Pope dwarves, suicide and the shocking world of men’s mags

What is bad taste? And, more importantly, who decides asks ex men’s magazine editor Paul Merrill who is no stranger to erring on the side of inappropriateness. 

The Chaser, Kyle Sandilands and Sam Newman have all found themselves on the wrong side of right and faced calls to be publicly flogged. But, mostly, it wasn’t their core audience who were outraged. Instead, the ‘serious’ media took it upon itself to be outraged for them. Part of my job as editor of Zoo was to push the boundaries of acceptability to appeal to a demographic that is hard to shock – blokes in their twenties.

So competitions to variously win a boob job, divorce, gay wedding, circumcision, bath with a girl band and month’s supply of lesbians were all designed to provoke shock  and generate PR. All of them pretty much succeeded.

People were talking about us. And nothing makes a magazine more appealing to young men than parents and authority figures labelling it offensive.