Susanne Ferrier

Susanne was a stunningly pretty model – great legs, lovely figure, bubbly personality, always smiling. In other words, the genuine ToCo girl-next-door model. She lived in a suburb of Glasgow and commuted every day to the city centre where she worked as a shorthand typist.

Editor Brewster tells us she was a keen swimmer, and loved dancing, cooking – and conversation. Not too many models were given that description.

Susanne was around in the transition days from stockings to tights, so she probably wore both – not at the same time, you understand. In pre-tights days, girls put on their suspender belt first, then the stockings and then the knickers. For some years after the arrival of tights, they followed the same habit – tights first, knickers last; in other words knickers over tights not tights over knickers as they do today. But if you look carefully at her photos, you will see that Suzanne put her knickers on first, then the suspender belt. Only 25% of the stockings photos in all the ToCo titles show that curiosity – and I personally don’t remember any girl doing that.

Susanne is one of the most enigmatic models to appear in the ToCo empire. She made only four appearances and there are just 21 photos of her. And as they are all taken in the same place (almost certainly photographer Fullarton’s house) and she is wearing the same clothes in all of them (though with white shoes instead of black in one photo), my guess is they were taken on the same day. And yet her first appearance (Span 121) was in September 1964, her second (Spick 142) in September 1965, her third (Beautiful Britons 174) in May 1970, and her fourth and last (Beautiful Britons 237) in August 1974. Four appearance spanning ten years! That is the most astonishing statistic. What on earth happened? Why was she never hired again? And if ToCo or Fullarton didn’t like her, why did they hang on to her photos for a decade instead of chucking them away? I can hear a skeleton rattling in a cupboard somewhere.

Such a dreadful shame. She could have been up there with Ruth Cavendish, Annette French and Anne Scott.

Personal Details  –  36-22-37

Appearances  –  4, debut Span 121 (September 1964)

Spick  –  142

Span  –  121

Beautiful Britons  –  174, 237