It always struck my friends as funny, but immediately behind my desk at Stamps sat the nerve center of another legendary magazine… two of them, in fact. Forum and Penthouse were published out of the same office, allowing one to enter the phonetically similar worlds of philately and fellatio with one deft swivel of the office chair.
Inevitably there would be a great deal of inter-action between the two magazines… on my very first day at Stamps, in fact, Forum feature editor Elizabeth Coldwell solved my first ever editorial crisis – trying to remember what the sheepish equivalent of “porcine” was. “Ovine,” she declared and I adored her from that moment on.
Following Stamps’ departure from the publishers’ fold in spring 1989, I hung around the office for a few months more, as “special features editor” for both Forum and Penthouse. I’d already contributed a couple of short stories, under two of my more imaginative pseudonyms, to Forum; now I found myself compiling two volumes of readers letters as well, and having additional fun “translating” American place names, slang and language to English. “The M2 to Leysdown was our highway to Heaven…” yes, that sounds about right.
It's Not Only Rock'n'Roll 