TBGM: The Little Magazine that Couldn't!

Many moons ago when I worked at Australian Consolidated Press (Australia's largest magazine publisher), I was browsing through the latest men's mag that was being launched to much hooplah -- Ralph magazine.

Both distinct from and eerily identical to FHM, Ralph was the usual mix of fart jokes, boob jokes, drinking jokes and sports jokes, all with a generous lashing of tits.

As the editor of the time once told me over a beer, it was the kind of mag a guy "wouldn't be afraid of leaving out where his girlfriend would see it, but that he could also have a wank to."

And how.

Anyway, the launch of Ralph scuttled my own ill-conceived plans for a similar magazine -- a magazine that has since become lore between my different magazine colleagues and I.

The magazine: TBGM, or as we knew it, Tits Bums Guns & Mud.

I didn't have much more than a catchy, humorous title, but you have to admit that you'd be under no illusion as to the mag's contents should you grab a copy at the newsstand.

Of course we would cover much more diverse topics than just Tits Bums Guns & Mud. Hell, sometimes we might not cover guns or mud for months. The masthead told you everything though, unlike FHM (For HiM? For Him M--? Ralph?). Then again, the generous helpings of airbrushed silicon all three mags would feature on the cover should give a fair bit away.

But it was never to be. The market was saturated with magazines purveying photos of breasts, stories about breasts and jokes about breasts. TBGM, with no business plan, no market research and nothing going for it aside from the title never stood a chance.

Tits Bums Guns & Mud lives on now only as a fondly-remembered dream of what could have been in the hearts and minds of hundreds, if not literally a couple people.

The world has truly missed out.