Taking the lead from the subthread on Uncle Wheaty’s ‘Why do you like…’ post, i thought a general survey on lifelong reading habits might be interesting/revealing/possibly unsurprising/a divertissement for a cold and grey February (at least in Europe).
My reading history from childhood to now, with those in parentheses being things I got some but less enjoyment from at the time (sometimes guilty pleasures):
Beano (& Bunty) -> Look & Learn (& Look In) -> Punch (& Steve Bell in The Guardian) -> NME (& Melody Maker) -> New Internationalist (& Staggers) -> Utne Reader (& Philadelphia Inquirer) -> The Economist (& Prospect) -> The Word (& The Week) -> The Guardian online (& Feedly)
Boy’s World (& The Eagle) -> TV21 -> Victor -> Hornet -> Look & Learn (& Knowledge) -> Punch -> Disc -> NME (& Sounds) -> Q (& Record Collector and Vox and Select) -> The Word (& Mojo and Uncut) -> The New Statesman and Private Eye.
Many of these subs/habits overlap, more so in later years when pocket money had increased a little.
Dandy, Beano, Tiger, Eagle then one day I , aged seven I think, wandered into the library where on the newly-returned pile I found “Five Go To Kirrin Island”. I read it in a day and went back to the library.
The kindly librarian said “You know there’s more over there, don’t you?”
Over there, young boy stands in total astonishment and glee. Rows and rows of Famous Five and Secret Seven. Thank you, Enid Blyton, thank you
My cousin Katherine, two years older than me, had a little wooden bookshelf stuffed full of Famous Five and Secret Seven titles, plus a few other Blyton’s that didn’t fit into either series: notably ‘Shadow The Sheepdog’, which cemented my life-long canine love affair, and ‘The Boy Next Door’ which was a route into all sorts of spy-ish fun and games to come – Rogue Male, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and on to Graham Greene and beyond.
Katherine was kind enough to let me work my way through most of her Blyton books over a year or two. Enid undoubtedly had her flaws, but she could sure spin a great yarn for a young reader to follow, and she was the first author to show me, again and again, the joy of escape into the pages.
I preferred Secret Seven to Famous Five – less jolly japes and more urban/suburban, from what I remember. I wonder if she planned an Esoteric Eight? Or a Nymphos Nine?
Friends/family members with collections – a great source of reading. I had two friends – one with all the Asterixs, one with all the TinTins. Happy hours of reading ensued, sunk in worlds of Brussels streets and antique markets, and Breton woods (though not preparing global financial institutions of course).
Thanks to Blyton et al, well into my teens all I wanted to do was go to Public School, have pillow fights in the dorm, eagerly open the latest tuck box from home, have a kindly Uncle who was not in fact a professor but a Secret Agent and, of course, have a bunch of friends who stopped beastly villains from doing beastly things.
Having gone to public school (well the nearest Quaker equivalent), I can say it’s not all that, apart from the tuck box (thanks Granny) and the tuck shop. The bunch of friends came way after I navigated my way through all that (not complete beastliness). It certainly gave me a jaundiced eye on Blyton and Rowling with their glowing stories of boarding school life.
Ideally, you’d also want the Kindly Uncle to send the odd postal order…
Beano -> Topper -> Victor -> Commando -> Speed and Power -> Punch -> Private Eye -> Melody Maker (& NME, Sounds) -> Q -> Vox -> Uncut/Mojo -> Word -> The Times-> The Guardian.
Some of the latter still overlap and co-exist.
Oh yes, Vox – The White Room to Q’s Later – slightly cooler, but not so long lasting.
The Elizabethan/Children’s Newspaper (high-minded parents) -> Swift -> Film Fun/Radio Fun -> Eagle -> NME -> Private Eye -> Guardian -> Rolling Stone -> International Times -> Zigzag -> Q -> Mojo -> Word.
These days courtesy of Readly, guitar mags, Apple mags, cookery mags, The Week (UK and US), Country Life, The Oldie and, er, Guns and Ammo, which I read with appalled fascination.
The Elizabethan – do you go back to Tudor times then, Mike?
Given that International Times reportedly stopped in the mid 70s, you must have been an early adopter of the earlier listed periodicals (NME, Private Eye, Rolling Stone etc) that long outdated it…
You forget that I’m a 60s person. This means that I’m both an early adopter and a forgetter of the order in which things happen.
I see on checking that it was actually The Young Elizabethan, named in honour of you know who. One of its editors was Kaye Webb, later the presiding genius of Puffin books.
