Land of Dope and Tories

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Toilet Reading: National Enquirer

Toilet Reading: National Enquirer

Tagline: ‘Ameri—(Bruce Jenner’s head)–ttest weekly’

Price: £1

Who is this magazine for? Being a celebrity is a popular career choice for some people. Apparently it’s supposed to be a glorious release from the drudgeries of life. No more sorting out the recycling or hanging around with mouth-breathers. No more Youngs Admiral’s Pie. No more exams or beige carpet. It’s all red, red, red from here…

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Toilet Reading: Good Woodworking

Toilet Reading: Good Woodworking

Tagline: ‘The No.1 magazine for aspiring designer makers.’

Price: £4.25

Who is this magazine for? Building stuff is part of what it is to be human. Who hasn’t enjoyed tackling the engineering challenge of building an impregnable sofa fort? Picking your site, honing the design, and berating the quantity surveyor for her inability to source the blankets and mattress that your fine blueprints…

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Toilet Reading: Country Smallholding

Toilet Reading: Country Smallholding

Tagline: ‘Britain’s Biggest-Selling Smallholding Magazine’

Price: £3.95

Who is this magazine for? Here you are, a chap of late middle age. You unconsciously harumpf every time you bend down to sit on the sofa, the barber laughs at you when you walk into his shop. Occasional sex is still enjoyable, but primarily as a reason for a nice lie-down. Even worse, your well-remunerated working life…

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Toilet Reading: Zoo

Tagline: ‘Britain’s Only Men’s Weekly!’

Price: £1.99

Who is this magazine for? The idea of gender-based magazines is a strange one, when you think about it. In these post-feminist times, there aren’t many areas of life that cheerfully segregate on the basis of chromosome ownership. The only everyday example I can think of is toilet assignment. Even that’s a distinction that can’t be very…

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Toilet Reading: The Economist

Tagline: It doesn’t have one. The Economist is too mature for taglines.

Price: £5

Who is this magazine for? I’ve subscribed to The Economistfor a while. If you asked me why, I’d find it difficult to give you a convincing answer. I might construct a laboured argument about it providing an international perspective you don’t get from the newspapers or the telly. I could contend that the fact it…

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Toilet Reading: Real People

Toilet Reading: Real People

Tagline: ‘Fab Stories!’

Price: 67p

Who is this magazine for? Sixty-seven pence is an odd price for a magazine. A strange price for anything, come to that. What costs 67p? Other than a well-judged bag of pick n’ mix and a small quantity of loose mushrooms hand-selected at the supermarket, it’s hard to think of many other things. So why is Real People being sold for such a precise fee?

The poor…

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Toilet Reading: Treasure Hunting

Tagline: ‘Britain’s Best Selling Metal Detecting Magazine’

Price: £3.85

Who is this magazine for? It doesn’t get much more romantic than buried treasure, does it? Sailing the high seas with men of questionable haircare choices. Racing the tides and moustache-twirling baddies hellbent on seizing your haul. Following a map that displays no more than a childlike grip on the intricacies of cartography

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Toilet Reading: Magazine Writing

Tagline: ‘Helping you get published for 25 years’ (I’ll bet the editorial team agonised over the fact this tagline can be interpreted in at least three different ways.)

Price: £3.85

Who is this magazine for? Some people see writing as art, an expression of the aesthetic divine through words. To them a page of Dostoievsky or Joyce sends echoes through the soul like the contours of Rodin or…

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Toilet Reading: Practical Motorhome

Tagline: ‘Tour smarter. Go further. Live your dreams.’ (Best. Tagline. Ever.)

Price: £3.99

Who is this magazine for? It’s hard to answer this question, as you don’t often get to see the people who buy motorhomes. That’s because you’re either stuck behind them, longing for some masked bandits to descend on the roof with the bags of tar and feathers, or speeding past them so fast their faces are a…

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Toilet Reading: Ireland's Own

Tagline: ‘Ireland’s Favourite Magazine for over 100 years’

Price: £1.20

Who is this magazine for?Despite its capital being less than an hour from London, my mental image of the Emerald Isle is pretty much just hazy caricatures. Shamrocks, Guinness and begorrah. Perched happily beside this casual racism on the brain shelf marked ‘Eire’ is a shamefully shallow pool of real knowledge. I think the…

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Toilet Reading: Total Guitar

Feeling nostalgic with the warm, jazzy tones of Total Guitar.

Tagline: Play Better Now!

Price: £5.50

Who is this magazine for? This magazine is for me when I was 17. Which is to say, a profoundly average guitarist with more talented mates.

Stuart, the editor, trying to pour cold water on the old ‘rhythm vs. lead’ debate.

I bought a few issues of Total Guitarbecause my great and talented friend Andrew York did so. In our depressing jam sessions, he knocked…

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Toilet Reading: Wedding Cakes

What's the most important thing about a wedding? Cakes, duh.

Tagline: The ultimate guide to choosing your wedding cake.

Price: £4.99

Who is this magazine for? You’re getting married – congratulations! Here, take this spade. What you need to do is dig a good-sized hole, say about two feet wide and four feet deep, and put all your money in it. If you can, try and put some other people’s money in it too; family, friends, it doesn’t really matter.

Now douse it…

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Toilet Reading: 'Heat'

Can't stand the Heat? No.

Can’Tagline: This week’s hottest celebrity news.

Price: £1

Who is this magazine for? Boasting a circulation that comfortably outstrips most of the newspapers, Heatis one of the big guns. It has a branded radio station, TV channel, exercise DVD and online gaming site. In fact, readers are invited to ‘breathe in the goodness’ of these multi-channel options on the mag’s very first page, a sensation…

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Toilet Reading: Love Crafting

Bubushkas for all! Why you should Love Crafting.

Tagline: There isn’t one. I read Issue 5, so perhaps the Love Crafting team hadn’t got round to writing one yet.

Price: £4.99

Who is this magazine for? The difference between ‘making’ and ‘crafting’ is subtle but important. To make something is to combine a series of materials or ingredients into a useful object. To craft something is exactly the same, except with the omission of the word…

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Christmas Toilet Reading: 'Radio Times'

Christmas Toilet Reading: ‘Radio Times’

Land of Dope and Tories will review a publication from the weird and wonderful world of specialist magazines. This month: Christmas Radio Times. 

Tagline: ‘It’s the legendary double issue!’

Price: £3.60

Who is this magazine for? Christmas, isn’t it? Bloody Christmas. And Christmas wouldn’t be the same without the telly. So this magazine is pretty much for everyone. Unless you’re using Netflix,…

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Who fancies a game of Pogs?

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Toilet Reading: 'Spirit & Destiny'

Toilet Reading: ‘Spirit & Destiny’

In a regular series, Land of Dope and Tories is reviewing publications from the weird and wonderful world of specialist magazines. This week: Spirit & Destiny. 

Tagline: ‘Your spiritual guide to life’

Price: £3.20

Who is this magazine for? People need something to believe in. A god perhaps. Fate. Brian Cox. For some, it’s fairies (always called ‘faeries’ for some reason), ghostly images of Native…

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