Babb loaded with ideas to punk it up

Richard Gillistalks to the former Ireland and Liverpool defender on how he got into publishing and his plans to increase his ' Punk' portfolio

EX-FOOTBALLERS TEND to play a lot of golf, but not many of them run a publishing business based on it. Fewer still have flipped over to the other side to the extent that they interview the biggest names in the sport, such as Tiger Woods and Nick Faldo. But Phil Babb, the former Republic of Ireland and Liverpool defender has always fancied being the one asking the questions rather than answering them.

We met on the Monday after the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, the pro-celebrity event at St Andrews. Babb didn't join the likes of Hugh Grant, Samuel L Jackson or his friend Jamie Redknapp in the event, preferring to play a charity football game in Donegal with his old Liverpool team-mates before flying in to St Andrews the night before our round.

It's slightly odd playing the Old Course the day after a big event. As we negotiate the famous 17th green of the Road Hole, the only noise we hear is the huge hospitality tent being dismantled. And in place of the crowds, a few locals walk by on their way to town as we tee off down 18.

Babb was introduced to the life of magazine publishing by the notorious Tim Southwell, editor of the first "lads magazine" Loaded. It was Southwell who took the Loadedformula and applied it to golf, creating Golf Punk, the self-styled rebel among the staid world of sports magazine publishing.

"After the World Cup in 1994 I did an interview with Loaded," says Babb, who was considering a journalism course when he was offered terms with Coventry as a teenager. The decision to choose football over the writing game he describes accurately as "a no-brainer".

"We had a couple of days off in Ireland and the guys from the magazine came out and stayed in our hotel. We stayed up till five in the morning drinking a bottle of vodka just talking. I loved their hedonistic view of life, they were getting access to A list celebrities like Mick Jagger and doing iconic photo shoots with beautiful women. I was fascinated by them, and they were fascinated by me as a professional footballer. We became friends.

"When I retired from football, they said 'we want you to go down to Sydney and interview Nick Faldo'. I did a great interview with Faldo - I was a breath of fresh air. I turned up, we had 15 minutes booked. I lined up with all the European press and went in about number 10. They were all talking about the Faldo Institute and his swing and all the normal stuff. I just went in and said, 'do you fancy a pint of Guinness?' He was like no, no, no! But we had a really good tongue-in-cheek interview, really light-hearted, questions. He'd met our Bunker Babes and he was quite fascinated by what we were doing."

Babb has plans to extend the Punk brand, and is in the process of launching a football version: Football Punk. The gap in the market he says is because the newspaper coverage of the game, which although extensive, is increasingly distant from the players. There are two reasons for this: PR and money. There is too much of both.

The news agenda, says Babb, is controlled largely by the clubs and their sponsors, who govern who the press can talk to and when. As a result, many of the morning papers run the same stories. Running parallel to this trend is the growth in player salaries, which is having the effect of putting further distance between the players and the people who pay to watch them.

"I want to produce a football magazine that will make me laugh and still be informative," he says. "I think I may have something to say that is slightly different. I'm doing interviews for Football Punk - so far I've done Incey (his friend and Blackburn manager Paul Ince, JT (John Terry), Harry (Redknapp) and Jimmy Bullard - and I'm just coming at it from a different angle. I'm not really interested in how they're playing at the moment. Or how the team is doing. I want to get a bit of warmth and a bit of humour. The side the punters don't see.

"They become so detached and I know the fans are becoming frustrated," he says. "It's easy to say 'Oh he's on 150 grand a week, we want more from them', but the players can't say what they want to say because they worry about getting into trouble. They can't show that warmth any more. We need to get away from the cycle of every newspaper printing the same stories with the same people, of review and preview, which is very controlled by the PR industry. There's a reluctance on the part of the players to show their real character, which is a shame."

There is a tendency to think fondly of previous generations, says Babb, and to regard today's players as either spoilt or boring. "We know there was a drinking culture in the 1970s and 1980s and now they are much more into fitness, but that doesn't mean there aren't jokers out there and intelligent footballers out there, people with something to say. All I'm saying is, let's find them and talk to them.

