#tbt FHM Magazine

The last of the lads' mags is dead. RIP FHM, the bible for many a young man for 31 years. The February 2016 edition is the final issue. It held out longer than any of its competitors, so fair play to them.

I remember first finding them in WHSmiths at about 14 years old: a fair bit younger than their target audience at the time. As I got older, though, I found I didn't fall into the magazines as had other lads my age. I was too busy at college for magazine reading, and as my life was consumed by my course I had no money to buy the clothes or holidays they advertised and no interest in football or sports other than Muay Thai. When university came around I started reading magazines, but still found a lot of their journalism didn't speak to me. Their office-related jokes didn't strike, and their advice sections weren't particularly helpful.

What did strike me was the comedy- the articles were usually humorous and written by either a bloke I could see myself being mates with, or presumably by a group of writers who were likable and entertaining. Their “ten things” lists had obviously began as the kind of jokey, laddish email exchange that many of us had in the MSN days. Their adventure reports, where they would send their journalists do different exotic (and sometimes terrifying) parts of the world made me wish that more of the magazine was in that trend.

I thinned-out my magazines when I moved out in 2010, and all the lads' mags went to the Great Magazine Rack in the Sky (the recycling collection point). I regret this. Lads' mags are now a part of history, and something I don't have physically any more. I don't even have the DVDs that came on the front of them (which was usually the reason I bought them in the first place).

The internet in its vastness now provides more than enough entertainment, rendering such magazines obsolete. It was good while it lasted.