I think I was interested to know particularly about when you started reading Private Eye and NME.
The former must have seemed quite radical when it first started in the 60s as part of the satire boom – I don’t suppose there had been anything like it before. Though possibly as a creation of a bunch of old Salopians, it was immersed in public schoolboy humour from the start.
The NME seems to have gone through various stages over the ages – from a pop chart mag a bit like Smash Hits to start with, through the 70s caftan/ heavy overcoat prog years to the hip young gunslingers of the punk/post- punk times, the arbiters of indie taste in the 80s, to the multi genre-setting scene of the 90s. Were you there for all of that?
I don’t remember exactly when I first started reading Private Eye, but I was definitely still at school because I remember it turning up in the prefects’ room. 64-ish I should think.
I can date NME very precisely: 1960. My sister got polio* and the rest of the family was quarantined for what seemed like months but was probably only a few weeks. I persuaded my parents to have it delivered as part of the keep Mike sane programme. I taught myself to play guitar at the same time. I can’t remember when I stopped reading it though – definitely before the 90s!
*she recovered, thankfully.
I can pinpoint quite accurately the year in which I gave up on the NME: 1981. It was starting to bore me, which would have been unthinkable a year or two earlier. I did glance at a few copies later in the 80s and found it quite unrecognisable.
I’ve noticed that people have different memories of the NME depending upon whether they read in the 60s, 70s or 80s. If it was in the 60s/70s, people have quite fond memories of it overall, for helping them keep up what was going on and turning them on to some new music. If, like me, you read it in the 80s, you just tend to remember how annoying it was.
I read it in the late 80s and it reminded me of the Alexei Sayle joke about telling a joke to a left wing audience where there would be a 10 second delay when the joke would be politically vetted, and then they would laugh. That was how the NME in the 80s approached pop music.
I loved it throughout the 70s. Even, possibly especially, when they were gratuitously cool and judgemental. Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray seemed impossibly able to define a zeitgeist, Mick Farren less so. The Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons era started well, not forgetting a young Chrissie Hynde, but became too clever clever know nothing.
I forgot Oz.
Up there ^ somewhere I too forgot a title – Undercurrents, which was a greenish, alternative technology based, leftish, anti-establishment monthly I took for a couple of years.If i recall correctly, they used to sell it in the university bookshop – 30p an issue or thereabouts.
1986 I worked for a year for a Quaker office in Brussels – they had many radical journals and magazines, including I am sure Undercurrents, Peace News, probably Resurgence, The Ecologist and maybe Spare Rib. There must be a whole archive of alternative publications somewhere – possibly at Bradford Peace Museum.
I also remember something subscribing to called 4th World Review and I’m pretty sure there was a Reclaim The Streets/Critical Mass zine based in Brighton (possibly also with video) – though I cannot remember the name.
I’ve hung on to my launch issue copy of The Ecologist, since the day I bought it. I did a BSc in Ecology – probably the first one offered by a UK university – and saw the nascent mag advertised on the notice board in the Washington Singer labs, popped up to the campus bookshop and there it was.
Whizzer & Chips and The Daily Mirror, at parents’ expense, then a magazine I remember as being called Rock On but I can find no trace of that title on my internet so I might have that wrong. The only article I can recall from it now was an article comparing Willy de Ville and Tom Petty. I remember it said one of them had a “crap image, great music” and the other had “great image, crap music” (I can’t remember which way round it was and they both made great music and had an ok “image”, imho). I never got into NME, MM or Sounds. I liked glossy pages so Q and Empire suited me far better. Uncut and Mojo, and then The Word, which was the last publication I paid for regularly.
I used to enjoy the tactile newspaper feel of the NME – particularly when it was fresh off the newsagent shelf, turning through the short news items on the first few pages, via the singles review, the big cover interview or lead article, the first album review, then the obscure ones by Dele Fadele, Edwin Pouncey etc. I wasn’t so bothered by the live section, but the Hungerford crossword and the pedantry, angst and forthrightness of the letters page were a draw. Sometimes the small ads were entertaining – was there a famous band hiding behind the call for new players? Was it worth sending off for the cool threads advertised? Obviously not.
When I moved to Enfield mid 80s, being able to get the NME one day earlier was wildly exciting. Would finish work on a Tuesday, walk to Enfield Town station and pick it up there. Had probably read it cover to cover by 9pm.
