I’m still in the target late-20s to early-30s range and I thought it was bang on the money in the days of Quirk, Bell, Beale, Wilson etc.

It seems to be far more fashion and grooming oriented now, and from a commercial point of view that makes sense. A lot of mags are going that way – I even saw grooming stuff in Loaded a while back. When I was there on work experience in the 90s we used to laugh at people when they phoned up asking for the person who dealt with grooming - clearly they’d never read the mag. But one sales war with FHM later…

If Arena needs to do that to get sales up then fine. The online section can do the things that are tough to sell around and don’t please advertisers – often the things I’m more interested in. Things like Hollie’s pop-culture commentary for a start.

I did flatley refuse to buy an issue once which led to a 3 or 4 month enforced hiatus on principle for me as Chris Evans was on the front cover…now they were dark days.

I started reading during Anthony Noguera’s editorship, and maybe it’s like Bond where the actor who’s playing him when you start becomes your favourite.

As recently as the last few issues the quality of the content seems to be rising again after a bit of a protracted dip in my opinion – where I just wouldn’t read it all, only parts of it – but the design of the magazine at the moment… you know I don’t like it; I’m on the letters page of the most recent issue, which, with its dark, busy, matte-finish cover, looks like an issue of Hotdog magazine. Not threatening to stop buying like the blog says though.

I’d then be gutted to see such a negative response and lose the job, based not on my writing, but seemingly on how I got the gig.

I’m 33 now and still a journalist. There’s nepotism in every industry, especially the media, and I’ve both missed out on jobs and landed them because of it.

And having just read Hollie’s post above, for God’s sake let her write about indie bands. It’s a blog, it’s not like you’re going to run out of room on the page is it?

I like the mixture of writing styles in the mag and on this site, the mixture keeps people coming back. But I’m guessing that I am probably one of the older crowd that visit this place - I have been buying Arena since the late 80’s and im going through a transition right now and finding it difficult to adjust to the new school coming through with their skinny jeans and cutting edge synth lines - to quote Mark Kermode ‘All of these garage/guitar bands just sound like Gang of Four to me’. I stick with things loyally through good and bad, I have signed up for another years subscription for the mag so its too fucking late now anyway.

I thought about saying something abusive but I’ll let you off.

As for Hollie Moat’s article (I read it after yours, which helped keep it in context) it was a bit indulgent, not all Arena readers live anywhere near or care about Camden, it’s pubs or those who frequent them. But I doubt it’ll happen again as she’ll be chalking it down to experience eh…?