Richard Burdett’s passion for sport and trivia makes Total Sport an
instant hit
If you know who Kirk Dumpleton is, you don’t need to read this article
or, indeed, buy Total Sport. But we’ll come to that shortly.
If you’ve got a winning formula you should stick to it and that’s
certainly the case with this launch from Emap. The formula in question
is Q’s and a quick glance at the front covers and contents pages of the
latest issue of Q and Total Sport shows a nearly identical approach in
every way. Hardly surprising as several names appear on the masthead of
both magazines.
If all this sounds like criticism, nothing could be further from the
truth. Q is an indispensable part of my monthly media consumption. Its
clever editorial mix makes the reader feel in touch with the mainstream
and the cutting edge of the obscure and the arcane. Total Sport manages
the same trick. Articles about the rehabilitation of Liverpool under Roy
Evans and the Rumble in the Jungle (mainstream) are interspersed with
features on fell running and the history of the football boot. And any
magazine that makes swimming interesting is a winner in my book.
Best of all are the irreverent, trivia-laden list features. Five blokes
who could give Mike Tyson a seeing to is a knockout. And while the
feature on the off-pitch misdemeanours of the Arsenal team causes me
some personal pain, it’s nevertheless an hilarious catalogue of petty
crime.
It’s an invaluable source for those trivia questions to test your mates.
The only problem I foresee for Total Sport is that we’ll all be reading
it, so we’ll all know Kirk Dumpleton won the 1972 English Schoolboys
cross-country championships (ahead of those two also-rans - Seb Coe and
Steve Ovett).
Richard Burdett is vice-president of advertising sales for United
Artists Programming