Beano and Dandy (including the annuals)
Cheeky Weekly
Roy of the Rovers
Shoot
Smash Hits
Record Mirror
NME
Q
What Hifi
Car
Esquire
GQ
Loaded
The Word
I travelled a lot through work in my 20’s and 30’s which meant that I would buy a lot of magazines. The mainstays were the music ones and Car, which was a fantastically written magazine.
Now I have a subscription to the New York Times which includes The Athletic (£20 pa bargain) and I use the BBC news site. I don’t buy magazines anymore – they appear smaller, with more adverts and are more expensive.
I also bought The History of Rock, complete with the white binders. I have no idea where they are. I hope they are not worth much…
Maybe you’ll have to buy a landfill in Wales to find them…
Pippin>The Beano>Wizard>2000AD>Smash Hits>NME>The Word
Running alongside:
Commando/War Picture Library
Shoot
Occasional sounds/melody maker
Fairly consistent Select with the free cassettes for a few years early 90s.
finally finished my paper sub to 2000AD after forty three years. Now on the tablet – a fairly shronky app experience but need to stop accumulating paper. Very excited about the return of Brass Sun imminently. Fav stories at moment: Brink, The Out.
Discussion with son about how long the five-story six pages a story comic can keep going. A complete outlier now. Dredd will endure of course. I said if the median age of 11 year old boys at launch are now 59, then probably another 20 years is the answer.
complete Proustian moment: Can remember vividly a Wizard story – they had one short text story an issue I recall, in which a villain puts together a home-made atomic bomb with two chunks of plutonium that he will smash together via a connecting rod. Our hero foils this by putting his arm between the two to stop them smashing together then bending the rod out of shape with his extraordinary strength. A striking story that’s stuck with me – can anyone verify? Probably 76-78.
In rough order…
Marvel
DC
Whizzer & Chips
Beano
Dandy
Roy of the Rovers
MAD Magazine
2000AD
White Dwarf
ACE
Your Sinclair
Computer & Video Games
Crash
Zero (superb magazine)
Edge
Empire
IKON
NME
Wizard
Previews
Select
Vox
Arena
FHM
Q
Neon (short lived, but brilliant)
Face
Prospect
Wired
The New Statesman
The Spectator
The Source
Mojo
Spin
Uncut
The Economist
Blender
Huck
Word
Don’t think I’ve regularly bought a magazine since Word went, unless the London Review of Books counts. It was fun while it lasted.
A voracious reader, Bingo!
Zero being the video games mag, not the US punk, rock & metal mag, I assume?
Face (& i-D) is a missing link for me between Punch and NME, that I should not have forgotten – at the time I loved the radical chic – Issey Mayake & wedge haircuts. I might even include Vogue (Harpers & Queen/Tatler) before that – for about a year I really got into the New Romantic/Sloane scene after I stopped being a pre-teen metaller and before I donned my black gear and got goth.
Though it feels like the days of magazines are over, when I passed through Stansted on the way home last week, I was quite impressed to see Prospect, Byline Times, New Internationalist, New Statesman, The Economist, Private Eye, The Spectator, The Oldie – hardly a drought of opinions there.
I forgot Mad. Loved it for about 4 years solid.
I was obsessed with Mad as a small child. Subscribed and spent my final year of Primary School sacking off the uniform in favour of a T-shirt bedecked with Alfred E Neuman, finger knuckle deep up his nose, and the immortal slogan “What, Me Worry?” Start as you mean to go on.
Parental funding:
Look-in
Beano
Planet Of The Apes (UK marvel)
Motor Sport (something nice about the paper, bit boring to read)
Science Fiction Monthly (fold-out broadsheet, nice illustrations, fiction)
Own funding:
Mad
NME
Face
Private Eye
Time Out
Q
Modern Painters
Mojo
Guardian
Independent
Word
Kind of petered out here…
Beano (parent funded)
Dandy (Grandad funded)
Whizzer and Chips (Grandad funded)
Shoot (Grandad funded)
Match
NME/MM/Sounds
NME (ongoing)
Guardian
NonLeague Monthly
Q
Vox
Select
The Non League Paper
The Word (subscription)
Mojo (subscription)
many over the years
Beano
Monster Fun
Smash Hits
NME
Melody Maker
Record Mirror
Face
Blitz
Arena
Select
Q
Vox
Neon
Sky
Loaded
Wisden & the Cricketer
Empire
Word
dabbled in Mojo, Rolling Stone, Uncut and Classic Pop
Glad to see Wisden slipped in there. I’m hoping someone will mention other classics of the newsagents shelf – The Countryman, Country Life, The Lady, Horse & Hound, New Scientist, Jackie, Amateur Photographer. Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and of course, Viz (Nuts! & Oink!)
bloody hell, i forgot Viz
i also forgot Deadline (with Tank Girl) and Andy Warhol’s Interview … bugger all fashionable happens in the Cotswold’s, I had to live the London/New York life through Interview, the Face and Blitz.
