Barry McIlheney was a tireless advocate for the publishing industry, for the magazine brands it encompasses and the talented journalists who bring them to life.

From 2010-2020, McIlheney served as CEO of the PPA, working hand-in-hand with members and partners to promote the sector’s vital role in UK culture and business, ensuring it remained relevant, respected, and resilient.

He was a passionate proponent of the next generation of journalists and was in his element when asked to talk to students of PPA-accredited journalism courses, and as a ‘Speaker for Schools’.  

His career in magazine publishing began in the 80’s with a role at IPC’s Melody Maker, before being appointed editor of Smash Hits in 1986.

You can hear McIlheney talk through his early career and his life in magazines in a podcast interview recorded back in May 2020 here > The Giddy Carousel of Pop

Talking about being approached to be editor of Smash Hits by Tom Moloney and David Hepworth he says, “To this day I don’t know why they approached this young, pretty inexperienced, not long out of Belfast, former librarian currently on the Melody Maker. It’s not the most obvious fit.”

Following considerable success with Smash Hits, he went on to become the launch editor of Empire, before being appointed MD of emap metro, and helping to launch heat in 1999. Later that year he moved to Paris to oversee the launch of FHM France.

He returned to the UK in 2000 as Chief Executive of emap elan, the company’s women’s magazine division, and in 2003 became Editor-in-Chief of emap consumer media.

McIlheney was appointed CEO of the PPA in February 2010, and he represented the industry on the boards of the ABC, the Advertising Association, the Advertising Standards Board of Finance, the European Magazine Media Association, FIPP, and audience measurement body PAMCo.

Paul McNamee, Marcus Rich and Terri White who worked with McIlheney in his various publishing roles and his time as PPA CEO, have shared a few words and memories. Many other tributes have been paid, and we’ve added some of these in links at the end.

Marcus Rich – PPA Chair 2017-2019

On stage he was a master of the two guffaws and a titter. In Baz’s world all speeches were determined by their comic levels of audience engagement.

He was passionate about magazines and had worked on two of the seminal titles, Smash Hits and Empire. I remember he wanted to work in magazines and never retire from the PPA.

I was texting him last Wednesday (May 21st), discussing golf courses and cruises.He’d been on two cruises to Asia and most recently South America. He was extolling the virtues of seeing as many countries as possible but all from the same bed! In his words “Also loved the quizzes on board every night which obvs we usually won”.

It’s such a shock and heartbreaking to know he won’t be wandering through the door with the same black suit on with another famous celebrity Empire Awards story.

However right to the end he maintained his celebrity status. “My golfing buddy is Dr Robert from The Blow Monkeys who you might remember from back in the day”.

I’m still in shock. Such a great bloke and my heart goes out to his family.

To quote from Van.

“Hark now, hear the sailors cry.
Smell the sea and feel the sky.
Let your soul and spirit fly.
Into the mystic“

R.I.P. The Bazman

Paul McNamee, UK editor, The Big Issue

Barry always had a scheme. His way was ever forward. So many conversations would begin with a variation on ‘I was thinking…’ What came of those plans was always thrilling.

He was both an anchoring rock and a propellant energy around which so many of us gathered, and from where so many were lifted. 

Barry’s history in publishing is one of the most storied of the last 40 years. He wouldn’t mind its retelling. The most successful editor Smash Hits had (‘imagine, a million a copy Paul!’), the launch editor of Empire, overseeing the glory days of Q and FHM, launching Heat, going global to launch Zoo and some strange other challenges along the way (who else would dive headlong into a repositioning of the Sport titles?). There were always stories, glorious in their airing and frequent inappropriateness.

By the time our paths crossed, Barry was chief exec of PPA. It was an oddly smart move of a member association to appoint somebody who not only knew, but had helped mould, their industry.  He carried them through their centenary, changed the name to Professional Publishers Association (Periodical Publishers Association was dusty and museum-gloved – Barry was neither) and made them a dynamic and essential organisation. He was a creator and wanted to keep creating.

He took me, and a couple of my generation, under his mighty Belfast wing, and off we went. There were events, introductions, a debate in parliament, talks, risks, and great dinners. There was always a great dinner with Barry, and always advice and the right encouragement. 

Belfast was part of him. He carried it with him. He had the spirit, the resilience, the dark humour, the restlessness that comes from leaving and not quite settling again. Last year, he was excited about having got back together and recorded with his old punk band. Bizarre twist, but fun, he said. Music was an abiding passion. I’m convinced he took more enjoyment out of curating a playlist for PPA awards than for the ceremonies themselves. 

And there was his backing for Integrated Education, still needing a boost in divided Northern Ireland. When funds were to be gathered to help it grow, Barry would host folk for dinner in London and move things along.

He was a proud father, and spoke, when any opportunity presented, with unabashed joy about Frankie and Mary, what they’d done, their plans. We make it work, Paul, he said of he and Lola and their deep enduring love. His love/frustration/annoyance at Arsenal was a more complex arrangement. Christmas in Doagh spent with his brother was an annual pilgrimage and highlight. 

Invitations to pop down and see him in Granada were not taken, foolishly. And in recent times, Barry said he was ready to roll again after time living in Spain. In May he turned 65. He was not a pensioner.

I tried to think of a favourite memory of Barry, some distillation. It’s not easy to settle on one. But there is this – simple, no grand reveal, just a shining moment. 

