Have it Awayday

Saucy goings-on in the British Rail publicity department in the 1970s; the cartoonist of the right hand,1975, leaflet, was Styx, otherwise known as Leslie Harding (1920-80).

Birds & Dollies

Three Spick & Span Extra covers from the early 1970s.

Stocking Parade

A little photo-feature from Stocking Parade, dating from 1965, featuring Wilma Evans. There were loads of  publications like this in the 1950s/1960s, all quite innocent when compared with the more explicit 'top shelf' magazines that became available from the 1970s and which effectively killed them off. They are quite collectable now and can command good prices. They are now often advertised as being of 'Fetish interest'; it has been suggested that a predilection for stockings was often formed when a young child would see up his mothers skirt whilst crawling along the floor. I can well remember Miss Eccles, a drama teacher at our grammar school in the late-1960s, who would have us naively adopting positions on the floor in the hall while she moved amongst us.........

Sophia Loren

An eye-catching photograph from the pages of Lilliput magazine, December 1955.

Happy 1956.................

Getting into the party spirit, this from the January 1956 issue of Beautiful Britons, which would have been on sale as I was being born..........

A happy 2013 to all who have looked in on this blog over the past year.

Toys for 1960s boys

A few adverts that appeared amongst December issues of Meccano Magazine, during the 1960s;

And for older boys in 1968....................

Of Steam and Suspenders

When searching through pictures of vintage pin-ups for inclusion in this blog (it's a tough job, etc.), I try to include something else in the pose. Thus, we have had Amanda climbing a stile, Jayne with her Jag and Fiona Richmond sandwiched between to big blokes and so on.

Sorting through some pictures recently, I came across this. Unremarkable, you may say. Model Jane Fairbanks looking a little distracted whilst disrobing in someone's living room from a 1970s issue of Spick magazine. What caught my eye however, was the record standing next to her right foot. Not just any old record, but a record of the sounds of steam engines, a copy of which I have had in my collection for many years.

The recording of the sounds of steam locomotives at work and subsequent sale on vinyl had been going on for many years, notably by O Winston Link in the USA and Peter Handford in this country. The record in this picture is Memories of Steam, recorded by Kenneth Grenville Attwood on the Longmoor Military Railway in 1969/69 and at Carnforth in the summer of 1968, during the dying days of steam on British Railways.The colour photographs on the cover of the album were by Ian Krause, but are misleading as none of the locations illustrated actually appear on the record itself. Further evidence of the photographer's (or the owner of the room's) interest in railways is the model of a Canadian National locomotive on the shelf behind. It's always nice to combine one's interests!

What glamour shoots are really like.........

We wish.

From High Heels, July 1965

Beehives and Petticoats

Three young ladies cavort in the countryside in the 1960s; since these pictures came from a magazine actually called Beehive Girls, the one on the left doesn't appear to be playing the game!

Two Big Blokes and a Bird (and a Jag)

Remember Fiona Richmond? In the 1970s, she was a model, an actress and also wrote all sorts of naughty books supposedly about her own sexual experiences, not to mention being the girlfriend of publisher and club owner Paul Raymond. Today she apparently owns and runs a couple of hotels. This picture comes from a 1976 issue of Spick magazine, photographed at a contest to find Britian's fattest man (how very non-PC!!). Mighty George Macaree looks rather startled; I wonder what Fiona was doing with her right hand........?

Whilst trying to find out what else she had got up to in recent years, I came across her in the excellent BBC series The Car's the Star, where she was interviewed in the programme featuring the Jaguar E-Type in 1997. In the 1970s clip she is driving FU 2, not now on the DVLA database, though has probably since been re-registered, whilst JCT 1N is still on the road in 2012 (Unless they are the same car, of course.........)

Jane & Jag

Model Jane Mercer, not her real name, I'm sure, adorns 1960s Jaguar XKG 318 amongst the pages of Span magazine for March 1975. My father did some glamour photography from a studio set up in the spare bedroom (which made my early teenage years interesting!) and also owned a Mark 2 Jag. I don't think that he ever combined the two interests, although I suspect that my mother would have taken a dim view if he had!

Carry On Rambling

With the spring weather upon us, The Ramblers Association have unveiled their new lightweight clothing range. Model Amanda Jansen gets the Vintage Stuff seal of approval as she climbs a fence on the South Downs. Mind your step there, Amanda!

From Beautiful Britons, August 1969

Scottish Mae West?

A bit of early post-war sauce, with this "Inter-Art" postcard, bought in Brighton a few years ago. Posted and delivered within Lanarkshire in July 1953, Mr J Wright appears to be on a promise........