My friend Nicky and I ran around London together in the late 80s and 90s. I hadn’t seen her for 25 years because - outrageously - she upped and left the UK for New Zealand where she’s lived ever since. When I heard she was coming to the UK on a trip I thought, why not have a reunion?
In 1989 Nicky and I worked on a magazine called TV Guide. I wasn’t that into TV at the time - embarrassing really, as I was Features Editor. And all of the features were about TV.
Okay, I’ll come clean. I lived on a canal boat the time and didn’t actually have a telly!
I wasn’t sure how it’d be, when I went to work on this TV magazine. It was the first truly grown up magazine I’d worked on after Jackie and Just Seventeen. I thought it might be intimidatingly serious and not as much fun as teen mags (I was wrong on both counts). Plus, both Jackie and Just Seventeen had been staffed by (mostly) young woman in their teens and early twenties. We’d been these big gangs of friends who all socialised together en masse. Apart from our editor, who’d hired me, I didn’t know anyone in this newly formed TV Guide team.
I also worried that I’d be rumbled for the lack-of-TV.
What could I do? Invite myself to friends’ homes to cram-watch as many programmes as possible? Stare at the screens in the windows of TV shops?
Relax, I told myself. It’s only TV. It’s not like you’re pretending to be surgeon and are about to blunder in and operate on someone’s spleen.
Anyway, it turned out not to be a problem as most weeks we just slapped someone from Neighbours on the cover. Usually Kylie or Jason actually. And what a fun bunch they turned out to be. Not Kylie and Jason (although I’m sure they are lovely) but the magazine team. We worked hard, smoked like fury (shockingly, we had piled-high ashtrays on our desks) and tumbled out of the office to a nearby pub. Real friendships were formed, and then after a couple of years our editor Ian left for the US, and the whole thing sort of crumbled and we all went our separate ways.
I didn’t manage to track down everyone from the old team - but ten of us got together and it was so lovely. I know people freak out about reunions, worrying that they won’t recognise anyone, or that it’ll be judgey and all, ‘So what do you do now?’
Of course we covered all that - our lives in the interim decades - but it was also hilarious as we reminisced and gossiped and Michelle reminded me that I has a secret bottle of PORT (!!) in my drawer. And Phil, our junior designer back then, told us that his department boss used to make him go and hide away in the darkroom whenever an Important Person visited the art department.
We remembered that Mystic Meg had an office on our floor and that Gino wanted to do the layout for one of Natalie’s features because he liked her. And here they are now, married for decades with two adult sons - one of whom is 32.
Unbelievable! Where does the time go? How is it possible that at least three of us around that table have bus passes?
It was a wonderful evening and totally life affirming to discover that the lovely and hilarious people I remembered are just as lovely and hilarious now. In fact - and I really mean this - no one has changed a bit.
For one unforgettable evening in Soho last week, we partied like it was 1989.
Love,
Fiona xx
What a wonderful evening that must have been! 👏👏
Love everything about this!