Diane Clarke

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Bargain Buy

A secretary has to dress well, you know. In the old days, they used to make do with hairpins, hatpins, cuffed blouses and stiff skirts. Not just on one day, but every day. The boss was never distracted from his work but he often got slightly depressed.

It’s different today. Secretary DIANE CLARKE, going along with the modem tradition that secretaries should look elegant and glamorous, spends most of her money on clothes and when there’s a bargain buy in the offing at one of her favourite stores, she’s right there to sort out something breathtakingly exciting.

Little muted cries of delight, muffled gasps of exaltation. “Oh, that’s a dream, and that’s an enchantment and if I don’t look simply scintillating in the coffee-cream I’ll never look anything in anything.”

Yes, but don’t stand about, darling, get home early tomorrow before they shut.

“What, when they’re sold out? Wouldn’t dream of it. Look, you go and get me a flask of hot coffee and some smoked salmon sandwiches and I’ll stay here and be first in the queue for tomorrow morning.”

Girls are mad, aren’t they?

Pinky Sands

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Perky Pinky

This is another fairy story.

No matter how much television plays seek to befuddle you into believing there’s no such thing as a happy ending and that life for everybody is a lot of old boots, the fact is nice things do happen to people.

Princes and fairy queens and old harpies on broomsticks don’t play such impressive parts as they used to, but nevertheless, take the story off PINKY SANDS.

There she was, sitting home most nights and wondering what to do about life. Nothing fantastic ever seemed to happen and she couldn’t find a great deal of glamour in her typewriter, especially when it came to changing the ribbon.

Then a man who was photographing the bridesmaids at a wedding saw her looking long-legged and lovely among the guests and said, taking his eye off the bridesmaids so that they came out with their heads cut off, “You look like you ought to be a model, go and apply to an agency.”

So Pinky did just that and the agency said what a willowy wonder she was, and now Pinky rents a cosy little flat in town and is long-leggedly engaged in the glamour world of modelling. No wonder she’s perky.

Trudi Jackson

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Pretty Personal

A most photogenic asset to the office is TRUDI JACKSON, who works in Bournemouth. She is the personal secretary of a high-class businessman there, and, yes, he does know how lucky he is.

Whenever another businessman calls, he makes Trudi hide herself, because he has a kind of quivering certainty that friends and rivals alike would not hesitate to grab this deliciously efficient wonder girl for themselves. Trudi is an absolute dream of efficiency at every secretarial chore, and when you add all that to her sex appeal, you've got yourself an asset indispensable to the sweet flow of business life.

Sara James

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See You At The Circus

It was Frank on the phone. SARA JAMES, Kensington dolly bird, was trying to sell him off the idea of becoming an elephant trainer. She thought he was too eligible to spend all his time with elephants.

"Okay, "said Frank, "listen. I'll try the trapeze, I often feel like flying about after a day selling insurance."

"No, don't do that," said Sara, "you'll only fall off."

"Tell you what," said Frank, "if I do fall off I'll pack it up and we’ll do a safari from London to Istanbul, how about that?"

"Lovely," said Sara.

"Agreed,” said Frank, "see you at the circus, then."

So, they met at the circus and the management let Frank try his trapeze potential. He fell off as soon as he got on. He was still dizzy when they went off on safari to Istanbul and after a whole day's travelling they were still going around Piccadilly Circus.

Sara got off at midnight and went to a club with Nigel.

A girl can only stand so much.

Anne Duke

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Going Off Bingo

Percy Blake and his wife Dolores were fanatical about bingo, they never missed a session at the village hall. And, bingo, they regularly came up for a couple of quid here and a couple of quid there.

Then a lovely and absolutely delightful girl came to live nearby, the sort any man just can't ignore. Percy went all agog the first time he saw her, and from then on, he was hardly ever out of a kind of trance-like goggle-ment.

You couldn’t blame him. The girl was ANNE DUKE, a Welsh beauty queen, with vitalistics of 36'-23'-36", and Dolores had never looked anything like that.

