Jackie magazine burst onto the scene 60 years ago this month, sailing into the world on a slick of strawberry lip gloss and a fanfare of pop music.
The latter was usually supplied by hunks called David — arise Mr Cassidy, Mr Essex and Mr Bowie — while the lippy came as a free gift, riveted onto the front of the mag.
From the very first issue, it was a sensation. In 1964 there were few titles on magazine racks that catered specifically to the needs of teenage girls — a new phenomenon in themselves.
The upstart Jackie, with its fizzing blend of pop, fashion, adverts for Scholl sandals and Supersoft shampoo, along with wholesome advice from agony aunts Cathy & Claire, hit its market dead on target. It was relatable, affordable and completely remarkable.
The cover of the very first issue featured an illustration of Cliff Richard, straplines that promised perfume tips for a ‘more kissable you’, outfits to make you ‘pretty in the rain ‘n’ snow’, and some ‘way out exclusives on all the popsters’. Way hey!
This marvellous Jackie world, in which girls made themselves prettier for boys and advice was doled out to troubled teenagers by people who were not mental health experts, wouldn’t find much traction in today’s hard-edged, plugged-in, terrifyingly sophisticated teen world, but Jackie belonged to a more innocent age.
One in which girls were encouraged to practise kissing on the back of their hands and flutter their eyelashes ‘against his chin’. What? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time plus — bonus points — it didn’t get you pregnant.
By the 1970s, Jackie was selling more than a million copies a week and, to this day, it still holds a special place in the hearts of generations of female readers who couldn’t wait until it dropped through the letterbox every Thursday.
Women who read Jackie at an impressionable age have never forgotten it, even though the last one was published in the summer of 1993. That made a total of 1,534 glorious issues, a whole world encapsulated within its glossy pages. And some of them I even worked on myself, a walk-on part during my two years working with the magazine’s publisher.
For while Jackie had a London address, to which fans were directed to post their letters, it was actually written, edited and produced entirely in my hometown of Dundee, by a firm called DC Thomson.
Its imposing city centre headquarters housed a warren of local and national newspaper titles, popular comics and magazines such as Diana, Bunty, Blue Jeans and The Beano. And there, near the end of a corridor on the third floor, was the mighty Jackie itself, notable for the giant sack-loads of mail that arrived every day.
In a tiny office with a wonky wooden floor and an unlit fireplace, staff would pore over galley proofs, dream up pop quizzes and encourage readers to make face packs from avocados or give precise instructions on how to be ‘the only pebble on the beach’.
The Cathy & Claire advice page received more than 400 letters each week, a total nearly equalled by the Dear Doctor column, which covered what were known in the office as ‘below the waist issues’. For even Jackie could not ignore the fact that the Pill had been made free on the NHS in 1974 — although none of the more graphic queries from readers ever made it onto the pages. Jackie was all about romance, not sex.
The farthest it ventured into that naughty territory was advising girls whether or not to let him kiss you on the first date — the standard advice was never to do anything unless you felt ‘ready’. And I don’t recall there being anything published about same-sex relationships, which, in Jackieland, simply didn’t exist.
‘Jackie had a certain tone of voice, it was like a kindly big sister,’ said Ria Welch, who worked on the title from 1987 to 1992 as fiction editor, beauty editor, then deputy editor.
‘And it was very much grounded in reality.’ She recalls a problem letter sent in the 1980s, from a reader in love with Adam Ant and convinced she was going to marry him. No, you are not, was the plainspoken Jackie reply. It’s just a crush. Snap out of it!
It is difficult to imagine any publication dishing out such a robust response today, but I think Jackie understood its readers on a deep and intuitive level. It grasped that what most of them wanted wasn’t actual advice but affirmation or renunciation; they wanted to know where the boundaries were in the tricky, uncharted transition from girlhood to womanhood.
On this, Jackie wasn’t perfect — and even today it still has its critics. On Loose Women a few years ago, presenter Nadia Sawalha said she had long-lasting and damaging body-image issues over advice about fat bottoms she had read in Jackie. ‘They look really grotesque in tight jeans that are straight or tapered,’ the magazine had advised, in its typically blunt way.
No one could accuse Jackie of soft-soaping or having a surfeit of tact, but for many young women it was a good and true friend to have in the hormonal thunderstorm of adolescence. Today’s all-knowing teenagers can get any information from a tap on their phones, but back then it was very different.
Saucer-eyed, fresh out of school and no older than Jackie readers myself, I was there only briefly. What do I remember? That each issue had a 16-week lead time (from its first discussion in the Dundee office to magazine racks around the country), but still managed to stay topical and fresh.
That Donny Osmond appeared on the front page of Jackie almost as often as the date. That the biggest sale of all time was when they put David Cassidy on the cover during the hysteria of his 1974 UK tour. And that the women who worked there seemed so daunting and terrifyingly sophisticated.
There was Alison, the beauty editor who had London telephone numbers in her contacts book without the 01 prefix, which I found incredibly impressive. There was Sandy, the deputy editor who was also an officer in the Territorial Army.
Then there was Jackie’s first female editor, Nina Myskow, who would tote a Harrods carrier bag around Dundee for weeks — she’d been in London! — and told her staff how David Bowie had bought her champagne and she had ticked him off for wearing chipped nail polish. She played tennis with Elton John and the rumour went around the office — never denied — that he had written Your Song for her.
Yet sometimes, looking back at Jackie through the prism of half a century, it seems almost as ancient and incomprehensible as hieroglyphics. The Art of Being Kissable; Join The Great Boy Hunt; Kim Wilde Talks About Beauty — what the heck was that all about?
However, the magazine — like all its sister titles — was not without a strong moral code and its readers were encouraged to be confident and ambitious in a world where friendships with other girls were regarded as more important than relationships with boys.
And how commendable that fashion always focused on the cheaper end of the High Street — it was drummed into us never to forget that our readers didn’t have much pocket money.
So there were tips on how to jazz up jeans by sewing on an apple appliqué and regular features on affordable treats such as Aqua Manda perfume or a compact of Miners Face Shiner. There were certainly no £1,000 handbags or Victoria Beckham smoky eyeshadow quads for £56 being shoved under readers’ noses.
Today’s fractious and covetous TikTok culture sometimes makes me despair for teenagers, but it’s too late to turn the clock back.
Jackie’s legacy lingers on, though. There are Facebook groups in the magazine’s honour, a musical was launched in 2015 and there are even plans for DC Thomson’s own Emanata Studios to launch a television series — although the proposals are still in their infancy.
However, could any musical or show or tribute ever truly capture the magic and weirdness of a girl’s teenage magazine that ruled triumphant in a world where there were no mobile phones, no texting, no selfies and no Instagram?
With the field to itself, Jackie was the touchstone and the motherlode, all rolled into one joyous package. And that will never happen again.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