I also used to read the cricket pages in the Daily Telegraph back in the day when they had a reporter at every county match. dipped in and out of the Guardian and the Observer, loved it when the Observer had its Sports Monthly and Music Monthly magazines … some great in depth articles
@exilepj My dad, who most definitely wasn’t a Tory, read the Telegraph. He only got it for the cricket pages, he told me once. He also got the Observer which I still get occasionally for the Sport Section. Those Music and Sport Monthly magazines were indeed very good.
My mother in law got the Daily Mail “just for the puzzle page”. Her opinions were spookily aligned with Heil editorial policy though – “immigrants get given big houses” etc.
Country Life (previously only available in dentists’ waiting rooms) comes with Readly. I look forward to my weekly dose of unaffordable properties and posh totty.
@mikethep welcome to the Cotswolds … unaffordable properties and posh totty galore
Beano
Commando
Shoot
Sounds
Vox
NME
Select
Viz
Q
WSC ( when Saturday comes )
Hot Press
Word
Time out
Guardian
Classic pop
Vive Le Rock
Mojo
Still subscribe to Hot Press and Classic Pop
Comics including Whizzer and Chips
Beatles Monthly (mid 70s reprints)
Daily Telegraph sports pages
NME
The Guardian
Q
Vox (couldn’t get Q where I was living)
Mojo
Empire (for a short period)
Uncut
The Word
Now I don’t buy anything physical on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I do buy Uncut special editions and the occasional regular issue.
The Observer too
I recently started buying the paper Observer again as Mrs. T likes the puzzle page – it is generally excellent especially the Opinion columns.
Things of Science
Ancient Magnet and Gem issues from my Grandfather. They’d be worth a bit now.
Eagle
Beano/Dandy
Fabulous 208 stolen from my sister purely for ridicule purposes
Marvel comics when I could find them. I was a total bookworm as a kid – teenager – pulp stuff like JT Edson, Edge, earlier on the William books, Jennings, then later had a Thomas Hardy phase. Etc.
NME
Bugger all for ages
Word
Mojo
Uncut
Private Eye
Country Music
Word
Bugger all now.
I’ve tried different newspaper digital versions – Times, then the Graun, currently the Indy, all of which are annoying for various reasons, usually because of the crowdsourcing of their readers’ unpleasant opinions.
Also:
Guitar Player
Guitarist
Guitar
Guitar Techniques
Etc etc
At various times. I had a massive pile of them and offered them to collect on our local Facebook group and a woman and her 14 year old son arrived – he was over the moon as he bore them away. Which was nice. Not sure Mum was.
Beano, Fantastic/Terrific, then back to Beano.
Record Mirror/Disc & Musical Echo (not mine, but read every week.)
Melody Maker & NME: each for the best part of 15 years, 15-30.
Folk Roots
Q until Mojo and Uncut became more appealing. I still buy both every month.
R2R ( nee Rock’n’Reel)
A train or plane journey may prompt emergency purchases of Songlines, Rolling Stone or, in France, Rock’n’Soul.
Folk Roots! Of course! Another omission from my recall. I even stumped up some cash to try to help it continue at one point.
Songlines too, though I’ve tended to avoid buying that regularly as it almost always leads to a wallet-emptying plunder of some obscure music from a dusty corner of the globe previously unrepresented in my album collection.
Fans of Folk Roots (later fRoots) may be interested to know that Ian A. Anderson’s memoir, “Alien Water – Six Decades Padding in Unpopular Music” will be published on 28 March. Pre-order it now from Ghosts in the Basement now!
https://ghostsfromthebasement.bandcamp.com/merch/alien-water-by-ian-a-anderson-paperback
Let’s see if we can sell a lot of copies to the Massive – come on everybody, you can all join in!
Pre teen – Bimbo, Teddy Bear, Dandy, Beano, Whizzer and Chips, Cor!!
Teen – Shiver and Shake, Monster Fun, Topper, Beezer, Marvel, DC, Tiger, Roy of the Rovers, 2000AD, StarLord, NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Psst!
20s Smash Hits, the Face, Deadline, Viz
Older – Empire, Total Film, Select, Vox, The Word, Q, still buy a ton of comics, some old, some new. Seldom buy Mojo or Uncut – maybe the end of year round ups.
