Gypsy Creams

Weekend Archive

Leafing Through the Classifieds…

Weekend / 30th January 1974

So many gems here, but what really leaped out at me from this collection was the topless catsuit, as I remember ads for something similar in the News of the World, which my parents read regularly when I grew up. The weekend supplement was responsible for a fair bit of my sex education; thank goodness my parents were willing to answer the questions I had after reading the articles!

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Soviet Miss World

Weekend / 30th January 1974

There’s plenty to enjoy here, of course, but I like the implication that Soviet men are suffering due to the lack of totty to wank over, and am curious as to whether the competitions to see which wives carried out their ‘duties’ were a regular thing in the USSR. There was a practical point being made by Soviet Sport, however, in that a competition based on looks WAS a political problem in the enormous and ethnically diverse USSR. Don’t worry, though, the treatment of women as accessories of men (albeit through their domestic work) still meant that it wasn’t all that different to the decadent West.

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The Sound and the Fury

Weekend / 30th January 1974

Proof, if any were needed, that certain columns in newspapers seem to have always existed simply to fill space. This chap has filled a good third of a page saying absolutely nothing. The real interest for me lies in the garish ‘coming up next week’ promotion, which is very characteristic of modern womans’ magazines. I’ve actually read Charlie Williams’ autobiography “‘Ee, I’ve Had Some Laughs”, which Weekend was running extracts from at that point. It’s fascinating as a memoir of someone overcoming open, unrepentant racism, but also reflects the racism Charlie had absorbed as a way of coping; playing things the racists’ way. Alternative comedy helped question a lot of bigotry, and although we’ve still got some way to go, we can at least identify and talk about that nowadays.

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Oh, Noele…

Weekend / 30th January 1974

No, the Crossroads favourite isn’t flogging cough syrup, but the Great Universal catalogue, a former titan of the home shopping sector. As with many home shopping companies of the time, there is a strong emphasis on agents, a role internet shopping has sidelined. That’s not the only thing that has disappeared over time; commission on purchases appears to have gone, and although long-established players like JD Williams still offer credit accounts, many online stores request full payment up front nowadays, with a refund on returns. Credit is, of course, a business in itself nowadays, rather than part & parcel of the business that you wanted credit for.

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The Professionals

Weekend / 30th January 1974

Good jobs. Good money. Good times; with a ‘lively’ posting in Northern Ireland, I expect. Although it must be emphasised that being on the front line isn’t the only career being promoted here. Long-term readers will recall adverts for nursing also concentrating on pay and holidays/time off, which is something unthinkable nowadays, not least because large nationalised organisations with collective pay bargaining are becoming something of the past. I suspect Thatcherism, with its emphasis on ‘hard work’ (but only for a certain section of the population) did for this sort of advert, as questions around holiday & benefits are now considered taboo in job interviews, as if all jobs were a selfless vocation, rather than a honest exchange of labour/skill for money. Again, this coyness about benefits seems to disappear the further you get up the greasy pole. Curious!

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Ring Selection the Romantic Way

Weekend / 30th January 1974

I present this with no comment, apart from noting that 100 Oxford Street is now occupied by Game, and the downstairs is, of course, the legendary 100 Club.

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Oh, the glamour!

Weekend / 30th January 1974

This is a bit half-arsed, isn’t it? You’d think more effort would be put into cultivating a nicotine dependency.

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For the Young Master…

Weekend / 30th January 1974

Times may have changed, but the descriptions of the women footballers marry have not. Who knows if poor Jutta ever achieved anything by herself?

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The Austin Maxi

Weekend / 30th January 1974

A brave attempt to challenge the dominance of the Range Rover, but the Maxi was only likely to suit country pursuits that were on-road.

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Select Seven Girls From Paisley

Weekend / 30th January 1974

Yes, you read that correctly. They want you to rank seven ‘girls’ (they look like women to me) from the list, and then rank them in order of ‘merit’. Even considering the popularity of Miss World at this time, which is the ultimate symbol of ranking women against each other simply based on their sex, this is still a ludicrous way of winning a car. To be fair, I published a similar competition which featured in Women’s Own, but at least they had the good grace to stick with various photos of a named, well known man, rather than comparing random men against each other.

Regular readers may have noticed that this comes from a different source than the rest of my posts. This is an issue of Weekend magazine, from the week beginning 30 January 1974. It took me a little time to try and figure out exactly what demographic this magazine was aimed at, but then I saw where it was based: Northcliffe House, home of the Mail. This was a weekly version of the Mail, in essence. You’ll see the similarities in future posts…

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