GQ marks men of the year issue with ?ve covers

GQ’s annual Men of the Year Awards bumper edition boasts ?ve separate covers this year, writes Catrin Rogers.

Heidi Klum, Edward Norton, Orlando Bloom, The Clash and Matthew Perry grace the covers of the magazine’s October issue, which was published this week.

GQ is no stranger to multiple covers. In April last year it used two covers, one of Kirsten Dunst and one of Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay, and the following June it featured two separate photos of David Beckham – one fashion and one sports-related.

Editor Dylan Jones says the formula has worked very successfully in the past, and that the Men of the Year issue is one of the highlights in the magazine’s calendar. “It’s always a very big-selling issue, this one, because it sells lots of advertising, and has much more editorial content.” But Jones insisted the idea was not to persuade readers to buy more than one copy. “No, no, absolutely not. You’ve got to make it explicit that this is the same edition.

“The last thing you want is complaints from the readers, because you feel as if you’ve let them down. You have to remember that a Matthew Perry fan might not necessarily be a Clash fan – the two are mutually exclusive. So long as you don’t try to hoodwink the public, it works very well.”

The winners were announced this week at the Royal Opera House in a star-studded ceremony presided over by Johnny Vaughan.