Big boys get their very own journal

A NEW MAGAZINE aimed at the generation of men which believes clubbing can go hand-in-hand with gardening and that home decorating is an extension of high fashion is launched next week.

Later appears to be based on the premise that refusing to grow up is now a cultural trend and not just immaturity, following in the footsteps of Red, the first young women's magazine to mention children without appearing terminally unhip.

Red spotted that women were having children much later and keeping hold of both their careers and their dancing shoes when they did.

Now, using the unarguable logic that men have been refusing to grow old gracefully for years, comes a magazine which peppers its pages with thirtysomething icons like Leonard Rossiter, James Hunt and Bruce Lee.

"Later is for those of us who are no longer teenagers," says Phil Hilton, 35, the former editor of Men's Health who is editing the new magazine. "It's for the man who feels he is outgrowing the existing glossies."

If any articles in the first issue of Later sum up the different interests of the "middle youth" man from the standard magazine "lad", they are a profile of the journalist-turned millionaire author Robert Harris and a piece on men who have given up their safe jobs to start their own businesses.

Eighteen months since its launch, Red is selling 173,000 copies a month but because the men's market is a less competitive one, IPC, the publisher of Later, is printing 400,000 copies of the first issue and backing it up with a pounds 2.5m advertising campaign.

At least part of the appeal to publishers is that men in their middle youth have money to spend and are in the market for a range of consumer goods, not just beer and trainers.