MEDIA HEADLINER: New Loaded editor promises to resurrect iconic lads' mag.(Interview)

Martin Daubney's zest and contacts book are his key weapons.

The editor's seat at Loaded is IPC's most precarious. The previous editor, Scott Manson, lasted just ten months and the magazine has had three editors in under a year.

Loaded's new man is Martin Daubney, deputy to Manson for the past seven months, and his fighting talk suggests that he'll get his armoury out if IPC calls time.

'I'm totally dedicated to this job,' Daubney declares. 'I have a blow-up mattress and a foot-pump by the desk so I can just roll into bed at night. It will take blood, sweat, tears, adrenaline and probably a few drinks.'

At 33 years old he may be a decade older than the typical red-blooded Loaded reader, but he promises he's up for anything. Which is just as well, given the Herculean task ahead of him.

He inherits a magazine which, in the latest ABC audit, experienced the second-largest fall in period-on-period circulation after Front, slipping just under 10 per cent to 261,937. It's still the second-biggest seller in the men's market after FHM, but Maxim is not far away at 251,117 copies a month.

Daubney's mark is already on the magazine. His enthusiasm for a more interactive approach with readers is apparent, introducing features such as 'Britain's Sexiest Barmaid' and 'Photo-booth Challenge', where readers' girlfriends flash their assets for pounds 50. His promise that he 'lives the (Loaded) lifestyle, I don't make it up' seems to hold up, with the latest issue featuring him and Manson (Scott, not Marilyn) trying out 'a bag of acid' to see if they could get any artistic inspiration.