ENGLAND — While America’s print and online adult entertainment professionals live in fear of prosecution or condemnation for featuring content deemed too “extreme” by some, a British magazine editor is suffering from precisely the opposite problem. The now former editor of Men Only magazine has been sacked – for not putting daring enough girls on the front cover.French Pierre Perrone brought his 49 years of admiring women to his job as editor of Men Only, but it did him no good when he ran up against 81-year-old business owner Paul Raymond, who wanted to see grittier images gracing his publication.
While Perrone sought to please “discerning older gentlemen” with his selections, his nephew and managing director Mark Quinn found himself in the position of urging him to push the boundaries, instead. Quinn ordered his uncle to choose more youthful appearing models and boost the size and intensity of the images found inside the softcore publication’s pages.
After learning that he no longer had a job due to his taste in photos, Perrone took the matter before a Central London Employment tribunal. The results were revealing, though not in a way that Raymond likely hoped.
The tribunal members, which confessed a “sense of wonder” at the company’s behavior, concluded that Paul Raymond Publishing had unfairly removed the more visually sensitive editor from his nearly $98,000 job due to what Perrone referred to as “artistic differences (that) led to him being demoted, then axed in a sham redundancy.”
Perrone had contended in court that circulation for Men Only was suffering due to free online content, competition from men’s lifestyle publications such as FHM and GQ, and harder content imported from out of the country. He claimed that his softer approach with more mature models had been part of a strategy to lure an older, more choosy readership.
Any direct quotes from Perrone on the issue will have to wait for the confessional, since he signed a confidentiality agreement in exchange for an undisclosed five figure payout from the company, which also publishes Mayfair and Escort.