So, Percy went off bingo. He sat on his front doorstep waiting for Anne to walk by. Dolores didn’t go off bingo. She still went. And she continued to coin the bingo lolly and Percy continued to goggle. It was always a real pleasure to see Anne walk by. He didn’t ever try to date her. Well, what good is it when she’s twenty and he‘s eighty-four?

Elaine Stephens

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Pigtails and Pep

When ELAINE STEPHENS was a leggy schoolgirl she used to find that the noisy boys wanted to tweak her pigtails and the nice boys wanted to carry her books. The barbarous ones only ever wanted to kiss her.

Elaine, all grown-up now. still has her pigtails—but no one pulls them anymore, and no one carries her books.

The barbarous boys who have grown into barbarous men are the ones who have remained in the picture, of course.

"The trouble is." says Elaine, "they still think Sunday afternoons are the time for them to come around and kiss me in the summer-house. What sauce!

When I was a schoolgirl. I’ll admit I did get kissed in the summer-house, but I never ever go in there now— except on Sunday afternoons."

Linda Clemenes

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Linda The Goer

Talking about geary goers, as we were some pages back, how about 18-year-old LINDA CLEMENES of Portsmouth down in lovely Hampshire?

Linda is such a goer that nothing less than a motorbike suits her desire to get up and go at speed. Her motorbike is her great love. There are boyfriends, of course, but mostly they take a back seat on the pillion.

Linda works for her local paper, she has dark brown hair that is fascinatingly ruffled and windswept, and brown eyes that often look browner through her goggles.

Her vitalistics are 37-25-36, and her long legs look extremely geary in her motorcycle boots. Don't get in the way if you see her coming, you'll get caught in her slipstream.

Eva Bartok

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Leather Weather for Eva

Since it won’t be too long before Europe will be discarding the bikini in favour of warmer wear, EVA BARTOK, the Hungarian actress, is trying out leather fashions in West Berlin.

Eva, always in the front of what’s new in fashion, is quite aware of the fact that all those vast herds of steer don’t wear their hides for nothing. They sure keep the cold out.

But that isn’t to say you can’t turn a hide into something that will make a woman snug and warm and gorgeous.

And it certainly gives her a shine.

Nicola Taylor

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Pick-Me-Up

You can be the most indispensable secretary to the busiest tycoon in Black Boulder Falls or Little Twittering, but you can’t keep at it indefinitely. Sometime you’ve got to put the lid on the typewriter and go in for a bit of rollicking fun.

Like letting off a firework in a room full of transcendental meditators or taking a ride on a recalcitrant bicycle. NICOLA TAYLOR chose the latter. She went spinning down the garden path, through the gate, down the lane and up the hill.

Then there was a crunch, a clatter and an “Ouch!”

Oh well, it’s all part of a pick-me-up.

Millicent Dawson

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You Could Have Fooled Fred

"Now this is a part of London noted for its hilly position and its vistas," said the guide, "and there for instance, you can see the clock tower of the Edward­ian town hall—"

"Hold on," said Fred, "you could have fooled me if I'd only been listening, but I been looking as well, and that's no clock tower."

"Eyes the other way, if you please," said the guide, who was a walloping great woman who didn't like anyone not paying proper attention.

But Fred resigned from the Hamp­stead tour and introduced himself to a vista he much preferred to clock towers. It was London model MILLICENT DAWSON and Fred being so polite as well as raising his hat, they had a coffee together and then visited the Hamp­stead funfair.

Fred got stuck on the Dodgems and Millicent went off to audition for a commercial in Barbados. While Fred was still going round and round Millicent won through.

Jan Newman

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Story of a Dream

It was night. Well, it was all dark, anyway, and Fred was in bed. And solidly immersed in a dream about fishing boats.

When Fred is solidly immersed his mind is totally unimaginative.