* Kid: Beano / Dandy / Whizzer & Chips
* Older kid: Tiger & Scorcher / Roy Of The Rovers
* Pre-Teen: Shoot / Match / Scoop
* Teen (Music): Smash Hits / Number One
* Older Teen: Sounds (NME and Melody Maker made an appearance, but Sounds was the inky of choice)
* Late Teen / 20s: Kerrang / Metal Hammer / Raw
* 20s (back to Comics): Viz / Smut / Zit / Oink
* from late 20s:
(back to Football): 90 Minutes / Four Four Two
(“other”): Loaded (yes, I admit it)
(Music): Q > Mojo > Select > Vox > Q > Uncut > Word > Q > Mojo
* Now: Mojo and occasional issue of Viv Le Rock
As a child, the Beano, the Dandy and then Tiger (Billy’s Boots, Hotshot Hamish, Death Wish, etc)
Warlock…yep, the short-lived Fighting Fantasy magazine
Nothing for ages then Q and Select
Kept buying those magazines but added Ablaze and also the very short-lived Siren when no indie band could be too obscure
Like others, the much missed Neon
Mojo
Word
Inbetween there were occasional purchases of PC Zone, Official PlayStation Magazine and Total Film.
Then nothing for a long time before realising that I enjoyed reading magazines moreso than articles on a website. But also realised I wanted in-depth articles that have a critical distance so now it’s…
Mojo
Uncut
Retro Gamer
The Dark side
Infinity
Classic Pop
And the Radio Times and The Guardian app.
And still the very occasional copy of the Beano.
Arf, I forgot (the) Word, bought faithfully from issue 2 for about 75% the subsequent trajectory, eagerly embracing the website as a relatively early adopter. I left as the magazine began to dip in quality, clearly on its uppers, financially, but never jumped the virtual ship, bar 18/12 off games, due to a pesky (then) wife’s disapproval.
Well, here’s a Swedish version of these periodical lists (with some overlap):
Childhood (parents and older siblings subscriptions/paid by parents):
Dagens Nyheter (daily newspaper)
National Geographic
Lyckoslanten (childrens magazine published by a bank: stories, poems, interviews and comics written to inspire kids to save their money, work hard and be honest…)
KamratPosten (childrens magazine: stories, interviews, comics, advice columns, reports on all kinds of subjects, material sent in by readers etc)
Svenska Mad (Swedish version of Mad Magazine)
VI-tidningen (Reports, interviews, reviews etc)
Folket i Bild/Kulturfront (70s lefty journalism – and the Bellman comic strips, which I liked)
Kvinnobulletinen (feminist magazine)
Own purchases/subscriptions/sneaky reads at work:
Schlager (Swedish music mag 1980-85)
Smash Hits (loved it and read it between 1981 and around 1987, when it had stopped being good)
Pop (Swedish music mag, the best music magazine ever – yes, better than The Word – 1992-99)
Bibel (Swedish fashion – and music – mag made by the same people who made Pop, 1998-2000)
Serie-Paraden (comics)
Larson! (comics)
Ordfront Magasin (lefty journalism, plus a great publishing house – cheaper books for members!)
Sonic (Swedish music mag: trying very hard to be Pop, but not quite succeeding, 2000-17)
The Word (it was good, but I always preferred the website…)
Offside (Swedish football magazine, great journalism)
Q, Classic Pop, Mojo, Uncut (when all of the others were gone…these had to do, only the final two are still occasionally bought)
VI Läser (Swedish litterary magazine: reviews and interviews)
Dagens Nyheter (daily newspaper, but online subscription these days)
And a couple of Union membership magazines, ICA membership mag (supermarket chain, also where I work), free local newspaper and reading the Swedish tabloid newspapers at work (for free – wouldn’t pay for them!)
Beano
Whizzer and Chips
Dandy
Battle Picture Weekly
2000AD (still buy the odd annual)
MAD Magazine
Sounds
NME
Hi-Fi World
Q
Uncut
Mojo
The Word
Like others, magazine buying petered out after The Word. The occasional issue of Prog and back copies of Uncut and Mojo picked up cheap, keep me up to date with what’s going on in the 1970’s.
In roughly chronological order –
Once Upon a Time
Sparky
Dandy
Photo Answers
Practical Photography
Country Walking
Private Eye
Vox
Q
Mojo
What Hi-Fi
Word
Songlines
No Depression
Uncut
Sight and Sound
The only one I’ve ever subscribed to, and still read, is Uncut.
