Vinnie Jones tackles sensitivity

Soon there will be no facet of human activity that this man hasn't dragged into disrepute

THERE'S BEEN a new development in the evolution of man, or at least in the evolution of men's magazines. Catering to the older new lad, Later has been dreamed up by IPC as a kind of Boy Scout option for the overgrown Cubs at Loaded.

It's an odd magazine, in which men lose all track of time because they're constantly fretting about their girlfriends, and as such it seems spookily similar to the stuff in the heads of all the men who have ever struck you as perfectly decent, normal human beings. So, most of them really.

On the cover there's a thin veneer of male bravado, although there's no indication of what month or year it may be. Instead, there's a slug line reading "Success Money Women" and a topless example of priority number three with her arm across her breasts and none of her moles airbrushed out. There are no nipples inside, either, except for male ones.

While a couple of the coverlines blatantly cut to the chase and mention girlfriends - "Sex tips we tried on our own girlfriends", and "When girlfriends attack!" - the one that grabs the attention is "She's an old trollop: Vinnie Jones: Agony Uncle".

Is there no beginning to Vinnie's talents, one asks yet again. Footballing, acting, writing and now counselling. Soon there will be no facet of human activity that this man hasn't dragged into disrepute. Needless to say, his advice is shocking.

Q: My girlfriend dumped me for another man and I'm struggling to remain her friend. Am I wrong to get angry with her?

A: Turning your back on feelings is hard, so I won't tell you to just forget about her...

Q: My girlfriend wants to have kids but my sexy and slightly mad ex has recently come back on the scene. I'm torn.

A: ...You can't keep going off to see your ex just because it's easy to give her one...

See what I mean? Shockingly sensitive. But what about that trollop? A workmate girlfriend with whom our correspondent has fallen in love. She won't stop two-timing him with their boss, and he fears for their future happiness as well as both of their jobs. We women have a word for gals like that, too, Vinnie. And it's "trollop". There's no need to go bandying that offensive word "old" about, you know.

Although, in Later (which should perhaps instead be titled Earlier), old is good.

Take a look at the heroes of the Later lad, all of whom are showcased in issue one. Barry Sheene, Odd Job from Goldfinger, Harry Grout (the Guv'nor in Porridge), James Caan (circa Rollerball), Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, David Bailey, Leonard Rossiter and James Hunt.

And the heroines? Later requests that you ask your dad about them. Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda and Marianne Faithfull. Familiar faces from the old days, when men were men and women were women, and when sexual politics hadn't been invented.

Not that you entirely get the idea that the Later lad longs for those days. He wishes instead that his girlfriend could be an entirely emancipated but utterly old-fashioned pin-up.

Since quite a number of women seem to want that too, there is likely to be no shortage of candidates for the readers' girlfriends section, in which ordinary women are photographed by top photographers and interviewed about what they want from their sexual partners. There's progress of some kind here, I think, but I'm not sure what kind of progress it may be.

So what does it all mean? Who is the Later lad, and will women like him? Well, stop me if you've heard this one before, but he's an eternal child still mulling over the world that opened up to him when he was 10. But only because he knows there are things he still hasn't quite resolved from early adolescence, that really do need to be sorted out before he can move on.

In fact, there's a feature in the magazine in which one intrepid reporter goes out and spends a day doing the things he would have done at 15. Of course, he has a girlfriend, who gamely submits to the kind of seduction techniques at the author's 15-year-old command.

But while the writer enjoys his day as an adolescent, he realises that it is important for him to progress. Progressing means being successful and having some money, thus making it easier for a chap to settle down with his girlfriend. And while he isn't actually begging for baby-care tips, he knows that any sensible man will want children eventually, and that any sensible man will just do exactly what he's told to do when it comes to looking after them. Decent chaps

like a laugh, love a girlfriend. Surely there's a market here - for the magazine and for the men.