Adventures in Editing
BAA (British Airports Authority)
A moment's silence, please, for BAA, for whom I wrote corporate video scripts in the days when it ruled British airports.
Bauer
Rarely was subediting more enjoyable than at Bauer's Closer magazine. A great team, dedicated to doing the best work, made every day a pleasure. The same company's Top Santé magazine was the polar opposite, staffed by people who couldn't stand each other. Two of the longest weeks of my life, not least because they needed a production editor, which I wasn't, rather than a sub, which I was. More fun were more!, Mother & Baby and Pregnancy & Birth, especially the day I encountered a sock-less Keanu Reeves.
BBC Worldwide
Singing Milli Vanilli in an interview earned me a role editing listings for Radio Times. I also wrote radio previews that inadvertently offended John Simpson and Radio 4's drama department. Despite these indiscretions, I was allowed back on the premises to work on All About Animals, Olive and the launch of Lonely Planet magazine.
Cassell Illustrated
Hauled aboard 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die in 2005, I spent two decades editing, picture-researching and contributing to books in the 1001 series, often in offices with air-con helmed by Beelzebub. These included 1001 Guitars (despite me knowing nothing about guitars), 1001 Walks (with maps that, despite my pedantry, no one could or should follow) and 1001 TV Series (for which I wrote several very good entries about shows of which I'd never seen even a second). I also worked on 1001 Battles and 1001 Movies, but not the one that made my sister mirthful every time she thought about it, 1001 Golf Holes.
Cedar Communications
Subbing British Airways’ High Life and the Tesco magazine was a pleasant enough endeavour, elevated by a weekly drinks trolley once staffed by women dressed as Ghostbusters. I asked where they got the costumes and was informed, solemnly, ‘They came with the job.’
Climb the Green Ladder
Award-winning environmental specialist Amy Fetzer employed me to edit and research corporate sustainability reports and only once punched me for being annoying.
Condé Nast
The World of Interiors was unlike any other job. Snooty suppliers dripped disdain until I mentioned the magazine's title, at which point they snapped into action. The French editor swept glamorously into the office and greeted me as if we were old friends (we weren't). No deadline was ever met, but the chief sub insisted I take my full lunch hour so he could do the Times crossword. And I covered proofs with so many corrections that I was asked to find fewer errors.
Dennis
Neither a woman nor fit, I was nonetheless acting chief sub on Women’s Fitness for months. We shared an office with Bizarre magazine, so visits to the shared printer could be eye-opening.
EdenCo
Remarkably in retrospect, I got paid to watch movies, listen to albums, and write about them. This was for a partwork magazine overseen by Elvis Presley Enterprises, whose safeguarding of their money-maker made the Vatican look lackadaisical about Christ. It was a brave fellow who implied Elvis ingested anything stronger than aspirin or specified Priscilla's age when they began dating. But as an exercise in following rigorous style guides, it was educative. Later at EdenCo, I worked on the Hannah Montana magazine. Disney were, inevitably, even stricter than Elvis Presley Enterprises, but I got paid to watch Miley Cyrus and work alongside my future wife, so couldn't complain.
EY (Ernst & Young)
Editing sustainability reports for Chinese and Hong Kong corporates involved conjuring naturally flowing text from occasionally baffling source copy – though, to be fair, their English was substantially better than my Mandarin. And I've rarely worked for more polite clients.
Garden Route SPCA
A crash-course in labour law was just one of the lessons awaiting when I accidentally ended up chairing an SPCA (animal welfare) management committee for two years. One day I'll write a book about the court cases, car crashes and calamities that made every day a rollercoaster. And that's even before you get to managing staff, placating the public and making everything seem shipshape for the press.
Guinness World Records
I don't play videogames and know virtually nothing about them, but that didn't bother Guinness, for whom I subbed, wrote and researched the Gamer's Edition. I also worked on the main world records book, whose fiendish database will make dealing with rocket ships easier if I land a gig at NASA. Aeons earlier, I worked on Guinness's British Hit Singles and the extraordinarily titled Rockopedia.
Hearst
You had to raise your game at Cosmopolitan, because everyone was so good at what they did. I loved almost every moment of it, even when Katy Perry's management kicked off about something she said in an interview and I let through because there was nothing wrong with it until the Daily Mail took it out of context. I also worked on the offshoots Cosmopolitan Body and Cosmopolitan on Campus, and returned to Hearst to toil on an ASDA homewares catalogue. The key to that one, as the editor impressed upon me, was to dumb down the text, then dumb it down more. The experience reminded me of a brochure for a nightclub company that I wrote decades ago that was rejected by the client for being ‘too sophisticated’.
Insight Editions
When I die, people will say, ‘That was the guy? That was the guy that wrote Air Guitar: A User’s Guide?’ It will be studied in schools, like Catcher in the Rye and The Hungry Caterpillar. For Insight, I was also project editor on The Greatest Movies You’ll Never See, which entailed endless rewriting, arduous research and torturous negotiations about design. (‘Why are there sharks in the image?’ ‘Because the movie's called The Captain and the Shark’ etc.) Gratifyingly, the general editor wrote, ‘Thanks for the terrific job you did on the book. It's been a pleasure.’ Sucker for punishment that I am, I then took on The Greatest Albums You’ll Never Hear. My reward for that was an interview in Rolling Stone, finally putting into the shade my childhood appearances in the Ilford Recorder.
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Intel
Deciphering sentences such as ‘The performance profiler Intel® VTune™ Amplifier proved valuable for performing the diagnostic analysis because of its flexibility and graphical depiction of CPU operations and module activity’ so folks could read them without wanting to stab themselves in the eye was among the joys of editing mindbogglingly complex pieces by games developers. Other treats included an extraordinarily detailed style guide that occasionally contradicted itself and was routinely ignored by Intel staff.