Main childhood stuff
Treasure
Look and Learn
Whizzer and Chips
Tiger
Then footie mags –
Charles Buchans Football Monthly
Shoot
And so on to
NME, and then, in various orders, and dropping in and out of
The Guardian
New Statesman
The Listener
Q
Mojo
When Saturday Comes
The Word
Songlines
BBC Classical Music
Still subcribe to print copies of Songlines, Mojo and WSC but keep thinking I should stop them – I invariably end up flicking though them and leaving much of them unread. Also take digital copies of NS and Guardian – but, again, not sure it’s worth the price to be honest.
The NS app is atrocious. Half the time it won’t open.
I used to enjoy The Listener – I can remember being very disappointed when it finally bit the dust.
As a kid, all and any ’50s – early ’60s comics. Those smaller-than-A5-size war comic story books.
Secondary school years, more war stories fictional and factual and then some books on Communism and Anarchism.
Later teens, newspapers mostly. IT, Oz, Mad magazine.
20s, lots of sci-fi and popular science. Melody Maker, Omni, NME.
30s, books mostly. All kinds.
40s, more books and then some music mags indiscriminately (anything with cover discs). I quite often recycled the mags unread.
50s, music mags with coverdiscs, computer mags, Word, crime fiction, spy stories.
60s, Word, Mojo, Uncut. Crime fiction, espionage & sci-fi books mainly.
70s so far, crime fiction, sci-fi, espionage fiction Books mainly, Private Eye.
Private Eye is the only magazine that I read now. Music mags no longer interest me.
Forgot that I read some books on photography and film processing/darkroom practice in my 50s.
My subscription remains unthreatened, but my consumption of the detailed content of each issue of the Eye goes through waves of alternating concentration and exhausted disinterest; it’s like reading James O’Brien’s ‘How They Broke Britain’ over and over again on a fortnightly basis. There’s only so much exposure to venal ineptitude and blithe criminality one can take before wanting to either reach for the ammunition or consider the emigration options.
Yes. I’m a subscriber and intend to remain one, but I need to take a break from reading The Eye now and then, in order to keep my even temper and sunny disposition.
@Mike_H and Foxy march on Westminster after an overdose of Rotten Boroughs…
Brian Blessed and Jimmy Carr.
I resmble neither of those.
Looks like a disgruntled farmer and an insolvent commodities trader.
Could they be from the north? Possibly Forks Geordie…
Fog on the tine, etc…
Interesting to think about this one and what it means… Publications I have bought regularly or subscribed to in chronological order:
Tiger & Scorcher
Autocar
NewScientist
The Guardian/Observer/Daily Telegraph (I try to read differing views)
TimeOut
20/20
Q
Modern Review
Mojo
Vox
The Word
The Cricketer
Nature
Spectator
Uncut
The Critic
There are probably others I can’t recall at the moment.
In rough order…
Robin
Swift
Children’s Newspaper
Eagle
Commando
Batman US imports (and other DC titles)
Disc
Melody Maker
Sounds
Guardian
NME
Let It Rock
Zig Zag
Q
Mojo
Octane
Uncut
Word
Radio Times
Whizzer & Chips / Krazy
Action
2000AD
NME
Time Out
Viz
Q
Empire
Loaded
The Word
Haven’t bought a magazine on a regular basis since Word turned up its toes.
The Beano* (12)-
Sparky
Whizzer and Chips
Shoot!
Roy of the Rovers* (3)
MAD* (5)
Flexi-Pop
Smash Hits* (11)
Record Mirror* (6)
The Guardian
When Saturday Comes* (15)-
Private Eye* (15)-
Viz* (15)-
NME* (10)
Melody Maker
Sounds
The Face
Q* (10)
Select
Vox
The Word* (6 or however long it was)
*Every issue (est #years)
-denotes occasional purchasing, to this day
No asterisk means occasional but frequent purchase
Completely forgot about Smash Hits in spite of having an almost complete collection of the magazine from 1982-1986.
I have never read Smash Hits or ever even wanted to.
Sometimes I wonder WTF I am doing here.
I don’t think reading Smash Hits would have given you any greater sense of spiritual purpose.
I think we fall into the wrong demographic for Smash Hits and its celebration of pop music and the charts, being far too serious for such froth. (I always thought it was for girls, at that; I was a very serious young man and could never quite grasp the fairer sex. In any way, shape or form.)
