xeo":1rnnyrds said:
Gotta be MTB monthly !
There were two running it, maybe that Russel fisher guy, and possibly paul smith !?? one of them had a 91 muddyfoxAlu Team, which was often in the mag. I remember a shot with him getting about 2foot of air with a front pannier bag on!
The magazine was properly called "MTB mountain bike monthly", which was unfortunately a name that lacked snappiness, and therefore nobody quite remembers it. It wasn't actually smaller, it was wider! In the later days, it was printed in a format called "Super A4", which is the same height as other mags but a bit wider.
Initially, the staff that the mag centred around were Russell Fisher as Managing Editor, plus two guys from the Leeds mountain bike scene called Paul something-or-other, and Mark "Sev" Severs who wrote under the name "Andy Bentley". Severs was actually a communications engineer and used a pseudonym to hide his lack of genuine writing credentials.
Paul something-or-other lost interest and moved on and Paul Smith arrived, who was a great asset. He was a proper, professionally trained spanner-twiddler with a background in exotic modifications of motorcycles; and also a proper, trained, qualified professional photographer (as, incidentally, was mountain bike racer Deb Murrell who moved in the same Leeds scene, although she was never a bike journo). Paul was also a proper expert bike-handler, unlike Russ who was the dyed-in-the-wool journo, and actually held the magazine together while directing the rest of the lads.
The magazine was initially based in Leeds, in the premises of a printing factory that ran a couple of specialist magazines on the side, all about 3 minutes walk from Paul Smith's Mum and Dad's house. After a little more than year it was abandoned by the company, so the staff moved the title to a publishing start-up in Huddersfield, but it only lasted a few more moths before being wound up.
Everyone on the mag's staff knew John Stevenson (then of MBUK) personally, as he also moved on the same Leeds scene. Severs/Bentley and Deb Murrell had shared a hovel with John when they were all sloshing around in the Leeds student cycling scene at the end of the '80s and start of the '90s. The Leeds-based Yorkshire Mountain Bike Club overlapped that scene, and launched Brant Richards (who later ran On One cycles) into the world... so they all knew Brant too, who occasionally appeared in and wrote for the MBUK "faction".
The combination of that, plus the fact that Paul Smith had significant technical, riding, photography and writing talent meant that after the magazine folded, Paul went on to work for other magazines. Russ did too, but then he was a genuine long-standing proper journo and had worked for, launched, and run quite a number of titles already. Severs/Bentley realised that he wasn't going to make a living as a journo and liked road riding more anyway, so he went back to the subject that he was actually qualified for, and since the has worked in the engineering side of TV Broadcasting. He still writes facetious comments on John Stevenson's facebook wall, though.
I say "he", writing in the 3rd person, but actually he is me. I am that man Severs. I humbly apologise for all the drivel I trotted out, and I plead insanity.
By the way, I kept a copy of every issue and, if anyone is interested, I can scan them and post them.
Think I've still got most of them here somewhere. Russell Fisher, who ran it, did a stint as Deputy Editor of MTB Pro/Mountain Bike World later on.
