Bizarre Magazine was a British monthly magazine that started life in 1997 and persisted until 2015. I used to read it religiously for most of the 2000s, however in 2009 it went downhill pretty rapidly and then a few years after that publishers Dennis Publishing killed it off.

While it did indeed start out as the stablemate of Fortean Times, when I was reading it it was its own thing in its own right. Whereas Fortean Times was more about the unexplained and such, Bizarre was basically about, well, weird people doing weird things. The weirdness was a human weirdness rather than a physical or metaphysical weirdness, and as such the magazine was unclassifiable. In its heyday you could open it up and probably find something that was unusual that you found compelling within its pages. This was reflected by its tagline, "For Humans."

The magazine had several standard features within it. It would open up with a section entitled "Photo Assault" which was basically a number of press photographs from that months of strange, macabre, and unusual things. Some of them were gory and edgy and shocking, while others were just plain odd or more low-key terrifying. One that always stuck in my mind was a shot of a supermarket car park in Turkey which had a queue of trolleys across it, each containing a live lamb. This supermarket had instituted a service whereby for Eid al-Adha you could pick out a lamb and they would sacrifice it for you in the approved manner while you waited, and then present you with a bunch of chops, steaks, etc. While another featured roided up prepubescent Chinese kids doing pullups and a caption stating that this was par for the course at the Beijing Sports University to find the next Olympic champions for the glory of the CCP. Photo Assault would then be followed by a letters page, with the star letter winning a bottle of absinthe or later cherry vodka, then a feature on parties and things that the writers had been to, then a page called "Bizarre Beauties" in which lady readers were invited to send in shots of themselves in states of undress. Usually they were of the big tiddy goth gf mould, because of course they were. This was followed by a celebrity interview where they tried to work out how bizarre was a specific celebrity on a scale of "dead" to "fetch the big net!" by asking them questions like "what's the weirdest animal you've ever ridden?" This was the first time I encountered Russell Brand or became aware of him in issue 104 of this. In his interview his pull quote was "if you find faecal matter involved in intercourse, you do tend to think, what have we become? Particularly after you've ejaculated." That interview confirmed to me that he was, in fact, a cunt. And still is, incidentally.

This was then followed by the various feature articles they had, which were usually the main draw. They covered things such as retrospectives of odd art house cineastes like Kenneth Anger, infographics of offbeat censorship rules throughout the world, pieces on how they went to Paris to track down Edward VII's custom built sex chair for use in maisons closes, the feud between Mini Kiss and Tiny Kiss who were both Kiss tribute bands who were entirely dwarfs, findom (a thing I will never, ever, understand), 21st century voodoo practitioners, THE POWER TEAM who were a bunch of Evangelical Christian circus strongmen and women who did circus strongman stunts for Jesus, Lee Thompson's infamous Gorean sex cult in Darlington, the resurgence of flat track roller derby, Cassetteboy, art cars, those American teenage gulags like Tranquility Bay and Elan School, and many, many, more things. Basically if in current year it's a rabbit hole there would be YouTube retrospectives on them, Bizarre covered them. They did so in a particularly laconic and mildly disinterested way albeit with florid metaphors and a certain way with words that, upon reflection, I've found myself emulating on here. I give an example. An article on the gay fetish club The Hoist in London contained the fateful line "As the Pussycat Dolls' Don't Ya Wish Ya Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me pounds over the speakers, a man eases in up to the elbow, and when he pulls it out one expects him to be clutching a tiny, sticky foal." All of this would be interspersed with shots of models or alternative models in states of undress posing in a vaguely themed way to the subject matter, like Kelly Brook wearing just a police hat and belt on the censorship around the world article, for example. Basically, it was Playboy for the articles for sperglords.

For some reason that line's always stuck with me.

They'd then have a dates for your diary of odd things, usually in the alternative scene, happening the next month, for people who were interested, and then there'd be a sealed up section after that called Sleaze. This was sort of a mag within a mag and was a review of recent pornographic films and ads for phone sex lines. Dear God this part was grim. I recall they did a review of a grot flick in which MTF porn performer Alannah Starr (i.e. chick with dick, if you will) podged FTM pornstar Buck Angel (i.e. man with fanny) over a stepladder. With screenshots. And the line "his clit looks like a fat maggot trying to escape a smashed Cadbury's Creme Egg." They also reviewed other pornographic releases and all were suitably gruesome. The ads were even worse. Anyone fancy ringing an 0900 number promising "Live Cunt action with dirty old slappers" at all? Or "Catheter out, cock in!" Well now you can. (I don't advise it by the way.)

The final page, which was unsealed, was usually a final humorous or parody piece of some variety.

Bizarre magazine was, well, bizarre. However it couldn't last. In 2008, the murder of Sophie Lancaster took place. This was a hideous incident in which she and her boyfriend Robert Maltby were crossing a park at night when they were set upon and beaten to death by a bunch of asbonauts who objected to them being goths in a built up area. The asbonauts in question were quite rightly charged, convicted, and sentenced to very lengthy terms in prison. The judge in the case described it as "abject thuggery" and motivated by Sophie Lancaster and Robert Maltby's subcultural tastes. Bizarre covered this, and given that there was a significant number of alternative type people who read it, their letters page was massive the next issue all about this sort of thing and about the stick they'd got for being visibly alternative. Fair enough. Unfortunately over the next few months, the magazine totally retooled itself. The features on weird and wonderful rabbit holes slowly reduced in size and number. Pages about tattoos, tattooists, dramas in the London goth and fetish scene, parties in same, whatever was going on at Electrowerkz or Slimelight, and similar things started to proliferate. Especially the tattoos. They actually had a page called "get yer tats out" in which you could do this and show off your ink. The tone went from laconic with baroque turns of phrase to, well, rather chippy. It changed its tagline to "Dare to be different." Yes. Be different. Like every other tatted up wannabe alternamodel in the country. They started openly sneering at the mundanes like they were any better. One page I recall had a lengthy box piece bloviating about how ripped jeans were not fetishwear, so stop turning up to lifestyle clubs in them. It was about this time I stopped reading. It clearly wasn't "For Humans" any more and was more for people who have unironically said "it's not a phase mum!" in their twenties or later.

Its readership died on its arse in 2015. Even in its proper guise it likely wouldn't have survived when there's many YouTube channels about weird shit that are way more in depth.

I have sadly mislaid all my old copies of it. But in my student days, many was the hour I spent reading about things that are bizarre in Bizarre, and that is how I choose to remember it.

(IN24/26)