I never read a single issue and just assumed it was for 12 year old girls.
I disagree! It was funny and even subversive at times.
I’m with you on this @Freddy Steady … our esteemed overlords Hepworth and Ellen led a team of very established journalists including Tom Hibbert and Miranda Sawyer, and it was great reading through my teen years … nothing to be sniffy about. Take it for what it was a music/pop culture magazine for teenagers which had it’s tongue firmly planted in it’s cheek
Agreed @Freddy Steady and @exilepj.
There certainly was a subversiveness with the likes of Sylvia Patterson and Tom Hibbert interviewing but this was also a magazine that (very occasionally) featured The Fall, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Cure.
So long as you were in the charts, you could into Smash Hits. I even remember That Petrol Emotion being featured around the release of Big Decision and Babble.
Granted, they were but smattering inbetween Wham, Duran, etc but they were there.
Artistic consistency was lacking but in amongst the best years for pop, it was a fantastic magazine.
Ah…there are plenty of wonderful things that a lot of men will miss out on because they assume “it’s for girls”… 😉
Meanwhile, girls experience twice as much thanks to considering it to be a challenge if somebody tells them that something is “just for boys”. 😀
I agree with you – Twinkle and Bunty, that my sister got were frequently more entertaining than the rather patronising and worthy ‘educational’ content of Look & Learn.
Bunty! Who can forget Hilary of the Highboard! Or The Four Marys!
The Four Marys – charitably looking after sponsorship girl Mary Simpson at boarding school.
I don’t remember Hilary of the Highboard, though there seem to have been a lot of tennis/swimming/dancing/athletics series. Over 550 listed in the wiki page.
I remember these:
Catch the Cat – Marie Bonnet is hated for being friendly with Nazi soldiers in a French town during the WW2 occupation. But this is really a cover for Marie’s double life as a costumed resister known as “the Cat.”
Gold Medal Girl – Gail Gordon’s ambition is to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. But the problem is whether she should concentrate on running or swimming. Gail prefers athletics, but she can’t escape from Martha Moor, her ruthless swimming coach. Jim Cook, Gail’s athletic coach, is trying to rescue her from Martha’s evil clutches.
Some seem designed for Viz’s ‘Black Bag’ style mocking:
A Bed Called Fred: A girl is pushing a four-poster bed named Fred all the way from John O’Groats to Land’s End.
I just consulted the list of Bunty stories on Wikipedia and Hilary is not there! I’ll have to consult my sisters.
Wiki is not always to be trusted (see the Hepworth quote in a comment below) – I don’t think the page claims that the list of stories is exhaustive.
This page has more, (almost 900) including Hilary…
https://girlscomicsofyesterday.com/bunty-stories/
It may have been but I never read it so I wouldn’t know.
To be honest, Jackie was just for girls and I alwasy read both the photo stories on my papaer round (one of the hoses had it delivered). Smash Hits was very good – espeically in the first few years, of making kids realise that reading about music was interesting and fun. Gateway drug for NME and Record Mirror for me.
My gateway drug to Melody Maker and then NME was the music itself.
In those far-off pre-internet days, if you wanted to know who was gigging where in your locality, you bought one or other of the inkies and perused the ad section. It was the only reliable way, apart from word-of-mouth, to find out.
Tiger
Shoot (occasionally Goal)
Look & Learn
Speedway Star (Speedway Mail) (still get occasionally)
NME
Wisden Cricket Monthly
The Face (short lived)
When Saturday Comes*
Viz
Q
Uncut* (Occasional Mojo)
The Word
Backtrack (retro Speedway mag) – every issue
The Cricketer
* = still buying each issue
I read Shoot, too. I used to like the questionnaire: Bobby Russell of Rangers listed as his favourite food, “Chips in a bag”.
The favourite food of many 70s footballers was Steak and Chips, Favourite music was often Billy Joel, and Biggest Influence was either “my dad” or a PE teacher
Oh yeah Shoot for me too, and occasionally Goal!
Smash Hits started as a merely a magazine with photos of pop stars and lyrics printed out for their current singles. That lyric information wasn’t available anywhere else and was the main original reason why I bought it. The reviews and the articles in Smash Hits started very small and gradually grew in size and more regular items and features began to appear over time.
Yes, it did appeal to the teenage girl “demographic” more than the inkies and Record Mirror. However, the interviews, reviews and articles were upbeat and often very funny. This lighter touch simply didn’t happen in other music media.