IPC
The good aspects of IPC were working with the friendly folks of Marie Claire, Ideal Home and Look, punctuated by visits to the poshest loos I enjoyed as a freelancer. The bad aspect was two weeks at InStyle. Not for nothing was the most horrible magazine I ever worked for known as InHell and InTears. At one point, the justifiably mutinous art department went to a pub for lunch and didn't return. The editor asked me to get them back. I declined.
Laurence King Publishing
Since I was a lad, I dreamed of doing a book about metal music. ‘Too niche!’ said Every Publisher Ever. Then Laurence King took a punt on it and, lo and behold, so was born 666 Songs to Make You Bang Your Head Until You Die – written by moi and laid out by my patient and in-no-way metal-loving spouse.
Macmillan
Sonic the Hedgehog and Backstreet Boys were all the rage in the mid-nineties. But Macmillan wanted a hardback book on Pink Floyd. Fortunately, I'd squandered my adolescence coediting a Floyd fanzine so was only too happy to compile one. It was surprisingly successful and paid my council tax for several years.
Maybourne hotel group
I sub Maybourne's magazine for its hotels. Alas this does not entail staying at any of said hotels, but I did once have tea at Claridge's next to Sven-Göran Eriksson's then-girlfriend.
Mongoose Gray
Recruitment ads for IT jobs aren't, traditionally, especially interesting. Mongoose Gray wanted theirs to be different, which gave me license to experiment with every idea that made me laugh. I might create a sub-page that includes all of these because it's some of my best writing and it would be nice if it was read by more than just people who understand what Node.js and Docker and Webix are.
Omnibus Press
A publisher I worked with had an idea for a book called Rock Connections. It was slightly bonkers and, while I wasn't too proud to take his money and write it, I wasn't confident that it would work. Remarkably, Omnibus ran with the idea, the book was well received, and I think there was second print run – despite a fetching picture of Lady Gaga's bottom being excised before it got to the first. For Omnibus, I also edited How to Win X Factor by my pal Keeley Bolger, whose amusing copy made me chortle in public.
PA Media (pa.media)
Editing TV listings for The Sun – involving insane hours for an exacting client – was gruelling. Editing TV listings for OK! magazine – including making up fictitious plots and ludicrous star ratings for TV movies, because Northern & Shell didn't proof the stuff we supplied – was markedly more fun.
Perrier Comedy Award
When I gamely offered to help a friend at the Edinburgh festival, I didn't realise it would mean meant dashing up and down hills, fuelled by Irn-Bru and lack of sleep. It was fun though, and I got a good story about The Mighty Boosh that I would be ill-advised to immortalise here.
Pitney Bowes Inc.
In days of yore, when people sent physical mail, there were things called franking machines. A US company did so well selling these things that they employed nearly everyone in a town in Connecticut. I can't claim this success was entirely due to corporate newsletters that I edited for them, but I'm sure shareholders thanked me in their prayers. Well, until email came along and ruined everything anyway.
Quintessence/Quarto
Publishing people will be familiar with creating titles for book fairs, where publishers say, ‘Hey dudes, check out these sample spreads for a book about craft beers, nifty eh?’ and other publishers theoretically sign on to turn 'em into bestsellers. Some luckless subeditor must turn what are invariably enthusiastically crappy ideas into publishable form and for several years that luckless subeditor was me.
Rough Guides
I didn't pay attention in school, so I can't tell you where any country is, but I can tell you which album The Rolling Stones released in any given year. This abundance of largely useless information cluttering my brain earned me a contributing role on the first edition of Rock: The Rough Guide. At the same time, I was working at Retail Entertainment Data, compiling catalogues for music retailers. This meant typing long catalogue numbers into a database powered by lethargic hamsters.
Sunday (wearesunday.com)
A sugar-lover's paradise, a dieter's nightmare, Sunday invariably had sweets on reception and cakes in the kitchen. Between finding credible reasons to be in either, I edited a John Lewis catalogue. Eventually I found so many errors – one potentially very expensive – in its terms and conditions that John Lewis's legal department asked that I stop reading them.
Thames & Hudson
The Rolling Stones’ official fiftieth anniversary book. Iron Maiden's official fiftieth anniversary book. A book about hip-hop, written by a bloke whose mum probably didn't name him Semtex. I've worked on 'em all, and hence spent far too much time working out who was who in Iron Maiden's bazillion lineups before they got famous.
Time Out
‘Bruno's job,’ said a harried editor on press day, ‘is to wake me up at 3am, worrying about what we've printed.’ Despite my teeth-grinding pedantry – in this case, concerning corporate logos in a photograph – I did quite a bit for Time Out, including writing for, and subbing, the magazine and branded supplements. One of the editors gave me a Kiss potato head that still has pride of place in my home.
WH Smith
Around the time The Bodyguard was huge, I worked in a music and video department at Smiths. We sold so many Whitney albums that I'm fairly sure she and David Jason – whose Only Fools & Horses videos we also shifted by the pallet-load – indirectly paid my wages for two years.
Whitbread Book Awards
I trust I will be the envy of anyone who grew up in Britain in the 1970s by noting that writing scripts for this ceremony gave me an opportunity to meet Floella Benjamin.
Wiley
I edited the environment-themed book Climb the Green Ladder, which made a change from work that involved knowing the ins and outs of Dr Dre's back catalogue.
Contact
Email: brunomacdonald@gmail.com | Tel: +27 66 230 1997