The story of The Oldie Stephen Glover
The first issue of this magazine appeared on 21st February 1992. Stephen Glover looks back on its 25 years
It’s hard to believe The Oldie was launched a quarter of a century ago. The first issue of what was originally a fortnightly appeared on 21st February 1992 in the midst of a recession, and six weeks before a general election. In many ways it was another world. Mobile phones were still half the size of a paperback book. Twitter and Facebook and tablets were distant dreams – or nightmares. The ‘Modern Life’ section of an early issue of the magazine innocently asked: ‘What is an email?’
But some things haven’t changed. Then, as now, the broadcast media seemed most interested in the young. Newspapers were desperately chasing after the same people, whom they seldom succeeded in attracting. The Oldie was the first publication explicitly aimed at those of more advanced years, though it was happy to embrace younger readers who felt properly grown-up. Unlike newspapers and magazines which only furtively catered for older people, The
Oldie was unabashed. The idea germinated in the reactionary though anarchic mind of Richard Ingrams, who had stood down as editor of Private Eye in 1986. One day in the summer of 1991 Ingrams met his friend Alexander Chancellor, a former ground-breaking editor of the Spectator, for a drink (non-alcoholic in Richard’s case). He divulged his notion of a magazine which would not genuflect to the cult of youth. Some weeks after this meeting, Ingrams and Chancellor came to see me in the mistaken belief that I might be of some use on the financial side. Auberon Waugh joined what could hardly yet be called a team, as did Patrick Marnham, a former colleague of Ingrams’s on Private Eye, and the journalist John Mcewen.
Our hopes might well have languished had it not been for the Palestinian-born book publisher and businessman Naim Attallah. If Ingrams is the first and abiding hero of this story, Attallah is the second. He agreed to put £225,000 into the new magazine, with the journalists I have mentioned each stumping up amounts ranging from £12,000 to £20,000, and a handful of well-disposed outsiders chipping in sizeable sums. Attallah became chairman of a board otherwise composed of hacks. He also made clear that he would like The Oldie – the name, thought up by Ingrams, had its detractors – to publish his interviews with famous people.
Without anything resembling a business plan, or research that might have established the size of the potential market, the magazine was launched amid much media hoopla. Like all first issues, it fell rather flat because it had no settled readership with which to interact. Yet looking at it now one is struck by how much has survived. The ‘Old Un’s Diary’ and those enduring favourites ‘Modern Life’ and ‘Still With Us’ were given their first outings. So was Candida Lycett Green’s ‘Unwrecked England’, which ran until her death in 2014. Valerie Grove, still very much with us, wrote the first of hundreds of radio reviews, while Mary Kenny and Jeremy Lewis appeared for the first time. Other well-known writers in the launch issue included Beryl Bainbridge, Jilly Cooper, Barbara Cartland, Angela Huth, Auberon Waugh (writing his iconoclastic ‘Rage’ column) and Germaine Greer (whose recent sacking by the Independent was welcomed as a godsend by Ingrams in an editorial). Bill Deedes, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, was interviewed at length by Attallah. Before and after its launch issue, The
Oldie and Richard Ingrams came in for a good deal of stick in the national press. Journalists are inclined to doubt that any publication backed by members of their breed can ever prosper, and a few of them nursed grievances against Ingrams from his time as editor of Private Eye. The gossip columnist Nigel Dempster unleashed a swirling tirade in the
Daily Mail while Jocelyn Target wrote an unfriendly piece for the Guardian which accused Ingrams of anti-semitism. The renowned, and at that time trendy, columnist Julie Burchill faxed a letter to Ingrams congratulating him for ‘producing the most pathetic magazine ever published’. This missive was greatly treasured. More amusing was the
Evening Standard’s Peter Mckay, who gave the magazine six weeks at most, and suggested that Attallah would have had ‘more chance of seeing a return if he financed a troupe of geriatric piano accordionists working on the Northern line on Sunday evenings’.
Although Mckay was undoubtedly negative, it soon seemed he might have a point. Sales of the first issue were a heartening 105,000 but the second issue sold only 40,000, and by the end of the first year circulation had dipped to below 15,000. The Oldie’s modest reserves of capital were being eaten up very fast. Over at the Daily Mail Nigel Dempster was licking his lips, and ironically suggested that Attallah be given a knighthood for
bankrolling a magazine ‘edited by ageing hypocrite Richard Ingrams’ which employed ‘other deadbeats’. Attallah responded by ploughing in a further £300,000, which he was obliged to borrow from the bank. But since The Oldie was losing money at the rate of £10,000 an issue, this new injection of capital would not last very long.
