Surrey Life Editor's Blog

Strictly update

Phew! Only just got back to the office after a whole day of meetings in Guildford...

All very productive, but now have eight million e-mails in inbox and several thousand phone messages... oh good.

Anyway, couldn't leave without a superquick entry just to give you the latest Strictly Come Dancing update...

Further to our exclusive interview with Flavia in this month's magazine, it turns out she will be dancing this year with Phil Daniels from EastEnders, who in a strange twist plays Matt Di Angelo's dad (do you think the producers might possibly be having a sly wink there?). 

Meanwhile, her professional partner, Vincent, has been paired with pop star Rachel Stevens, who is not exactly known for her two left feet... 

No prizes for guessing who's got the best deal this year then.  

Anyway, we wish both of Guildford's finest dancers the very best of luck!

On the shelf

Humph... went into Reigate this afternoon and popped into newsagents More, in the middle of the High Street, only to find Surrey Life relegated to the top shelf.

Now I know we went out on a bit of a limb this month, putting Keira on the cover rather than our usual stately home, but that's no reason to stick us up there among the Playboys of this world - completely out of sight of all but the tallest of customers.

That's the thing, of course, when you're selling a magazine - to some degree, you're always going to be at the mercy of the newsagents and supermarkets. You just have to blithely hope that they put you in the right place.

Many shops actually have Surrey Life stands, which is marvellous when it works, as it gives us a really strong presence, away from the millions of other magazines on the market. However, even this can go wrong at times when some well-meaning part-timer decides to switch things around and puts Country Life there instead - as happened the other day in the Redhill M&S.    

It has to be said, our circulation team do a magnificent job of getting round most of the shops in the county, making sure we're in our rightful spot, but even with the best will in the world, they can't check every outlet every day - which sometimes calls for extreme measures.

Consequently, you'll often see me on a Saturday afternoon at Morrisons in Reigate, covertly shifting piles of Surrey Life from one end of the shelf to the other - or in an even more ambitious move, surreptitiously dragging the stand across the shop floor back to it's rightful position by the till.

I've yet to give in to the urge of covering up our sister title Sussex Life with our own issue - tempting though it is - but have been known to exclaim when walking past Surrey Life what a "marvellous magazine it is"... (oh dear, note to self... must get out more).

Anyway, enough rambling... I'm off to Morrisons, er, home I mean...     

Surrey's Olympic heroes

So, the Team GB press conference was held here in Surrey at the Runnymede Hotel.

The management there must have been over the moon, watching their foyer beamed out across the nation.

Actually, it's quite appropriate that the event was held in Surrey, given the sterling performance by the county's athletes.

By our calculations, our contingent picked up a grand total of five golds, one silver and one bronze - a Herculean effort indeed (incidentally, we'll have the full report on how Surrey's athletes fared in the next issue). 

I must admit, I'm no great fan of the Olympics (sorry, I know this is akin to saying I don't like the Beatles or something, but there we are).

However, it was hard not to be bowled over by the incredible achievements of Team GB and just how humble they were about the whole thing...

They could certainly teach our Premiership football players a thing or two. 

Anyway, it will be exciting watching how things progress in the lead up to 2012, and of course, we'll be keeping you fully up to date on the important role that Surrey will have to play in the whole thing, too. 

All a bit Monty Python

Yesterday, I found myself in the bizarre situation of having to walk into the office sporting a giant Mexican moustache.

Contrary to appearances, I hadn't completely lost the plot (that happened ages ago) but was merely the innocent victim of a blackmail conspiracy.

In a nutshell, I needed to pop to the party shop in Reigate, to pick up some balloons, so asked to borrow one of the sales team's cars - except the little ****s would only let me take a car if  I promised faithfully to return wearing a false moustache.

Goodness knows what the people downstairs in Everycare thought as I marched through the main door - no doubt it just confirmed to them that we are all categorically stark raving bonkers.

Anyway, thankfully, am now 'tache-less again today - which is just as well seeing as we have the magazine review meeting this afternoon...

Not quite sure how it would have gone down if I'd turned up with a full face of facial hair.    

Back to work

Well, after all my predictions of doom and gloom, we were blessed with absolutely beautiful weather at the V festival in Chelmsford.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the one in Stafford, where, alas, our senior designer Donna James spent the weekend. Apparently, it took her nine hours to get back down south after her car had to be towed out the mud.

Down in Essex, at least, we had a marvellous time - though must say that I am thoroughly appreciating having access to running water and clean toilets again.  

Indeed, it's back to reality today, with a whole mountain of e-mails etc to catch up on, not to mention accounts stuff to sort out and various reports to do.

On the plus side, though, returned from my break to find the brand-new magazine on my desk looking, in my opinion, absolutely marvellous.

So, what do you think? Do you like the new look? Let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below or sending me an e-mail at editor@surreylife.co.uk 

Piccadilly Circus

It has to be said, the Surrey Life office is not normally what you'd call the nervecentre of Archant, but it's been like Piccadilly Circus in here today.

Everyone from production manager Andrew Woollacott to publisher Robyn Bechelet and group advertising manager Rhiannon Wragg have all popped in at some point.

And that's not to mention the management accountant, the entire Kent sales team and the chocolate man (we have a tuck box, you see, in aid of the NSPCC).

