We are sailing

Evening campers,
It's all go chez FR2DAY with the server ready to go, features winging their way in from various lovely contributors and just under one month until lift off. One of the pluses of setting up a magazine in a new country is the amount of people you get to meet who under normal circumstances you might never cross paths with.

Mat and Milly own a fabulous classic sailing yacht called The Blue Peter which is moored in Cannes Harbour and they came over for drinks and sushi on Saturday night along with many other friends. It was the first time we'd met and we got on brilliantly and a trip on the boat is in the offing...all very lovely.

A straw poll on Saturday evening yielded the general opinion that a comprehensive, up to date, witty and informative guide to the best restaurants in Cannes, the coolest clubs in St Tropez, the latest gigs in Nice, the best shopping in Monaco and beyond and much more besides would be a welcome addition to the Cote d'Azur. That's a relief.

KH

Richard and Judy

Bonsoir FR2DAY fans,

Well, we are four weeks away from launch now and it's all looking good if a little manic. But anyone who strolls nonchalantly towards a launch without late nights, frazzled nerves, snack food and no social life is in my view doing it all wrong.

Spoke to lovely Richard and Judy today (that's uber TV duo Richard and Judy, not my neighbours in Bar sur Loup) and Richard has agreed to write a review of his fave restaurant down here, La Colombe d'Or. He and Judy can see their house from this restaurant and they spend lots of time there, sometimes in the company of Gloria Hunniford, so keep your eyes peeled for a good, honest, funny, read (although I may have to delete a few swear words as his language can be a bit fruity.)

My lovely best mate Sarah, who runs her own pr company in Mayfair with major league clients, has also been giving us her considered opinion on all things marketing and pr wise so at this rate, we should be in Forbes magazine this time next year (I hear there are lots of places going begging in this year's Rich List, poor Bill Gates is down about 15 billion dollars, sorry Billy but bring it on.)
The launch party is taking shape, with the Three Butterflies due to play, fabulous Cotes de Provence wine and a late licence....the perfect ingredients for a night to remember. But if you're not on the list, you're not coming in.......

If you change your mind....(there's an ABBA theme going down)

Once you are in deep with a project, it's hard to be as objective as you were when it was just a clutch of ideas on scraps of paper. So it was after much discussion and thought that a few weeks ago, we decided to change the name of the magazine from Riviera2DAY to FR2DAY.

There are a few reasons behind the decision, the key ones being that the word Riviera is associated with so much down here (not all of it good either) and also that FR2DAY sits more tightly and comfortably as a brand with LA2DAY, our sister magazine. An added bonus is that FR2DAY looks a bit like Friday (no bad thing, Fridays are good) and FR actually stands for French Riviera (not to mention France, which could lead to national, maybe even world domination one day.) Reader, you are right to assume we are thinking BIG.

A less radical decision was to change Rendezvous, our social networking page, to Meet. This seems even more timely given that during some idle research yesterday on your friend and mine Google, one of the top listings was for Rendezvous, an 'adult contact magazine offering a wide selection of adverts from ladies, couples, gays and lesbians seeking.....' well, who knows what? I can hazard a guess but I didn't dare click in case Issy sneaked onto my laptop as she often does to get her Stardoll fix and ended up with rather more that what Britney's latest outfit looks like.... but I did wonder why no men were mentioned.

Burning the midnight oil

Wayne and I have very different hours of working. He is up at 4 in the morning, even at weekends, much to the consternation and annoyance of everyone else in his house and his lovely partner Lucy, who prefers to keep daylight hours. To be fair, dealing with LA every day means either ridiculously early starts or incredibly late nights.
I, on the other hand, only get out of bed before 7am if there is a major emergency, a plane to catch or the cat has brought a squealing rat or mouse through the cat flap (mercifully these are all rather rare occurrences.) I make up for it at night, being the stamina-fuelled party girl that I like to think I still am (all those early mornings creeping home when the birds have long since started their dawn chorus have clearly trained me well.) But what it does mean is that someone is working continuously flat out on FR2DAY for the best part of 20 hours a day. How cool is that? You readers had better appreciate it.

Money, Money, Money

Never have I felt happier after spending far too many thousands of pounds than I do today (not even my infamous New York two-hour beat-the-clock spendathon in SoHo en route to JFK can match this buzz.) The contract is done, the money is winging its way to our mate Tim in LA and finally we can say that after a fruitful gestation period, the baby that is FR2DAY.com is born. She’s going to be a beauty.
Now it’s just the little matter of pulling together fabulously witty writing, arty images and up to the minute information on all the hottest, hippest hang-outs, the best French Riviera restaurants, the most beautiful Cote d'Azur beaches, great Monaco bars and the coolest boutiques in St Tropez and all the other hidden gems from Monaco to Marseilles and then we’ve cracked it. Oh, to have the budget of Time Out to play with. Instead, we are frantically recruiting by trawling the web (probably the best research tool ever), begging favours from talented friends and spreading the word that this is going to be one helluva rollercoaster ride.
Launch is mid-April which means early starts and late nights pulling everything together. There will surely be stress, fraying tempers and fatigue but we all believe the end product will be worth it. The icing on the cake is our launch party at the Cannes Film Festival on May 13th, which we are holding at the uber trendy bar Ear to the Ground in Cannes. It promises to be a huge celebration, with much chinking of champagne flutes until the wee small hours, as long as no-one keels over with exhaustion or collapses with a heart attack. Plenty of time for that after the launch!