"They are so frightened of being misquoted and misrepresented in the media and sometimes they are not articulate enough to get their point across, a journalist can exploit that. And they don't always get it right and they get crucified for it."

He points to the recent Joe Kinnear interview, where the Newcastle manager went on a foul mouthed tirade against the press, as reflecting a broader breakdown of the relationship between football and the media. He thinks far from being a mistake, the Kinnear response has won the manager new friends.

"Joe showed that he was a passionate bloke, people like that. It's great when we get someone who takes a different line. I remember when Kevin Keegan went for it on Sky Sports after a game. Some laughed at him, but most thought he was a breath of fresh air - I want that from a manager. It makes such a change from what you get now, all this, 'I didn't see anything or I need to look at the replay before I comment' stuff. The punters, the fans, are not getting the bang for their buck that they deserve."

His former Liverpool and Ireland team-mate Jason McAteer was an example of someone who, "had a great fan base because he was funny and lovable".

He cites Fulham's Jimmy Bullard, who is on the fringes of the England team, as McAteer's equivalent today. "We know that Cesc Fabregas has got a cheeky side but we don't get to see it now. Carra (Jamie Carragher) at Liverpool was a funny, funny lad, a proper Scouser. But all we see is him being a seasoned pro clocking up appearances."

Golf has similar problems in connecting with real people. When Babb interviewed Tiger Woods, the player had five press agents sitting behind him hanging on every question. "How many of these people do you really need? We even sent the questions in advance - It's a mad, mad scenario. When you speak to Tiger he goes into professional mode when dictaphone is rolling. When you turn it off he lightens up and we started talking about football - he'd just been to Liverpool v Chelsea that year - and you see a different side to him and you think why weren't you like that five minutes ago, that's what my readers want to see. It's a shame."

He's understandably sensitive to talking about the salaries of today's players, as many are still his friends. But football, he says, has to be very careful particularly now as the economy is looking so gloomy. "Going to a football match is a luxury what with ticket prices as they are, and all the other expenses such as replica shirts, so the outlay really hurts."

He saw a steep change in 1997, when Steve McManaman left Liverpool for Real Madrid, which was he said a shock to both fans and those, like long-time chief executive Peter Robinson, who ran the club. 'Nobody left Liverpool' was the received wisdom.

But McManaman, a born and bred Scouser did. "He wasn't driven out. He had a choice to go and play with arguably the greatest club in the world. But until then Liverpool never lost their star players. This was a key moment because they started looking at contracts differently. I went in after Steve to renegotiate my contract and the money that was on offer was very good. And the lads that were signing up then were starting to get really, really good money. And it's gone upwards ever since."

Babb's tenure as chief executive of a publishing business has been an up and down affair. The word around the golf business for a while now is that Golf Punk is in trouble. Suppliers and freelance journalists have complained about non-payment and a number of senior editorial staff have left over the past year.

When Southwell launched the title, Babb put his money into the venture as one of the initial investors. He is now the majority shareholder. "I bought the intellectual property and produced it through a new company. There was a lot of ill feeling. Tim (Southwell) left. People in the industry, suppliers and advertisers, started to worry about Golf Punk- was it going under, that sort of thing."

Babb says he spent a year rebuilding bridges with advertisers and the golf industry, presenting the new way forward.

"I've been saying forget what you've heard, I own this now and this is what is going to happen. We restructured the staff, looking at new business models. I've had to learn about accountancy, how to close deals and learn the publishing game: stock of paper, pagination, placement of ads, contract negotiating, hiring and firing. I had to find new advertisers and new revenue streams, going on golf days, doing the PR thing. I was working 10-hour days. It affected my relationship with my girlfriend and my daughter. And I suppose my relationship with myself. I was going in early and coming out at night. I had no social life."

His confidence in the future of his business stems from the 10 international editions of Golf Punk now available around the world, and new magazine launches, of which Football Punk is the first. "It's a brand we can apply to different sports," he says pointing to the company's tagline that being a punk is about attitude not age. "Some people say punk is a negative word, it's not. It has certain connotations but it's about having a confidence."