Ex Heat editor Mark Frith talks to Holy Moly about Heat, cellulite, Harveygate and regrets...

HM: Hello Mark! How is life after Heat?

MF: I’m loving it far more than I thought.

You’re now Editor of Time Out- Is there much of a difference?

There is. Firstly the office is just ridiculous, it’s huge!

Were you brought in to save Time Out?

Well I don’t think it needs saving. Well, we’d certainly like to sell more copies, who wouldn’t?

So, I did a bit of asking around about you Mark…

Ok, I don’t mind!

...and I couldn’t find anyone with a bad thing to say about you, which was annoying.

I’m really chuffed to hear that and I’ve been very surprised if it had been a lot of kind of the other way.

You presented Liquid News didn’t you? I really miss that programme.

Yeah me too, I didn’t love my time there – I was very much an outsider and I found the work difficult and they saw me as a…

...it was always going to be a thankless task presenting after Christopher (Price, the ace presenter that died) wasn’t it?

...Yeah, Christopher often used to talk to me when i appeared as a guest saying ‘you should do this one time, you should do this’.

It was a bit like when Alex Zane started presenting Pop World. Piontless after Simon Amstell.

Exactly. They may as well have canned it to be honest with you.

So your book. Did you fastidiously sit down every single night after work and write a diary with the sole aim of getting published for megabucks?

No – I was on holiday because Abby (Mark’s wife) was pregnant with our first child. Instead of watching Live 8 I read Piers Morgan’s book, and I thought that someone should do the magazine world equivalent. Then that summer’s Big Brother was just appalling and Heat always relied on a real sales push for BB. I just though ‘I’m through with it’. I was due to meet publishers the week after Harveygate (When Heat printed quite cruel stickers of Katie Price’s son), so we decided to put it off until January.

So, in another Piers Morgan parallel, Harveygate was your Iraq photos...

It was, at the time it was very very tough. I had already decided I was going to leave before then. My enthusiasm was on the wane anyway and it certainly took a hell of a lot out of me.

Did you fall on your sword for certain members of your staff?

No, it was my decision to print it. I came back after Christmas really revitalized, then the Mark Speight story was being reported on the same day they were showing footage of Britney Spears being carried out of her home on a board

It was a completely mental fortnight.

It was a mental morning! It really took it out of me because my aim with Heat was to do the new generation Smash Hits for the celebrity world – it was meant to be fun and lively. It was all dark. All of it.

I ended up on Richard and Judy that week because I just got so sick of it and just stopped using paps.

As a position it was absolutely the right thing to do and I remember us having a meeting at Heat Towers with our press officer, and a few other people about it – about what do we do and our view was that we were just going to ride it out and not speak to anyone because we didn’t want to make ourselves the story at that point because you were quite rightly trying to make us part of the story and try and get a reaction which is a very smart thing to do, as I say in the book, but we had to make that decision and not comment.

I always try to drag Heat into anything I do!

Yeah!

If you were editing Heat today would you be Team Andre or Team Price?

I imagine we’d be on Peter’s side. I’ve not watched much of the ITV2 show but what I have seen it’s just her taking the piss out of him.I don't think that anyone can cope with having their character assassinated all the time. I’m surprised it did go as far as marriage and kids, but that’s partly the madness of the celebrity world which is on fast forward, they go out with each other five minutes later, they’re living together within two weeks.

Heat is responsible for a lot of negativity surrounding body issues isn’t it? How do you respond to that criticism?

I regret calling that spread ‘Circle of Shame’ – we did that because More magazine, who we ripped the idea off, had a feature called ‘Ring of Truth’ and it was basically the same as that and we wanted to adapt the name and I should have abandoned the name straight away and I actually stuck with it until I left which was a huge mistake. The other mistake we made was we did a lot of cellulite stuff – a lot of stuff that people couldn’t help. We changed it, but because we’d done cellulite and because it we kept calling it the ‘Circle of Shame’ the image stuck. We did also do one cellulite cover. If I had my time again I probably wouldn’t have done it.

Is the book being serialized for T.V?

It’s in development at the moment with BigTalk, but these things take forever. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Is ‘celebrity’ over now? Did you leave at the right point?

I certainly felt I left at the right point. I don’t feel it’s over but I’d been there for ten years and for me it had got really dark. I feel that we were never going to sell any more copies than we were at that point. I’d gone off Big Brother, I was Big Brother’s number one fan and even I’d stopped watching it and that’s a huge part of our year.

So Simon Cowell hasn't approached you for TV then?

No and I don’t think he will. I was going to say I would turn it down, but I wouldn’t.

Who would! Thank you Mark Frith!

Thank you Holy Moly!

Mark's book - The Celeb Diaries, is out now on paperback - it is very good.