So it was that in July 1994 a decision was made to shut The Oldie. I can remember the board meeting quite well. If it wasn’t a tragedy, it was at least a great sadness that what had by then become a good magazine with a small but devoted readership was being despatched to the knacker’s yard. Where else would you find short stories by William Trevor and Jane Gardam alongside funny cartoons and original items such as ‘I Once Met’? But you couldn’t argue with the bottom line, and if there weren’t enough readers there seemed to be no option other than to close The Oldie.
Then a small miracle happened. An energetic young business manager on the magazine called James Pembroke persuaded Attallah that the doomed fortnightly could have a future as a monthly if costs and overheads were slashed. And so, much to the annoyance and disbelief of its enemies, The Oldie was eased off its deathbed and given a new lease of life. The road to profitability would be slow and arduous but, with reduced costs and gradually improving advertising revenue, losses were now just about containable.
During this process something rather remarkable happened. I experienced it strongly myself when I went to an Oldie lunch at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford in the late Nineties. ( Oldie lunches had started in Simpson’s-in-the-strand in 1996.) The people I beheld were not to be compared with ordinary newspaper or magazine readers with a natural but limited affection for the publication of their choice. They were more like members of a movement, almost a sect, possessing a powerful sense of identification with their idiosyncratic magazine, which had been subtly and rather mysteriously fostered by its editor, Richard Ingrams.
One way he achieved this was by encouraging outsiders with no journalistic background to write for The
Oldie. When I met Ingrams recently, he fondly recalled an article sent in out of the blue by a woman about the famous Dean Inge of St Paul’s Cathedral, for whom she had worked. Most of the contributors to ‘I Once Met’ didn’t make their living as writers. A couple of years after the launch of The Oldie, Ingrams expressed his belief that ‘anyone with a typewriter is a journalist’. This unusual view anticipated the modern figure of the ‘citizen journalist’ banging out a blog. Of course, legions of professional journalists, too numerous to single out here for praise, have also written over the years for The Oldie.
In 2001 Naim Attallah forgivably decided he had done his bit for the magazine which he had supported for so long. Majority control passed into the benign (and extremely wealthy) hands of the American tycoon Paul Getty, who unfortunately died a couple of years later.
The Oldie was inherited by his son Mark, much less of a fan. In 2007 Getty junior sold it to James Pembroke (who had departed some years previously to start his own publishing group) and two other investors.
At this point the magazine was selling about 24,000 copies a month and still losing money. Another rather extraordinary thing was about to happen. With Pembroke installed as publisher,
The Oldie began to put on sales surprisingly quickly. This was not because it had suddenly got better – it was already very good – but as a result of a concentrated marketing campaign. By 2009 circulation had reached 36,000, and in 2011 the target of 40,000 was hit. For the first time in its life, the magazine was quietly profitable. Here was a lesson for media students, as well as sceptical journalists who think they alone sell publications. Commercial success can be a very long time coming. And journalistic excellence by itself is not enough. Effective marketing is crucial.
Over the years there had been intermittent skirmishes between the editorial side of The Oldie and the management or ‘suits’, but they were invariably dampened down. In 2014 a disagreement blew up between Pembroke and Ingrams which could not be resolved. For a week or two it was difficult to open a newspaper without reading about the rift. Ingrams seemed to believe that The Oldie would be mortally wounded when he left, but it wasn’t. Alexander Chancellor, who had encouraged his friend all those years ago, took over as editor. It was, in fact, a tribute to Richard Ingrams’s monumental achievement that the magazine he had created could survive his departure.
And not only survive, but flourish, with current sales of just over 46,000, which is an all-time high. The future seems set fair. There will be greater numbers of older people thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and, one may hazard, more and more of them will be disenchanted with the seemingly ineradicable bias towards the preoccupations of the young evinced by the mainstream media. Moreover, while the internet is slowly killing off print newspapers it is having no such discernible effect on The Oldie and a number of other weekly and monthly publications. I’ve no doubt that in another 25 years’ time another observer will be celebrating the continuing success of a magazine which, although doubtless a little different with the passing years, will remain true to its original ideals.
‘So, much to the disbelief of its enemies The Oldie was eased off its deathbed’