A number of years ago he was organising PPA involvement at the annual Journalist’s Carol Service in St Bride’s, the journalist’s church, on Fleet Street. He invited me to deliver one of the readings. What an honour, in that place on that date. Come the time, I decided to turn up my full North Antrim, Ian Paisley-pulpit bashing accent, not because it was called for but because I thought it would amuse Barry. Midst reading, I looked down and there he was focusing hard on his order of service, suppressing a laugh. In the moment, both childish and august.

When we left the church, it was cold and clear, and quiet up Ludgate Hill. Then it started to snow. It felt like London in a fairytale. It felt like Barry had organised it because that’s the sort of thing Barry McIlheney would do. And if he couldn’t, he’d know somebody who knew somebody. I stood and watched the snow, then we all went for a fine dinner.

No matter how tricky the magazine industry got, no matter the challenges that came, Barry always reminded us that it was a fun job, a joy, better than anything else. That is worth remembering.

It’s very hard to think of a world without Barry McIlheney’s life force in it. But we must.

Travel well, you big comanche.

Terri White, journalist, author, documentarian

When Barry McIlheney – Baz, Barry Mac, B Mac, Barney Tabasco – magazine publishing’s man in black, was all soul. All heart. All velocity. Yet he had died in his sleep in the early hours of Monday, at the age of 65.

It seemed…impossible.

Not the way it should have been, should be. Any of it.

“I can’t believe it,” I dashed out to the man whose post I’d stumbled on (the only redeeming feature was that it belonged to Ballymena’s Paul McNamee, editor of The Big Issue, the only man I know who’s as passionate about magazines as Barry – himself from Belfast, some 32 miles up the road – and with a soul to match). “What a man. What a force. How can that end?”.

Everyone has their own specific line to Barry, has been inching their way back along the thread this week. Editors, journalists, designers, chief execs, marketers, all speaking of when he launched their careers, offered a hand or bit of creative genius, made them laugh until everything hurt. Of what they feel they owe him.

I knew of Baz for the first decade or so of my magazine career, the towering guy who’d written for Melody Maker, edited Smash Hits, launched EMPIRE and then scaled the cliffs of management without mortally injuring his glorious character (how many can say the same…?). We met occasionally at industry events, his energy, generosity and raw charisma pulling in me and everyone else gathered around.

Then, after I moved to New York, Barry asked if I’d be interviewed on my ‘success story’ – he’d become CEO of industry body the PPA – really, loving the story of how I got my very first job (my mum cobbed a drive-through McDonalds application form at me, prompting me to call editor Phil Hilton a likely-criminal number of times, begging for a job as his PA). He invited me to be interviewed again a while later: the PPA Festival was falling during a short trip back to London, the offer of a ‘primetime’ slot and on-stage grilling by Mike Soutar, then-CEO of ShortList (which I had edited at 29).

But the thread I’ve been tracing this week, is obviously, inevitably that of EMPIRE. The magazine he launched in 1989 after a suggestion from magazine genius David Hepworth (who’d co-founded music title Q with fellow-g Mark Ellen). Barry edited it for three wild, successful years. My own stewardship as EIC of EMPIRE came in 2015, my shift some six.

Just a day after landing back from New York for the gig, Baz took me out for lunch to Balthazar in Covent Garden. This is normally when ex-editors tell you the score, often try and assert the rules as they still see them. Baz, though, simply offered support, asked what I dreamt of doing with the magazine and, of course, told me a raft of spectacular stories from his days in the chair (David Lynch agreeing to come to the EMPIRE Awards if he could smoke all the way from LA; sitting next to Quentin Tarantino at the Awards [rest of the story part redacted, part forgotten]; David Schwimmer boarding the EMPIRE boat at Cannes).

And while things had certainly changed in the twenty-odd years between our tenures – A BOAT AT CANNES, ARE YOU KIDDING – some things hadn’t.

“Our mission statement at the time,” wrote Baz for the magazine’s 400th edition in 2022, “though we would never have called it that back then, was ‘At last, the movies get the magazine they deserve’. I like to think it was a promise we lived up to in those halcyon days of 1989, and a promise that holds true to this day.”

The pledges to deliver on that promise: EMPIRE would always make the film the star; lift the velvet rope and go elbow-to-elbow with insiders, closer than anyone else to the movies as they were made; would review and rate film after film, tell you what was really worth watching. It doesn’t sound radical, but it was. A blueprint, yes, arguably laid down by Q, but with EMPIRE, naturally, a different animal was born.

Barry McIlheney, Baz, Barry Mac, B Mac, Barney Tabasco – 1960-2025.

My heartfelt condolences to Lola, Frankie and Mary, who Barry spoke of often with such chest-bursting pride, and his brother Colin.

You can read an extended version of Terri’s tribute here in her substack : https://bit.ly/3T16zDi

Other tributes to McIlheney:

Mike Soutar: https://bit.ly/43TTt0Y

Phil Thomas: https://bit.ly/43EaKd5

David Hepworth: https://bit.ly/4dCbGmV

Andy Cowles: https://bit.ly/43mtFdN

FIPP: https://bit.ly/3FA8UC9

Empire: https://bit.ly/4kFA6hH

A memorial service to celebrate his life will be organised in collaboration with his family later in the year.