I was reminded over the weekend that Easter Sunday, 31st March, marked Sadie Milligan's 86th birthday. I can confirm that she is well and thriving in Australia. It was 60 years ago that she left Ardrossan for a new life down under.
Let's hope it was all that she had hoped for and more. Let's enjoy a few pictures of the very lovely Sadie Milligan, who was about 19 to 20 years old when most of these pictures were taken.
Playing 'first-pass-the post-bags-a-lollipop' are vivacious brunette MARY GRAHAM and eye-catching blonde JANETTE GOODMAN. Anyway, it's a good substitute for press-ups and not so killing, even if it is hard on the knees of the gee-gee. And some gee-gee.
How'd you turn round in a corner? Janette's the worried one at this stage, but it's Mary who ought to have been.
Well, it was Mary, you see, who had farther to fall. This represents the final sequence of 'hands-knees-and-boompsa-daisy'. but no two girls could go 'boomps' with more photogenic emphasis than Janette and Mary, unless they weighed twice as much. In which case the emphasis would be physical-ouch!
Span No 103 - March 1963
Very snugly ensconced in a cosy corner of the lounge is ANNE SCOTT, and there's no one who can decorate a cosy corner quite as photogenically as this lovely lady. Wearing her warm longs, Anne subscribes to the view that comfort is all-embracing when the last breezes of fading winter still blow chill.
Beautiful Britons No 102 - April 1964
For those who swear that there is no pin-up quite as elegant or quite as attractive as SUSAN DOUGLAS, here is Susan brought to you in the zingiest of modern lingerie, and we just hope you like the zingiest of modern lingerie.
We were assured it's what all the girls are wearing in the musical "Charlie Girl."
We were assured it's what makes a girl with it. It turns her from just a beautiful dream into a real kooky.
Span No 140 - April 1966
A selection of ToCo favourites spotted in an early edition of Janus. Quite a few ToCo models were to be found in these early editions of Janus. I guess ToCo sold the pictures to them.
Lets put some names to faces. I will start things of with a nice easy one.
Dawn Grayson - Picture 6 (Bottom Row)
If you're addicted to Long Johns, you're with it, and right in the groove is PAM JOHNSTON with her latest.
Long Johns went out when the mini skirt went high but came back again when they thought about the maxi. Point is you need something warm in the winter, don't you, and the hot chestnut man isn't always around when you most need him.
Spick No 186 - May 1969
With so many facets to fashion, the question is should a girl go for boots or frills or Long Johns?
Secretary JACQUELINE BLAIR thought it might solve something if she went for all three but found out immediately that Long Johns simply don't go with a mini.
Boots go with a mini and so does a straw hat on a sunny day, and frills go with anything. But Long Johns are for warmth and comfort, not for viewing, So Jackie bought a maxi and everything was as it should be. Except that the maxi hid the boots and frills as well and she had to acquire the cutest straw hat she could find and wait for a sunny day.
No, is it really me? asks pretty SYLVIA STUART, office girl in an old town of Ayrshire. I mean what would mother say. Nothing I suppose, except does your grandmother know you've been to her chest. Smashing, aren't they? The beatniks aren't so crazy as I thought.
Well, I mean, they may not be a frightfully artistic adornment, but think of their worth up in the cold Highlands.
Pardon me - I was just getting ready to take a bath. But I'm not ready yet and my forthcoming immersion is the result of a mere slip. Of the feet. If it's too hot or too cold I shall yell my head off.
Oh, well, once you're in you're in, and once you're wet, you're all wet. Did I ever tell you about my grandfather all steamed up a Turkish bath? He didn't go off the boil for days.
It's not so much the way CAROL LESLIE does her shorthand-typing, it's the way she looks when she's relaxing. Still, the old-fashioned look on some girls can be awfully cute. There was Mary Tomkins in her lace pantaloons and ribboned hair at the fete last month, and when she came down the helter-skelter, she looked delicious. A bit like Scarlet O' Hara.
Carol likes her old-fashioned look.
Well, it's no problem to us.
All girls are different. That's what makes it all so complex. You bow to one girl and kiss her hand and she thinks you're round the twist. But she says, "Oh, how gallant, Major Tuttley." You bow to another one and kiss her hand. She thinks you're round the twist too and says so. She says, "Here, give over or they'll lock me away as well."
It's all a matter of individuals.
Spick No 204 - November 1970
Well, winters with us and as the girls leave home in the mornings to catch their trains to their offices the last thing they tell Mum is to keep the fire going so that they can toast their tootsies when they get home again. That's what SUSAN DOUGLAS likes to do, it's heaven to feel one's toes tingling from the warmth. Of course, if Mum has let the fire go out one can only hope one's long winter whatsits will keep one warm until it's lit again.
Beautiful Britons No 110 - December 1964
Reading that the modern girls were Twisting in long underwear. LINDA BROOM'S grandmother presented Linda with some all to herself much to Linda's astonishment. Trying them out Linda had trouble making her way through the bushes and after that it was back to modern lingerie.
But how do they really look asks Linda? Can it be true that these were all the rage with grandmamma? Well, so they say. After all, the Victorian’s thought pantaloons were absolutely ducky.
Linda, by the way, is nineteen, measures 37"-24"-37" and is a receptionist. She lists her hobbies as Twisting, swimming, and walking. And she wants to be famous. Well, she's halfway there for Linda is quite a looker.
Span No 110 - October 1963
Nostalgia Publications produced and published a selection of glamour and stocking fetish magazines throughout the 1990’s. They also had a small shop in York, which I am sure many of us were familiar with.
Titles included Nylon Parade/Flash - a nice quality A4 size magazine. Nostalgia also held a large selection of ToCo prints and negatives, which I guess they had acquired when ToCo themselves ceased trading. Nostalgia went on to use some those negatives to publish a selection of themed stocking and nylon interest A5 magazines. They also published a range of magazines featuring many well-known Harrison Marks girls, who had been frequently seen in Kamera, Solo and other Marks publications.
I have, over the years, acquired some of these magazines and have now decided to make copies of them available as eBooks for us all enjoy for a little longer.
It would be good to hear from anyone who has a full collection of these books, which would enable me to fill in the gaps in my information. Some years back I was offered Jim Barker’s stock of negatives, which Nostalgia Publications held at that time, but sadly we could not agree on a reasonable price for them, and they slipped my grasp. I often wonder if they did get sold and, if so, where they ended up. Jim would now, I think, be in his late eighties. Any more information - or just your thoughts on NPL - would be of interest. Please do get in contact.
I have recently been preparing some early editions of Mentor and Janus, and was surprised to note how many familiar faces there were. In its early days, Janus Publications was obviously a buyer of pictures from ToCo.
Most, I think, are quite familiar, but can you put names to faces?
Janus Volume 1 No 6 - 1972
The line is long, but it's mod and it's swinging or so they say. Modelling it is beautiful JACQUELINE BLAIR, shorthand-typist, a great trad jazz fan and, hold it, chaps, hockey captain during her rousing schooldays. Jackie is twenty and last year won two Scottish beauty competitions.
Spick No 128 - July 1964