Far removed from boats and fish is our kind of dream. Her name is JAN NEWMAN. She lives on the South Coast and is a sun worshipper. If, when you are deep in sleep, you can dream about a dream like Jan, then you'll have a far more sublime period of floating sub-consciousness than silly old Fred.

Don't ask us how.

Perhaps it's just a matter of artistic concentration and the right kind of night-cap.

Jan is a secretary, a richly corn-coloured blonde with the loveliest legs. If you like elegance, you whistle. If you like dumplings, go home to mother.

Sometimes even elegance takes a tumble. Still, it was entirely involuntary. Jan thought there was a chair there. Never mind, it does prove our point, that she really does have the loveliest legs.

Vanda Vane-Dotson

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Tremendously busy, said VANDA VANE-DOTSON.

She was up from the country and typing manuscripts for an enthusiastic author, who, if the truth must be known, felt that his cloak-and-dagger thriller about detergent sabotage in London and New York paled by comparison with the thrilling incandescence of Miss Vane-Dotson.

Vanda, often seen at Hunt Balls where they like the atmosphere to be glowingly incandescent, was insistent on helping the author reach page 327, which was the end of the novel, but it wasn’t half a slog and by the time she had tapped the last full stop she was ready for a cheese sandwich and two glasses of champagne.

Valerie Peters

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Secretary At Work

Most secretaries are regarded as an indispensable part of that strata of commerce and industry which is responsible for high- powered organisation and administration. In case you find that vague or indefinable, it means secretaries are on a higher plane than the girl who pushes the tea trolley round, and rightly so. Most secretaries are beautiful as well as efficient. This is because there are few men so dull as to settle for efficiency alone.

Most secretaries who are beautiful as well as efficient also possess a much more glamorous look than most fashion models. This is because most models are miserably skinny, poor dears, and most secretaries elegantly and naturally curvy. A typically beautiful, efficient and elegantly curvy secretary is VALERIE PETERS of Hornchurch, Essex. We couldn’t show you Valerie at work in her office as we couldn’t get our tripod through the front door—there was a big, upstanding commissionaire in the way.

But Valerie at work in her own home on a warm day makes a delightful alternative to Valerie at work behind her desk. It may not have the atmosphere of that upper strata of commerce and industry, but we don’t care—do you?

Anne Stewart

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When you’re not too busy

We were talking to secretary ANNE STEWART, who’s a camera enthusiast, and trying to persuade her to find the time to come on over and take some colour films of our dahlias.

And Anne said she didn’t know we grew dahlias and the sickening thing was we were too embarrassed by the truth of the matter to recover from our foolish clanger. Our window boxes are full of mustard-and-cress and nothing else. In a kind of mumble, we said it was only our way of asking her to come and share a pot of tea with us. There are some girls so bemusing to one’s eyes and ears that one can’t help not being one’s usual brilliant self in the company. It’s all to do with a strange numbness that takes hold of one. Beauty casts it’s wondrous spell and mumbling incoherency is upon one. All that clear, scintillating wit departs, never, it seems, to return.

Anne, who loves to travel, is saving up hard to buy her own car and drive herself all over Europe.

She'll be taking her teddy bear for company and her binoculars for security. She'll be able to spot the Casanovas a mile off. Casanovas are the men who ask a girl who's a camera enthusiast to come on up and take colour films of their dahlias. Etchings went out with the flapper.

Sylvia Ternes

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The Park Looks Nice Today

It didn’t look quite so nice yesterday, but it looks very nice today. Parks are for walking in and for exercising your dog in and for nannies to rescue mites from ponds in.

They’re also for courting and playing ball. They look more colourful in the summer than they do in the winter, of course, and the real reason why this particular park looked so attractive at the back end of a quite a hard winter was because SYLVIA TERNES happened to be around.

It wouldn’t have looked half as nice if it had been a dog sitting there instead of Sylvia, and though dog-lovers may not be in complete agreement with us here, it’s a toss-up as to whether we’re prejudiced or they are.

We are. We confess it. We can’t help it. She's so photogenic.