J Nash

Steve The Publisher was well-known for his bullet-headedness, a reputation bolstered by such famous incidents as emerging sprightly from his office with a sheaf of figures to explain bombastically that the Christmas issue had sold astoundingly well and that we had made enormous, heaping sums of money for the company, then quite literally laughing in our faces for suggesting a raise.

(His inability not only to be swayed by any contrary points of view - no matter how reasonable or perceptively argued - but also to see any contrary points of view would later reduce a senior AP staff member to violently smashing up an office photocopier out of sheer inarticulable frustration.)

He and I personally didn't get along (though never to the amazing extents suggested - for example, there was a mag meal after AP42 at a restaurant called Just Duck. I don't like Cantonese food, but, as I had only recently joined the mag, I thought I'd better play up and play the game, so went along, joined in the enriching conversation (largely centred around the Attract Girls With Pheromones ads the Ad Department were still accepting after swearing on the eyes of the orphan children of the world they'd stopped), read the freshly-pressed sample issue and drank but a glass of water. Later I learned my abstinence had been interpreted as a personal slight. My giddy aunt) but even for all his absurdities (his altering the cover as a matter of principle became so endangering that we'd deliberately add obvious errors before he arrived to approve the design) I remember him fondly.

I remember him fondly because of this: in a rare unguarded moment he gestured to the assembled AP team (it was another mag meal, context fans) and said proudly,

"It's a pity our kind of magazine isn't afforded any respect; isn't thought of by the rest of the magazine industry. Because I think you could hold AMIGA POWER up alongside any comedy magazine in the world."

Thanks, Steve.