Surrey Life Editor's Blog

Printing problems...

I was really pleased with the new October magazine - one of my favourite issues so far - which makes it all the more annoying that a problem at the printers has caused a slight delay in getting some of the copies out into the county.

We had a few calls earlier today from people saying they couldn't find the new mag - and a couple from disgruntled shops wondering where their copies are.

Anyway, never fear - our formidable circulation manager, Phil Elcome, is on the case and everywhere should now be fully stocked.

Meanwhile, I've just got the photos back from a photoshoot we did yesterday at the Guildford Yvonne Arnaud Theatre with much-loved actress Penelope Keith, and they really our beautiful.

Our photographer, Kate Eastman, and art director Richard Andrews, have done a splendid job of capturing her in a far more relaxed, informal way than we are used to seeing her.

It's a cracking interview too, with loads of great stuff about her love for Surrey and all the many things she is involved with in the county - but you'll have to wait until November for that one.

    

 

Hot topic

Well, the great dressing gown debate certainly seemed to touch a chord (or should that be cord?) far beyond the Surrey Life office.

Check out the comments on the previous entry to see what some of our readers had to say on the matter.

Meanwhile, we had our latest planning & review meeting yesterday, which actually went very well. Group editor, Jon Keeble, is really pleased with the latest issue (which hits the shops today) and, in the main, so am I.

The feature on Surrey vineyards is just gorgeous - big beautiful pictures that could have been taken in the south of France - and I love the encyclopaedia of Surrey ghosts, the interview with TV hardman Donal MacIntyre and the fascinating article on foraging for food.

Anyway, better crack on - we're already hard at work on the November issue but there's still a scarily large amount of work to be done.   

Bedside manner...

One of the great things about working at Surrey Life is that we are blessed with a truly fantastic team of people.

In the main, we all get on like a house on fire, but that doesn't mean we share the same opinions - far from it.

Take men in dressing gowns, for example, today's hot topic... Rarely has a subject created such divide. Is it acceptable for men to wear dressing gowns or is it a bit, er, poncey? Answers on a postcard please...

One thing's for sure - no-one could ever accuse us of not being intellectual in this office.

 

 

Back to work

It's been an eventful few days for at least two members of the Surrey Life team - for very different reasons.

Firstly, there's our very own equivalent of Clark Kent, Ade Holder.. By day, a quietly spoken Surrey Life sales executive, by night he turns into a full blown rock star - the lead singer of acclaimed punk band Phinius Gage, no less.

They had a particularly big gig in Brighton last night, which I'm led to believe was an unmissable occasion (apparently, people were even asking for his autograph - something to bear in mind if you ever receive a media pack from Ade - you never know, you might be able to flog it one day on e-bay).

Anyway, congratulations to Ade on what sounds like a very memorable night.

Meanwhile, our copy editor, Helen Hughes, has been off work having her tonsils out - poor thing. We all wish her a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing her back very soon.

In other news, my assistant Matt Williams returned today after a few days off. It was great to have him back again, though I was really looking forward to one of his legendary coffees, which failed to materialise.. Strange.. Oh well, he must be saving it for tomorrow morning - right, Matt...?      

 

Undercover operation

I've just spent the best part of two hours weeding through potential cover shots, and I don't think any of them are going to work.

As regular readers will already be aware, looking for those elusive cover shots is the magazine equivalent of searching for the holy grail.

Not only do they have to capture Surrey at its best, they also have to be seasonal, relate to a feature in the magazine, have enough room for cover lines and, as a general rule, have lots of blue sky.

They also have to satisfy all of the following people:

1) Designer

2) Group editor

3) Art director

4) Advertising manager

5) Production editor

6) Regional director

7) Circulation manager    

If any one of  the above don't like the picture, the cover gets binned and it's back to the drawing board again.

I think what I really want for the northern edition, I've just decided, is a nice arty shot of the new Henry Moore exhibition at Kew.

