GQ editor Dylan Jones, interviewed in the latest issue of The Word magazine, says most of the job of being a magazine editor is dealing with egos - "egos out there in the office, contributors' egos, celebrities' egos, publicists' egos."
He adds: "That's the art. I think it was Peter Mandelson who really taught me that lesson."
Jones tells how he wooed Mandleson as a columnist but found that after a good four months the quality of the column tailed off.
"So I took him for lunch, ostensibly to talk about the column, tell him it wasn't good enough, and I said, "You should write about about the media, because the media is one of the few places you don't pull your punches.
"You've been vilified, you've been treated so badly - imagine if you were a celebrity."
"And he grabbed my arm in the middle of the restaurant and he said 'I am a celebrity.' There was not a hint of irony about it. And that taught me a huge lesson: that everyone needs smoke blowing up their backside."
- The Word doesn't put all its mag content up online but it has a good website here.
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