Playboy cleans up

Playboy Magazine has decided to stop publishing pictures of naked women. The two weatherman discussed what happens when events over take you in a fast moving world.

Weatherman 2: Playboy are having a cleanup and withdrawing pictures of women with no clothes on.

Weatherman 1: That’s astonishing. I’ve heard of a make-over but this is like a whole body transplant.

WM2:  Whole body?

WM1: Well it’s in the title isn’t it? Boys like to play. It’s as if the News of the World said they wouldn’t do news any more.

WM2:  They never did. It was all tittle tattle and gossip; they were never interested in the world, just Coronation Street.

WM1: But can you imagine Dairylea announcing they were going over to Soya? Or Branston pickle stopping pickling? Or Guinness declaring they will stop making stout?

WM2:  Playboy is just responding to the market, and there isn’t one for magazines like they publish any more. The magazine was a dinosaur and sometimes technology makes things redundant.

WM1 : There was a time when people looked up at the sky to get the weather. Clear Moon, frost soon or red sky at night...if the world still relied on such proverbs, we would be unemployed. Technology has given us our jobs.

WM2 :  Fair point, but we need to adapt or die in all spheres of existence. CDs went the same way. Children these days don’t know what a CD is.

WM1 : It’s a circular world. Albums are coming back. Thank goodness – the last CD I purchased had a font so small that I needed a microscope to read the lyrics.

WM2 :  We rediscover out taste for old things.

WM1 : In the case of LPs it was the baby and the bathwater say purists. We lost analogue sound quality with all that digitisation.

WM2 : Didn’t we just lose all those scratches? An authentic LP listening experience was to have the needle jump, the needle jump, the needle jump.

WM1 : That’s an area of hi- fidelity debate. So is Playboy staying on the shelves?

WM2 : Oh yes. Hugh Hefner understands we all still like to flick through a magazine. What else are you going to do at the dentists?

WM1 : I’ve never seen Playboy at the dentists. It’s always vegetarian cooking monthly or great knitting ideas for your dog...or some such.

WM2 : That probably explains why women have fewer fillings than men.

WM1 : He’s spotted a gap in the market hasn’t he? Hefner realises men’s oral health is suffering and he wants us all to get a check up. He’s calculating that if Playboy is clean enough to sit in the dentist’s waiting room, then men will book an appointment.

WM2 : I wonder what he will replace pictures of women with? Its original appeal must have been the unlocking of an erotic box for the curious male.

WM1 : Maybe he’ll run articles on unlocking boxes? An item called how to work out the combination of a safe or how to pick a lock would be of more than casual interest to some readers.

WM2 : That would be irresponsible. Burglars with a perfect smile – it doesn’t really cohere does it?

WM1 : Boys like to play. It fits with the magazine’s identity. Hasn’t every little boy tried and failed to undo a combination lock on a bicycle? And he could re-print those lyrics in a bigger font. But Hefner would need to have something in it for women too, if it is to have unisex appeal.

WM2 : I think they would be happy enough if Hefner just taught men a few essentials.

WM1 : Like what?

WM2 : Vegetarian cooking for one – most men can fry a steak but don’t know what a courgette is. And that it’s good to take out the rubbish, to clear up your beer bottles, to ask your woman how her day was – and that sex isn’t everything.

WM1 : Just as long as he doesn’t try to get me to knit something for her dog.