So, if any of you photographers out there have any beautiful shots that fit the bill, feel free to get in touch!   

Nick of time

Well, the picture arrived just in time for the deadline - thank goodness - so the legendary Simon Cowell makes it on to the Surrey Life pages once again, trousers and all...

Bless Max Clifford, he really has gone to the ends of the earth to produce another cracking column for us this month, with a fantastic mix of celebrity exclusives and interesting Surrey news.

I'm really thrilled with this issue actually - not least because it just looks so beautiful with loads of gorgeous, autumn pictures. You can have the best, most interesting content in the world - that's the easy bit as there are so many fantastic stories to choose from in Surrey - it's making the pages look truly stunning that is the real challenge.

Coming from a newspaper background myself, this is perhaps the bit that I've found the hardest. Even when the content doesn't necessarily lend itself to big beautiful images (say, if you're covering a town that's not massively attractive), you still need to come up with a way of conjuring up lovely pictures that make the feature look amazing when it's printed on glossy colour pages.

It's something I still haven't quite cracked so any suggestions gratefully received!

Right, better get back to the mayhem. Now that the October issue is safely off to the printers (it's out in the shops on September 25), it's time to get started on November in earnest.  

Back on track

After what was a total nightmare of a day yesterday, we seem to have caught up and are pretty much back on track.

Almost all the pages are ready to go to the printers (bar my editor's letter, which we're holding until the last moment to see how things fare with the foot and mouth crisis) and all I've really got left to proof is our big Halloween feature on Surrey's most haunted buildings.

Having said all that, today hasn't been without its problems.

I've spent most of this evening on the phone with our new(ish) columnist, PR guru Max Clifford, who is out in Spain for Des O'Connor's wedding, no less...

The problem is, Max has a brilliant photo of Simon Cowell, which he wants to use with this month's column, but no obvious means of getting it to us (we tried scanning and e-mail-ing it, but the picture came through too small for us to be able to use).

In the end, he's going to bring it with him when he flies back to England on Sunday evening, and then my colleague Sarah Dowd is kindly going to pick it up from his house in Walton on Thames on her way into work on Monday. 

To say this is cutting it fine is a bit of an understatement - given that the magazine goes to the printers early Monday evening - but I think the picture is good enough to risk incurring the wrath of our production editor.

I'll let you know how it all goes...

The storm..

I knew I was tempting fate by saying how smoothly things were going.

No sooner had I finished writing that everything was on track than it all went completely pear shaped.

Yesterday, it emerged that we have another outbreak of foot and mouth in Surrey, and whilst my whole-hearted sympathies go out to our rural communities, I am not best pleased on a personal level either.

It has meant re-writing at least two features at breakneck speed to take account of the latest events, and we had to pull Tommy Boyd's column entirely, as it was all about how well we had done to eradicate the disease (thankfully, he managed to write another one just in time to meet the deadline).

If all that wasn't enough my computer crashed spectacularly this morning, with the result that I have now lost all the archived folders from my e-mail and everything in the address book.    

Oh, and as a result of all the above, I still have a mountain of proofing on my desk and the deadline is closing in - all of which makes me rather unhappy today.

Calm before the storm

We're coming up to our deadline this week, but instead of the usual pandemonium, things seem to be going remarkably smoothly.

This probably means one of two things a) I have forgotten to do a whole section of the magazine or b) We are actually on track but all hell will break loose on the last day.

Still, for the moment, it seems to be shaping up to be one of our best issues yet.

We really have got some cracking features this month - a brilliant article on how Surrey wine is taking the world by storm, a lovely piece on where in the county to go foraging for food and a fascinating overview of Surrey's most haunted buildings.

There's still a fair amount of proofing to do, but all the features are laid out and designed (with the exception of Max Clifford's column as he's away at Des O'Connor's wedding till the weekend!) and so far they look fabulous.

