The idea for The Waiting Room Magazine was born out of the realisation that there was not even a single magazine that was of interest to me on my GP’s waiting-room table. 90 per cent of them were popular women’s magazines, and 90 per cent of that lot were many months out of date, some over a year old; even my female co-patients didn’t seem to be overly interested. Listlessly, I flicked through a few; what else can you do in a GP’s waiting room? The only non-fashion glossies were, a cookery magazine, a dog-eared fishing magazine and one on gardening but, as I am not a cook, and I neither garden nor fish, that occupied all of five minutes. I sat back, closed my eyes (which were paining me anyway) and considered.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a general magazine was what was needed, a one-size-fits-all publication that had content for men, women and children, of all ages and interests. That was obvious, and it only needed a small bit of content for as many categories as possible, enough to occupy each sector for the 15/20 minutes that they waited. Variety had to be the keyword. That, too, was a no-brainer.