Jeff Maysh Interview

“Write. Send in stuff. Be a workie. Refuse to leave. Meet everyone, and write down everything. Don’t be afraid, no matter how f*****g scary stuff gets. You never really get that hurt. Touch wood”

Multi-Award Winning Journalist, Jeff Maysh, On What Makes A Good Reporter

The current being IPC Writer Of The Year, PTC New Writer Of The Year, and MJA Feature Writer Of The Year, says the reason he became a journalist was because he wanted to be Superman, but had to settle for Clark Kent!
A workaholic, the 24 year old from Bromley says he enjoys the fast, ever changing lifestyle of journalism. Starting freelancing for FRONT magazine when he was still in university, this well travelled writer has worked his way up, sending in pieces whilst studying. He now spends his days having fish and chips with Michelle Marsh, getting involved in tear gas incidents with Danny Dyer in football stadiums in Poland, and illegal fist fighting in the Australian Outback, all in the name of work.
His current position at Loaded magazine is Senior Staff Writer, although he plays this down a lot; “My interview for the Loaded job was a 6 hour p**s up, they had to send me home in a car”.
Ever the party animal, “Monster Maysh” (as he writes under) has been all over the globe, and has met a fair few people to boot, so has the stories to tell.
Jeff was hired by infamous Loaded Editor Martin ‘Daubs’ Daubney, whom Maysh insists in the best Editor in the country. “Not just because he gave me the job!”
And apart from David Hasselhoff and Pele, his favourite interview was when he interviewed Carmen Electra in LA, and toured with Maroon 5 through Japan.
However, its not all glitz and glamour, and Jeff was on the receiving end of a harsh assignment when Loaded gave him the Fijian Island Task: “I was left crying on the beach in Fiji, after a mile of wading with my camera bag over my head through shark infested waters, having escaped the cannibal island of Naitilo.” And you thought your boss was tough!
He’s also has had his fair share of the spotlight. Maysh had the first exclusive access to Lotto-Lout Michael Carroll, before the tabloids, and drove his 4x4 for the day. He won MJA Feature Writer of the Year 2006 with this story, beating off GQ and Time magazine’s writers. He even pretended to be a serious journalist on Sky News over the Richard Hammond Crash story, so it’s fair to say that he’s been around a bit.
The rest, as he says, is a blur, from going “on the p**s” for two days with Danny Dyer on the set of The Business, then appearing in the film as an extra, to going bullfighting in Texas, via waking up on Santa Monica beach, to the sight of the most beautiful sunrise, having slept rough all night for his story ‘Down and out in Beverly Hills.’
“I could go on forever...every day is brilliant.” he says, and he’s right too. Maysh has worked in America (LA, NY, South Carolina, Oregon, Texas, New Jersey,
Florida, Georgia, San Francisco, Minneapolis), and been to Morocco, Atar (in the Dakar Rally), all across Europe (in an 850cc Robin Reliant for the Mongol Rally), Iceland, Austria, Australia, Singapore, Barcelona, Ibiza (“God knows how many times”), etc, the list goes on.
“I don’t have many pages left on my passport, which is not bad, considering it’s only got two years left on it. I'm away at least twice a month.”
Maysh agrees the perks of the job far outweigh the wages.
Living in Islington, Jeff has a wide screen projector for a TV, is single, and used to drive a VW Polo before he realised that if he needed a car, reviewing one was twice as much fun.
From speaking to him, it sounds like he definitely enjoys doing what he’s doing. “The best bit of the job is not knowing what tomorrow will hold. I have a semi-packed bag at home ready to leave at any moment. I've come in to work on a Monday and been sent to America by lunchtime.”
The only downside of the job is, as he puts it, “not having much of a social life outside of work, because I'm just not about...,” But then I remind him to look at his social life at work and he starts to say “Well, can’t complain, I suppose, would you?”