Beauty queen DIANE CLARKE isn't kidding you with her Long Johns. She means it. She likes them. They remind her of the bygone days of the 1920's, her favourite historical era, when the young people first thought up all the mad things to do. Diane is a Middlesex girl and likes to feel warm in winter.
Spick and Span Extra No 35 - Summer 1970
What's New?
Nothing really. Everything is merely an improvement on the old. Irrelevantly, we'd like to mention that
LINDA WHITE is the most photogenic hair stylist we know.
Beautiful Britons No 122 - January 1966
When the good old Windmill closed its doors and its nonstop revue disappeared into the pages of exotic history, one of its youngest girls decided she wasn't going to queue up at the agencies to find similar work.
Not a bit of it. JILL MILLWARD decided on a complete change of occupation. Know what she is now? A children's nurse. Gad, those lucky children. Wonder if they realise how good life is to them?
Span No 167 - July 1968
Susanne Kent’s set from Span No 144 was most certainly shot on the intake to Mugdock Reservoir.
The set was taken in 1966, with the final picture showing the location much as it is now. The trees have grown a lot over the years, but it is quite obviously the same place.
Thanks goes to David for researching this.
The Kent sisters, Susanne and Madeline, did a photo shoot here in 1965. These pictures, though, never appeared in a magazine, as far as I am aware. Louise Crawford was also a regular visitor at the tennis club. The final picture of this set shows the clubhouse as it is now; still the original building with its distinctive double pitch roof. It is reasonably well overlooked, but I suppose you would have had to look quite hard to notice from a distance that the girls had shorts on with their stockings and suspenders on show.
Thanks again to David for his research.
Janet Neill was born in 1937 in Kilwinning, just a couple of miles northeast of Saltcoats. She married George Fleming on 30th March 1959 at Barony Church in Ardrossan, which was recently sold and is now being redeveloped. At the time of her marriage to George, Janet was living at 4 Galloway Place - a small, terraced house not far from the sea front in Saltcoats - and was working as a Dental Nurse. What’s interesting to note on her marriage certificate is that Sadie Milligan is one of her witnesses.
Sadie (Sarah) Milligan was born in 1938 in Ardrossan. She married Patrick McAteer on 4th August 1962, and was married at the same church as Janet in Ardrossan. At the time of her marriage, she was living at 3 Caledonia Road Ardrossan - though it looks to me like the original house is now gone. Her profession is shown as an Explosives Process Worker; there was a large explosive factory in Ardeer just south of Saltcoats.
I often wonder, as I put things together and look at the local area, how they met and became friends. Janet was on the scene much earlier than Sadie, first appearing in May 1956. Sadie’s first pictures were not seen until June 1958, some 2 years later. Sadie, of course, was roughly 2 years younger than Janet, but both girls would have been about 19 or 20 years old for their first photo shoots. It certainly does make you think who else might have worked at the Explosives Factory, as it was such a large local employer. Julie Scott appeared in a couple of two-girl sets with Sadie, so perhaps she worked at the Explosives Factory as well.
You can just image the talk that went on during breaks about showing your stockings and knickers to a local photographer for some extra cash! I wonder if they are both still with us; Janet would be about 83 now and just full of great stories to tell us all.
The pictures of Janet are taken from Span No 54 February 1959 - just a month before she was married; what a lucky man George Fleming was!
The pictures of Sadie are from Spick No 105 and Beautiful Britons No 82, both published in August 1962 - the same month that Sadie was married. Oddly, both sets are of her in Directoire Knickers and in magazines published in the summer; not sure what that was saying to Patrick, her new husband!
Both girls though went on to appear in ToCo publications after they were married, so it was presumably something that their husbands approved of.
From Wikipedia
The Ardeer peninsula was the site of a massive dynamite manufacturing plant built by Alfred Bernhard Nobel. Having scoured the country for a remote location to establish his explosive factory, Nobel finally acquired 100 acres from the Earl of Eglinton, and established the British Dynamite Factory in 1871, and went on to create what was described then as the largest explosives factory in the world. The factory had its own jetty on the River Garnock in Irvine Harbour serving ships disposing of time expired explosives or importing materials for the works.
At its peak, the site employed almost 13,000 workers in a fairly remote location and had its own railway station. The station was used solely for workers and those special visitors with business in the ICI plant, and was never a regular passenger stop. Until the mid-1960s, there were two trains per day to transport workers. Although the line no longer exists, the abandoned platform remains, hidden beneath dense undergrowth.
Many thanks to David for researching this.
Once a girl has been a nurse, she always retains some compassion for suffering humanity, so CAROLE-ANNE BLAKE is just the girl to hold your hand when you've got toothache. Carole-Anne used to be a dental nurse; you see.
She comes from the North of England and is now modelling in London. She keeps quiet about her dental nursing qualifications because she found that any new friend who got to know about her former job wanted her to look at his teeth. "You can see one molar too many when you're dining out," she said.
Spick No 189 - August 1969
All those majestic maples and all those gorgeous outdoor gals you can't wonder we all want to emigrate from the U.K. Look at LISA LINNETTE from Vancouver, for instance. Hold on, Bert, don't go without your hat - in fact, don't go at all-Lisa's paying a visit to Europe this year.
Span No 125 - January 1965
JAN KERRIE came to London from Ireland some months ago, thought she'd stay a few weeks to see how unspeakable the English were and then return.
That was six months ago.
Jan is still with us. It's a divil of a blow to the I.R.A., so it is.
Beautiful Britons No 122 - January 1966
