Amongst many other things, Mark Michalowski is the co-founder of the incredibly popular Shout! Magazine and has been the editor for 15 years.
Mark Michalowski (Pictured).
GY: How would you describe your personality?
MM: Talkative, up-and-down, intensely annoying!
GY: And sexuality?
MM: Bent as a nine-bob note.
GY: Shout is an incredibly popular and long-running publication. What were the motivation to set it up and the secret to it longevity?
MM: It was actually the idea of my ex-boyfriend, Mike, who bemoaned the lack of any sort of local gay paper, particularly for smaller, more community-based organisations. The ‘big boys’ – BOYZ, APN (at the time) and THE PINK PAPER didn’t seem interested in anything that wasn’t London-based, male-centric clubbing or full of cash to buy adverts, and suggested we see whether a local gay paper – for local people – would work. We honestly didn’t think it would last more than a year, if that: and here we are, 15 years later…
GY: What is the strangest/funniest story you have covered for Shout?
MM: Oooh, that’s a toughie. The one that sticks in my head was the story of a gay man with HIV who wanted to return to the UK, because of his health, from where he’d been living in Spain; he wanted to bring his dog back with him but couldn’t afford it. Just by chance, Julian Clary was appearing in York and saw a copy of Shout! with the story on the front cover – and was moved enough by the story to pay for the man’s dog to come back to England. Stories like that make me think ‘Yes, Shout! is worth doing…’
GY: In addition to Shout, you are a published author, can you tell us about this and Doctor Who?
MM: Before Doctor Who returned so magnificently to our screens recently, my love of it was, I have to admit, a bit of a shameful secret! After it finished on TV back in, ooh, 1989, Virgin acquired the rights to publish brand new Doctor Who novels, and a friend suggested I write to them for the ‘Writers’ Guidelines’. I did but didn’t get around to submitting anything until around 2000 – by which times the BBC had taken back the publishing rights. After a couple of rejected ideas, in January 2001 I got one of the most brilliant emails I’ve ever had, telling me that the outline for my novel Relative Dementias had been accepted. I literally did run around the dining room shouting ‘Whoooooo!’
Since then, I’ve done a few more, and some short stories and audio plays, as well as a novel for the BBC3 series Being Human. My website – at www.markmichalowski.com – has most of my stuff on it, although it desperately needs updating!
GY: What are your ambitions for you professionally and personally and for Shout?
MM: For Shout!, I’d be more than happy for it to continue being a paper that Yorkshire Queer-folk seem to enjoy! Fifteen years is the longest I’ve done anything in my life, and despite the recession hitting our advertisers – and thus us – we’re still going strong, and we’ve got plans to update and improve our currently rather saggy website.
And for me? I’d love to write more Doctor Who – as well as some stuff that’s totally my own. Fingers crossed!!
GY: Anything that you would like to add?
MM: I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone that’s supported Shout! – and me – over the last 15 years: I honestly couldn’t have done it without you, and that’s no exaggeration!
