Sad day, Loaded magazine to close after 21 years, happy memories of working on the Loaded Lafta’s PR campaign

Loaded magazine to close after 21 years

I ran the PR campaign for the Loaded Laftas and have many happy memories of working on the magazine.

Once one of the leading titles in a booming lads mag sector, it hit print sales of 350,000 in 2000

Loaded, one of the titles synonymous with the mid-1990s lads’ mag boom, is to close after 21 years.

The last issue of the monthly magazine, which launched in 1994, is the April edition which is on sale now.

“As of the current April issue, published on March 26th, Loaded will cease to trade as a printed magazine,” the magazine’s publisher said in a statement. “We would like to pay tribute to our customers, staff and especially our contributors and editorial team”.

Loaded was once one of the the leading titles in a booming lads magazine sector, with sales of 350,000 in 2000.

In recent years the rise of the internet has seen sales plummet, circulation stood at about 35,000 in 2011, the last officially audited figures available for the title.

The magazine is owned by Simian Publishing, a company set up in 2013 for Loaded’s management to take control of the title.

The magazine has had a troubled recent history with four owners in three years and a brief period where it was put in to administration.

Simian acquired the title from Paul Baxendale-Walker, a multi-millionaire businessman who occasionally directs and stars in his own pornographic films, who owned it through Blue Publishing which went in to administration.

Baxendale-Walker acquired it in 2012 from Cooper Young, the administrators appointed to handle the sale of the magazine after parent company Vitality Publishing ran up a bill of £1m to creditors.

Vitality had acquired Loaded, gay lifestyle title Attitude, Superbike, horoscope title Prediction and Hair magazine from IPC Media, now Time Inc UK, in 2010.

In 2009, Bauer closed men’s monthly Arena after 22 years.

In the same year Dennis Publishing closed the print edition of Maxim after 14 years.

Last year, Time Inc shut Nuts, the weekly that along with arch-rival Zoo shook up the men’s magazine market a decade ago.