Animal House

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Occasionally, I slip outside to the fleshpots of Soho to attend a premiere or appear as guest on daytime television.

Such was the level of mayhem on this particular jaunt, one of the local travel guides was moved to comment, “I like James very much, but if he behaves in Rio how he has behaved in Sao Paulo he will be raped and murdered”. Loaded's unexpected success legitimised (and paid for) James's lifestyle, and it wasn't until he crashed and burned at GQ, and went through rehab, that any sense of perspective kicked in. The former charge is a particular bugbear of Brown’s; he was only there for 36 issues, and 26 of those featured men on the cover.As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: The tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta.

It traces Brown’s life from being a cocky kid in Leeds with a passion for football and fanzines to a media wunderkind who was appointed features editor of the NME at just 22 and helped define the 90s with Loaded before he’d hit 30. The strapline, “For men who should know better”, reflected the sex, booze and drug-fuelled lives of the editorial team, and their debauched lifestyle spilt gleefully on to the pages. The James Brown I have got to know, the man who helped me out with numerous employment opportunities, gave me a place to live in London and offered unending advice and encouragement with my writing, is kind, generous, self-effacing and unassuming to the point of anonymity. On one occasion, Brown says, the references to narcotics became so overt that the publisher at IPC became worried the drug squad might be about to turn up. No matter the obstacles in his way, whether that’s dinosaurs at the IPC, colleagues who said he’d never own a fancy sports car, or critics who looked down on his ‘laddish’ approach to magazine publishing, Brown did whatever it is he wanted to do.The story of James Brown’s meteoric rise to the top of the publishing industry, and his subsequent crash, burn and re-birth, is unflinchingly documented in his newly published autobiography, Animal House: Music, Magazines, Mayhem. After leaving school with no qualifications it's clear that despite all the fun and the carefree attitude that he attempts to portray throughout the book that he grafted very hard for his success. Rather than sack him, the company offered him something he’d never had before: support, and an introduction to an addiction therapist. James quit Loaded and embarked on a life of more or less leisure, touring with bands, doing the odd commission, working when he felt like it. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro ’96.

The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. I remember opening The Charlatans first single when no one had heard of them for that week’s NME single reviews and it just stood out in its structure and confidence.His full length debut on Daptone Records is equal parts raw feeling and elegance and exudes confidence and charm. I think James is a good example of the old adage 'make your hobby your job and never work a day in your life'. I'm not from the fanzine generation so I found this section particularly interesting in regards to the importance, impact and widespread nature of fanzines in the 1980's in the UK. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Loaded and it’s subsequent influence not only changed magazines, but helped to redefine British popular culture.