The artists themselves were largely in on the Smash Hits house style and took it in that spirit. Those at the more serious and earnest end of the spectrum probably didn’t like being asked questions about sandwiches by Tom Hibbert, for example – but they were often the best interviews.
well said @Black Celebration if it wasn’t for Smash Hits (which drew messrs Hepworth and Ellen together) we wouldn’t have a forum to share our varied views and experiences on and how boring would that be
Weren’t they both Whistle Testers first?
Think the Whistle Testing came between departure from Smash Hits and the launch of Q
Looks like there was something of an overlap between his smashie days as a journalist and his nicie nights as a tv presenter.
For some reason I think of OGWT as exclusively a 70s phenomenon, but it persisted till Janet Street Porter killed it off in 1987.
Stopped being Old and Grey as they lopped of the front of the title so it was quicker to say.
Still remain thankful to Whistle Test as it was my first sighting and hearing of Half Man Half Biscuit.
Hepworth was the presenter on Live Aid who had to very quickly cut to reading out addresses and phone numbers as Bob Geldof ranted and dropped the F-Bomb on prime time TV – at the time, I think it was only him, Clapton and Kenneth Tynan who’d said that word on the BBC.
Wiki quote about Heppo:
“Hepworth famously provoked Bob Geldof to repeatedly use the word “fuck” live on air”.
That’s not my memory of it at all. All Geldof did was say in a tired and frustrated way to Hepworth (who was about to read out the address) “fuck the address…” and passionately encouraged people to phone in and do it NOW!.
People seem to think he went F this and F that, but he didn’t.
If Hepworth is claiming that he goaded him into it because he knew it would be great telly, I’m afraid that doesn’t ring true.
I don’t think David Hepworth does claim that:
https://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.com/2007/10/live-aid-and-false-memory-syndrome.html
The actual clip is easily found on YouTube.
It’s Wikipedia – I guess somebody printed the legend, not necessarily the man himself.
Before the watershed. There would have been numerous TV shows and films with the F word, after 9pm
Back in the eighties the f word would have been bowlderised even after the 9pm watershed ‘melon farmers’ was one I seem to recall, ‘freakin’ another.
Probably late nineties before it started to be used as nature intended.
Not sure. I seem to remember hearing it in the 70s.There was also Steve Jones talking about “fucking rotters” goaded by Bill Grundy (not David Hepworth) in 76 or 77 that was well before 9pm (live TV)
That was before they put a delay on the broadcasts so they could bleep out any unwanted words.
Wasn’t there a Saturday kids’ show where it happened or some such folderol?
Matt Bianco on Saturday morning TV phone-in. Kid calls in “Why are you so shit?”
That’s the one @dai
@hubert rawlinson muddy Funster was another I remember which for many years was the name of our quiz team
Splendid.
Beano
Krazy (short-lived more freewheeling alternative to the Beano. Good fun. Ended up getting absorbed by Whizzer & Chips or something).
Look & Learn
Marvel UK
Kerrang! (Bought it from issue 5 or so, from about 1981 to 1984. It was great fun, I’ve never enjoyed reading a music magazine as much as I did with early 80s Kerrang. Let’s face it, the NME never printed photos of Thor blowing up a hot water bottle, did they?)
X-Men (stopped at the end of the 80s. Have never been able to get back into it. I can’t think of a Comics franchise that been more badly managed)
The Sandman (The only comic I bought regularly during the 90s. Have almost the entire run. Current events making me think now may be the time to sell them)
Sounds / NME
Private Eye
Q
When Saturday Comes (Read it for a long time, but find it a hard read these days)
The Economist
This forum has an NME complex.
Beano / Dandy
Valiant
DC Comics
Roy of the Rovers / Tiger
Shoot / Goal / Jimmy Hills Football Weekly
Mad
NME / Sounds / Melody Maker / Record Mirror
Marvel Comics / Indie comics
Manchester United Fanzines
Viz
Freak Brothers
Private Eye
Q / Mojo / Uncut / The Word
Playhour.
Beano, Dandy, Whizzer and Chips, Beeper, Topper.
Look and Learn
Marvel comics occasional DC.
Fantastic and the others that reprinted Marvel in black and white.
Animals
Mad.
Sounds, NME. OZ Friendz, International Times.
Guardian Observer.
Hedgerow magazines (not bought found, honest)
Viz
Q
Mojo
The Independent (now the i)
Folkroots
The Word
Songlines
The New European
The Idler.
RSPB magazine Nature’s Choice
BBC Wildlife.
Free Waitrose paper Weekend.
Must be others but can’t remember them all.