THIS WEEK you will see a new advertisement on the London Underground.

It implores male travellers not to give up their seat to a woman as it might offend them. It is the sort of in-your-face wit that “lad culture” spawned. The attitude has always been that if women want feminism they cannot have old-fashioned deference as well.

The ad is for Loaded magazine and is part of a campaign to celebrate its birthday. Next month this bible of laddism will be 10 years old.

But will it be a birthday worth celebrating? Or will it be the first time that Loaded faces up to the fact that the world has changed and there is no longer the demand for the totty and caper-led fare that it serves up.

The figures tell a brutal story. At its height six years ago Loaded sold almost 500,000 copies a month; it now sells half as many.

Those heady, hedonistic days seem a long way off. James Brown, the founding editor, tapped into a phenomenon and the staid publishers of genteel men’s monthly titles were shocked into action. Within a few years the market was awash with titles trying to ape Loaded.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it meant that Loaded suffered as its dominant market share was eroded and finally overtaken by Emap’s slightly more refined FHM.

The new Loaded editor, Martin Daubney, has been in the chair at IPC’s King’s Reach Tower offices overlooking the Thames since last year.

It is a sign of the struggles at the magazine that there have been three editors in the past year alone.

The 33-year-old still encourages the Loaded lifestyle in his office and admits that some of his staff take drugs.

“We had a feature recently that road-tested acid,” he said. But he also offers a more realistic view on the challenges that face the magazine as it enters its second decade.

He said lads still existed, so the market still existed. But as well as the other monthly titles vying for the discerning lad’s money, there is now weekly competition as well. Emap and IPC have given huge budgets to their two new titles — Zoo and Nuts, respectively.

“It’s still as valid a proposition as it was back then,” said Daubney. “Lad culture was not invented by Loaded. It has been around since the cavemen, but it was Loaded that tapped into it and gave men something they wanted.

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