Our designer, Donna James, has really done us proud this month, and I can't wait for the magazine to hit the shops!

In the meantime, I better get back to that mountain of proof reading, as inevitably this will be the calm before the storm...

Four letter words

Just popped into the office to catch up on a bit of proofing, before deadline week starts in earnest, and couldn't resist sharing with you a rather amusing incident that happened at the end of last week (well, it made me smile anyway).

 

As regular readers of this blog will already be aware, my last entry was all about a big charity event that we're organising in aid of breast cancer care.

 

Now whenever I post a new entry on the blog, the first thing I do is check on the website that it has uploaded sucessfully.

 

So, as usual, I duly logged on and went into the blog - and blow me, the computer had only gone and removed the word 'breast' and replaced it with asterixes!

 

The end result was that having used a perfectly innocuous word, it now looked as though I had said something seriously dodgy.

 

Cue a swift call to the I.T. help desk where a decided awkwardly conversation ensued - well, you try explaining to some poor unsuspecting systems guy that your computer has banned you from writing the word 'breast'...

 

In the end, we decided that we probably ought to make a decision there and then about which words ought to be allowed on the website - and which ones shouldn't.

 

I would love to be able to share with you the e-mail exchange that followed, but suspect if I did, it would not only be my last blog entry but probably my last day at Surrey Life too. Instead, I will just have to leave it to your imagination...

 

  

A 'pants' idea

I've just had a very strange conversation with our regional managing director, Suzanne Heaven, who made the following request...

"We need bras and pants - and as many as you can get."

Contrary to appearances, we have't changed businesses to selling lingerie, but instead our colleagues on our sister title, Sussex Life, are in the throws of organising their annual Brighton Ball - a huge fundraiser for breast cancer.

Never one to go down the expected route, for last year's event Suzanne came up with the inspired idea of asking celebrities to donate their bras to be auctioned off at the event - and incredibly they managed to raise a mind-blowing £40,000.

This year, they have decided to roll it out to men too, by including 'personality pants' and proceeds from that will go towards helping victims of testicular cancer.

So, if any celebrities out there are reading this, at risk of sounding like Tom Jones, feel free to throw your pants this way... 

 

Winning streak

Well, who'd have thought it? No-one was more surprised than us when our team walked off with the winning trophy at yesterday's BBC Southern Counties charity golf day.

I think it's fair to say that our lot were a bit of a motley crew, consisting of two of our readers, Ken and Simon, plus features writer, Alan, and his mate Stelios, and no-one really expected great things.

Actually, we were just happy to have a team there at all actually after Stelios got caught in a massive traffic jam and very nearly didn't make it at all...

But proudly wearing their Surrey Life polo shirts, off they went to tackle the 18-hole course at Dorking Golf Club and, blow me, five hours later, it turned out they'd won, beating 10 other teams in the process. 

I'm so proud of our players, bless them, and practically shed a tear when they went up to collect the huge silver dish and their individual medals - a huge thank you to them all (and also to everyone from the office who went along to support them).

All credit to BBC Southern Counties too who did a fantastic job of organising the day and managed to raise well over £3,000 for local children's charity, the Rainbow Trust.

In others news, had an interesting evening with Max Clifford, Bobby Davro & co. on Friday night (disco dancing with the PR legend was one of the more surreal moments of my life...) at a summer benefit for an amazing young man called Ian Munroe.

Ian was involved in a terrible car accident a year ago, and very nearly didn't surive, but a year later, he has made almost a full recovery and this event was to celebrate that, while also helping to raise funds for his future rehabilitation.

The function room at Guildford's Mandolay Hotel was packed out for the occasion, and the charity auction raised well over £10,000 (thanks in part to Max who caused much excitement when he generously donated three pairs of VIP tickets to The X Factor!).

In short, a good time was had by all, and I think everyone went away feeling very humbled by Ian's extraordinary courage - not to mention good humour - after such a tough year.