Mag blag

Just lately I've started going to the gym. Not because I want to enter the next Malta marathon or anything like that. No, I've decided that I must get fit, to help me build up enough strength to carry home the Sunday newspapers.

Have you seen them lately? Or rather, have you felt the weight of them? You need the muscles of Arnie Schwarzenegger to just fetch them from the newsagent. It's not the newspapers so much as what they insert into them.

Every week they are cramming more and more supplements, glossy mags, A4 advert flyers... you name it, between the pages of the once modest newspaper. Last Sunday, when I finally reached the sanctuary of my front porch, I needed a sit-down and a cup of tea, to recover from the strain of carrying, not just The Sunday Times and a couple of Opposition rags, but there was also Manic (that's the one for chiropodists and manicurists), several glossy bin-liners (that's advertising flyers for everything from luxury cars to high-fibre laxatives) and, oh yes, and there were a couple of estate agents' flyers in there as well. These are rather cool actually, since if you roll them into a ball, you can have hours of fun trying to toss them into the waste-paper basket.

And we, at Allied, are also starting to produce our own crop of mags. We've already launched Pink (I haven't actually browsed through it, but with a title like that it's probably targeting the gay community)... Where is it all going to end?

I dunno, but I'll tell you this... I'm getting in on the act. I've set up in business as a magazine consultant. I shall suggest titles for anyone daft enough to want to launch their own insert magazine.

And there's masses of scope. We'd certainly need our own Maltese "celebrity" mag... along the lines of Hello. The difficult bit would be finding enough so-called local "celebrities" to put in it, so that should be called Goodbye.

And what about our national obsession, football? It's time we had a Maltese football fanzine. Only, in keeping with our character, we'd call it In the Bag. We'd run personality pen-portraits on celebrity bookies and our "Those were the days" slot would be packed with reminiscences by long-retired players telling us how they fixed the championship decider between Floriana and Sliema in the winter of 1952.

And we can't forget our other national obsession; in fact it's actually our national sport... politics. Yeah, yeah, I know the newspapers and TV channels are chock-a-block with politics, politics, politics... and more politics, but we've yet to be regaled with any commentary magazines, like The Spectator or The New Statesman. So we'd launch two here. They'd serve the two main parties and one would be called We are Right!... while the other would bear the title No, We Are! It doesn't matter which party gets which title, it doesn't even matter which party prints which articles, they'd all come out sounding the same anyway.

There have recently been a few glossy insert mags on my own favourite subject, food and drink. Well almost my favourite, my real fave is actually the drink bit. So for goodness' sake! Let's stop pussyfooting around and bring out a periodical on just... drink. There's lots of angles to explore... what gets you p****d quickest, what does and does not give you a hangover. What wine to drink with other sorts of drink. We'd call the insert Legless. Should do well.

There are a load of motoring inserts, but nothing for all those devoted owners of beaten-up Ford Escorts and lacerated Ladas. We would call the supplement Scrap. It would be packed with handy tips on how to get those few extra decibels out of the in-car stereo system. How to do a handbrake turn with totally bald tyres and which are the coolest CDs to hang from the rear view mirror.

I could go on... and will if someone coughs up the 10% plus my usual fee. Freebie mags are the next big thing. Get hustling.