I don't think this office has ever seen so many people in here at one time - in fact, given the ramshackle state of the building, I'm surprised we didn't all fall straight through the floor into Everycare downstairs.

Anyway, they've all gone on their merry way now, so I'm just taking advantage of the peace and quiet to get a few final things done before I disappear off on holiday for a few days - though I don't think I'm going to be coming back with a tan.

I'm off to the V festival this weekend, and given the grim weather forecast, I'm bracing myself for the worst. 

In fact, I've just made an emergency dash to Millets in Redhill to buy a waterproof jacket and wellie boots.

Hmm, wish me luck...   

Blogging breather

Apologies for the slack blogging over the last few days, due to the usual deadline chaos.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no matter how organised you are (and you should see my multi-coloured Excel spreadsheets), you can guarantee that something will go wrong causing everything to fall apart spectacularly.

This time, we had to contend with all sorts of last-minute hitches - not least, the realisation that we had referred to Max Clifford's beautiful partner Jo as a man in one of the picture captions: "Jo and his partner Max outside St Peter's Church."

I'm sure that would have gone down a storm with our star columnist.

Then, no sooner had we sorted out that little problem, we realised we had the word 'best' on the cover twice.

Cue lots of head scratching as we tried to come up with a suitable alternative (weirdly, there aren't many words you can use instead of best), but we got there eventually.

Anyway, last-minute problems aside, I can't tell you how excited we are about this issue, especially the cover.

I don't want to say too much, but suffice to say, you can expect your Surrey Life to look a little bit different when you see it in the shops from next Wednesday...

I look forward to hearing what you think!

The MD and, er, Jerry Maguire

Just popped into the office to finish off one or two things before the final onslaught of deadline day.

As ever, it's wonderfully peaceful at the weekend - no e-mails, no phone calls, no interruptions - if it was always like this, I swear we'd get the mag finished in half the time.

Anyway, as a result of all that, hoping that I'll be able to make good progress and be out of here pretty swiftly.

Subeditor Chris Clark is phoning through the final few amendments shortly, then it's a case of signing off some pages, checking through the contents and then I think we're almost there - phew!

It's even more important than usual that we hit our deadline in good time, as apparently the managing director is taking a few of us out for dinner on Monday night.    

Not quite sure whether this is a good or a bad thing - but I'm hopeful that the Arkle Manor in Betchworth is not the sort of place you'd go to give someone their marching orders.

However, seem to recall scene in Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise gets taken to a cafe for that very reason, in order to ensure that he doesn't make a scene. Hmmm...

Deadline approaches

Sorry, intended to post an entry before I left last night, but after yesterday's proofing extravaganza, I had practically turned into a zombie.

If the truth to be told, not feeling much less zombie-like today actually, but sales guru Ade Holder has just made us all a coffee so fingers crossed that'll do the trick.

Meanwhile, I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for the September edition - praise be to God and all his angels.

I have to say, it's shaping to be a cracking issue, what with our Top 50 celebs, the big feature on Keira Knightley's latest period drama, which was filmed in Surrey, and our exclusive interview with Strictly Come Dancing's Flavia Cacace who lives in Guildford.

Unsurprisingly, we've yet to settle on the cover, however, but as I mentioned in my last entry, we're hoping that we're going to do something rather brave this time.

It all depends on 'the powers that be', of course, but we should find out more today.

In the meantime, back to the proofing...

Big decision...

We're just wrestling with a rather tricky decision at the moment. It concerns our cover shot for September...

Now, as regular readers will know, we usually tend to favour an iconic Surrey building and lots (and lots) of blue sky - but this issue is a rather special one.

As well as our annual feature on Surrey's Top 50 celebs, we've also got a cracking article on Keira Knightley filming this autumn's big blockbuster film, The Duchess, at Clandon Park, plus an exclusive interview with Guildford's very own Flavia Cacace on the the new series of Strictly Come Dancing.

All of which we're very excited about, but don't really lend themselves to pictures of buildings...   

As such, we're just weighing up - and don't faint - whether to put a picture of a person on the cover.

It would be a fairly radical move for us, but perhaps it's about time we broke the mould and did something a little bit braver... 

We're going to try mocking up some drafts tomorrow so I'll let you know how it goes.

TGI Friday...

It's been non-stop today at Surrey Life towers, with almost an entire day of editorial meetings (albeit some of them held over the road at the Panther).

The upshot is that we've made very little headway again with the September issue, but at least it was a productive day in other ways.

Group editor Jon Keeble spent most of the afternoon up here, casting his expert eye over the features and cover, which is always very welcome as it's great to get a second opinion from another editor - especially one I have so much respect for.

As well as his group responsibilities, Jon also edits the beautiful Sussex Life magazine - if you live down there and haven't seen it before, then do make time to check it out - it's a fantastic read.

If, however, you live in Surrey then I'm afraid you are categorically banned from picking up his magazine and are only allowed to read ours.    

As well as catching up on all the usual bits and pieces, we were also very pleased to offer a key member of our editorial team an important promotion, but I'll tell you more about that next week when the 'official' announcement has been made.

In the meantime, I'm off home for some much-needed rest and relaxation...