QX

About QX

QX Magazine was a free LGBTQ weekly magazine distributed at most LGBTQ spaces across London and the UK. Founded in 1992 and published by Firststar Ltd from London, it was for nearly three decades the capital's definitive gay scene publication — its main focus the club and bar scene, with arts reviews and articles on issues affecting the LGBTQ community alongside its famous photographic galleries of the weekend's revellers. It ceased publication in 2020 during the pandemic, and the owning company went into liquidation in December 2020.

As a free magazine, QX carried a high proportion of advertising space for revenue. Formerly aimed exclusively at gay men, it had more recently shifted its focus to include the whole spectrum of LGBTQ, with a diverse range of featured cover stars. Issues were available for download in PDF format online or via the magazine's app.

Founded in 1992

QX Magazine was founded in 1992 — the era of London's great gay scene boom, when venues like Heaven and G.A.Y were defining the capital's nightlife. Published every Wednesday by Firststar Ltd from 23 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8NH, it was distributed free at most gay bars, gay clubs and other gay venues across London and the UK.

Its ISSN was 1356-6903, and it was also known as QX International — a reflection of its ambitions beyond the capital.

The Capital's Scene Bible

Although the magazine included arts reviews and articles on issues affecting the LGBTQ community, its main focus was the club and bar scene of the capital. QX's main feature was its photographic galleries of revellers from the previous weekend — the pictures that made it the essential record of London gay nightlife.

The magazine's back pages were famously dominated by adverts for male escorts — a fixture of the free gay press — while its editorial pages carried news articles, club and bar reviews, celebrity interviews and scene personalities, with an insider's knowledge of London's buzzing club, bar and cabaret scene.

From Gay Men to the Whole LGBTQ Spectrum

Formerly aimed exclusively at gay men, the magazine had more recently shifted its focus to include the whole spectrum of LGBTQ, with a diverse range of featured cover stars. The website featured exclusive online content like blogs and playlists, and the magazine's app — QX Magazine Digital, by Firststar Ltd — extended its reach to phones and tablets.

Its editorial team included editor Cliff Joannou — who in 2014 deposited the QX Magazine Archive (1996–2005), 17 folders of commissioned photographs covering nightclubs, events, celebrities and performers, at the Bishopsgate Institute — and later editor Dylan B Jones.

The Archive at Bishopsgate

The QX Magazine Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute preserves the magazine's photographic legacy: club photographs from venues including G.A.Y and Heaven, photo libraries spanning movie stars to drag queens, and the visual record of a decade of London gay nightlife. It stands as an important social document of LGBTQ life in the capital at the turn of the millennium.

Closure in the Pandemic

As bars and clubs were closed due to the pandemic of 2020, the magazine stopped publication early in the year — a publication built on nightlife could not survive the closure of nightlife. The company owning it went into liquidation in December 2020. As of April 2021, some activity was still evident on the website and social media channels, but the PDFs of the back issues had been removed from the site.

QX's Legacy

For 28 years QX was the paper of record for London's gay scene: the free weekly that told you where to go, showed you who was there, and chronicled the capital's LGBTQ nightlife through its greatest decades. Its photographic galleries remain the definitive visual archive of an era.

Though the presses stopped in 2020, QX's place in the history of London's LGBTQ press — alongside Capital Gay, Gay News and The Pink Paper — is secure: the free weekly that put gay London's nightlife on every bar counter in the city.

QX International: The Name and the Website

The magazine styled itself qx — lower-case, with no full stop — and was also known as QX International. Its home on the web was qxmagazine.com, which functioned as both the public face of the title and a parallel editorial channel: issues of the magazine could be downloaded in PDF format online or read through the magazine's own app, while the website carried exclusive online content such as blogs and playlists that never appeared in print.

The bibliographic record was straightforward: the magazine was a weekly, published on Wednesdays, bearing the ISSN 1356-6903. As a free title, its economics were those of the free press — a high proportion of advertising space paying for a magazine that was never sold, but handed out. The back pages, dominated by often explicit adverts for male escorts, were among the most recognisable in British gay publishing, and they told their own story about how the title was financed.

By April 2021, after publication had ceased, some activity was still visible on the website and the magazine's social media channels, but the PDFs of the back issues had been removed from the site. The domain stood as a digital echo of a title whose real life had always been in the physical world: on the bar counters of London's LGBTQ venues.

Photographs of the Weekend: The Galleries

QX's signature feature was its photographic galleries — page after page of revellers captured in the clubs and bars of London over the previous weekend. In an era before smartphones and social media made everyone a photographer, these galleries were the definitive visual record of the capital's gay nightlife: if you had been out, you looked for yourself in QX the following week, and if you had not been out, you saw what you had missed.

The galleries sat alongside the magazine's other main content: news articles, club and bar reviews, and arts coverage, plus pieces on issues affecting the LGBTQ community. But it was the photographs, commissioned and used by the publication, that gave the title its energy and its audience. They were also, it turned out, an archive in the making: photographs from 1996 to 2005, covering nightclubs, events, celebrities and performers, were later deposited at the Bishopsgate Institute, where seventeen folders of QX material now preserve the look of two decades of London nightlife.

Distribution was part of the formula. As a free gay weekly, QX was handed out at most gay bars, gay clubs and other gay venues across London and the UK — the magazine came to the reader rather than the other way round. That presence, week after week, is what made it the paper of the scene: not a magazine you subscribed to, but one you simply encountered, folded open on a bar, on any given Wednesday night.

A Gay History in Five Parts

QX was not only a listings and listings-adjacent magazine; it also took its history seriously. The magazine published a five-part series on London's gay history, tracing the capital's queer past from the barrack rooms and pubs of the mid-twentieth century to the clubland the magazine itself chronicled — all five parts were made available online at qxmagazine.com, extending the magazine's editorial reach beyond the weekly print cycle.

The series drew on the memories of the scene's veterans and the magazine's own deep knowledge of London's venues: the Earls Court pubs, the Kensington clubs, the bars that had come and gone across the decades. For readers who knew QX mainly for its photographic galleries of the previous weekend's revellers, the history series was a reminder that the magazine understood itself as part of a longer story — the story of gay London, told week by week since 1992.

It was characteristic of the title: rooted in the nightlife it covered, but alert to the past that had made that nightlife possible. When publication ceased in 2020, the history series remained as one of the magazine's more durable editorial legacies — a short, vivid introduction to the London that QX had spent twenty-eight years documenting.