| FHM Editor on ‘the world's best job’ |
|
|
|
| Written by Paul White | |
| Friday, 25 August 2006 | |
He’s been a painter’s apprentice and has worked in slaughter houses, garden centres and building sites. “I’ve done it all,” said 33-year-old Ross Brown, who in a relatively short time went from toy stacking in Selfridges to Editor of the best-selling magazine in Europe. Ross started nine years ago as a staff writer and believes it’s “the best job in the world.” Why is it such a good job? Ask any man if he’d like to spend his days riding skateboards around the office, flying around the globe to ‘test’ top hotels, or interviewing the best sexiest women in the world and sure enough they’d be on the next train to FHM's offices.
"Generally, what you find is that the young lads who come to work at FHM live the FHM life, they hit the free bars, they go mental, they hang out with models. "They do all that stuff that’s a pain in the ass for anyone else to hear about, but then they get tired of it very quickly. There are only so many free parties you can go to before you just start to realise they’re all the same.” But still Ross says he never loses the buzz of meeting celebrities and he’s no stranger to them, he has interviewed (and flirted with) Carmen Electra, who “talks outright filth,” he’s spent a weekend with Jackie Chan, (bizarrely) been to Albania with Norman Wisdom and interviewed the huge rap star Jay-Z in his penthouse flat. When grilling celebs for FHM the line of questioning is somewhat unorthodox, he says. “You’re very lucky because you can ask what you want. We ask things like: 'What’s the biggest dog you’ve ever seen?' And they always laugh. We might ask three questions about the film because we don’t give a shit about it. I said to Samuel Jackson, if you were in the desert and someone was coming the other way and no-one would ever know, would you kill him?” FHM is an ideal workplace for the bachelor; with models dropping in on-tap, a games area and a fun, laid-back atmosphere the flow of creativity is perpetual. Every Friday at five it’s ‘beer o'clock,’ where beer and a buffet are consumed with hearty chants to celebrate the week's work. Practical jokes are never far away and Ross laughingly re-lived the best ever... “It involved Richard Galpin, who was our celebrity booker. He was on the phone and the Editor at the time, Ant, who was a bit mental, had some brown gaffer tape. Ant stood behind him and wrapped it once round his arm. Richie just rolled his eyes and said to the person on the phone ‘you won’t believe what’s happening to me.’ "Before you know it, he’s got the phone completely gaffer-taped to his head, he’s in the chair and Ant starts going round his body. Next thing he’s gaffer-taped to the chair with phone in hand. The bloke was completely helpless. They disconnected the phone and started pushing him out. Reception was on the top floor and at the time it had real glamour puss girls on it. "So we put Richie in the lift, hit the top floor and sent him up about three or four times before someone pushed him out. Imagine the girls’ faces. Brilliant!” Even with all this tomfoolery FHM's success is phenomenal. But why? Ross said: “Being able to adapt has been our strength. Sure, there are good-looking women and good-looking women, but the type of woman always changes. "One month it's a tabloid girl, the next a Hollywood star. The perhaps a girl who’s in a British band in her knickers. Or Halle Berry. It’s not as simple as people think it is. "The trick is being able to adapt to the market at all times. So it’s strategy, the boring stuff, long-term planning, keeping everything fresh and identifying the reader's expectations at all times.” So what does FHM want from its writers? “Facts are always key,” said Ross. “Many people make mistakes when writing in to FHM by thinking they're funny. Even they think they’re funny, and they think that when we want to read something from them, we want a belly full of laughs all the way through. That’s not what I'm looking for in a writer. “If you can take away a paragraph and you’re left with bare essential facts, and the context is still all there, then you’ve got a good writer. You have to research your facts and don’t worry about being clever.” Get your facts right, and you've got more chance of working on FHM than a smart ass would-be comedian!
Related Items:
                             |
For Him Magazine's front man talks work, women and writing, from the helm of the world's self-proclaimed monthly man bible...
Although not one to ‘kiss and tell’ Ross, now settled in a relationship, said he had courted celebrities: “When you work at FHM it’s a lifestyle magazine and for all of us who work here it’s a lifestyle that becomes increasingly less liveable the older you get. 
