top Billing on television on a Friday night because it implies that they don’t have a life. I freely admit to not having a life and to enjoying Top Billing, but I’m not so sure that I really want to see the presenters on the cover of their own magazine, particularly when they’ve forced poor Michael Mol to do up all the buttons on that absurd undertaker’s suit he wears. It’s all about credibility and once a magazine is perceived as existing to promote the careers of TV presenters rather than ideas then I, for one, am going to leave it untouched on the shelf.
So it’s going to be interesting to see what the new editor does with Top Billing magazine. The last editor had a very short shelf life and rumour has it that there were “personality clashes”. Hopefully the new incumbent will be allowed to move away from vanity publishing and give us something a little more cerebral.