Jackie magazine's guide to love

Literally everything you need to know...

Love is complicated these days. There’s ghosting and orbiting and breadcrumbing. There are ‘situationships’, which I only got my head around today. And obviously the amount of ways in which the person you fancy/are seeing/are allegedly seeing might (or might not) contact you have multiplied.

Texting, WhatsApping, messaging you via Messenger/Instagram/plus a via dating app possibly? I have no idea how it works now. Because a very long time ago, when I was ‘dating’ (although no one called it that then), there was only one way in which you could end up being mortally disappointed.

By them not calling on the telephone.

Plus, we had beloved teen bible Jackie magazine to guide us all through it.

If the best you could hope for, frisson-wise, was Brendan Barfwaite scoffing his Spam fritters next to you in the school dinner hall? Never fear because Jackie would dish up the perfect dreamboat.

Ah that’s better

So, how to go about attracting a heart-throb of one’s own? By using Anne French, according to this vintage ad in Jackie.

Anne French was a popular affordable skincare line, in the days before ‘affordable’ was used as a marketing term - back then it was just ‘cheap.’ But how chic she sounded! Anne French. Because everything French seemed sexy and I can’t imagine Anne From Bradford would have been as wildly popular.

Anne French Deep Cleansing Milk was as ubiquitous in ‘70s bathrooms as soap-on-a-ropes and Dad’s big old underpants quietly steaming on the radiator.

Check this ad below. Could cleansing away her ‘grime and stale make-up’ boost Carol’s chances of nabbing not just a snog round the back of the chip shop but an actual HUSBAND?

I should say so!!!

No sooner had manky Carol upped her personal hygiene that Bob proposed! See what difference a little effort can make?

For Jackie readers not quite ready to be hauled up the aisle at sixteen years old, the magazine was always on hand with kissing advice. Do bear in mind that this advice was written by teenage girls such as myself, who went to work on Jackie straight from school and generally knew precisely nothing.

When I started working there aged seventeen I had kissed precisely two boys and done nothing else. I mean, I’d tended my stamp collection and made a family of paper dolls with extensive wardrobes - but you know what I’m talking about.

I’d kissed John, solely in bus shelters with rain streaming down them, and Tommy, who I liked mainly because his older brother had a CB radio when CB radios were MASSIVE (‘How many candles ya burnin’?’) and I wanted to be on that thing all the blinking time.

But I’m not knocking Jackie as a source of much needed advice. I’d been an avid reader myself and pored over every word. Eg:

Sensible advice too!

‘Keep your head up, don’t stare at the ground.’ As, if you do this suddenly, he might accidentally snog the top of your head.

‘When he moves towards you, don’t back away.’ In case you were thinking of stumbling backwards into a privet hedge.

‘You can stop kissing him now and lay your head on his shoulder.’ Have you ever tried this? The head-laying? I haven’t, and I wouldn’t try it now as my neck cricks awfully easily these days. Watch TV in the wrong position and I can’t turn my head for a week.

Meanwhile, advanced kissers! Once you’ve mastered not staring at the pavement or teetering back in blind panic, you might be considering the French kiss.

We all know what ‘pretty experienced’ means, right? She’ll stick her tongue anywhere! I once saw her poking it into a Walnut Whip, trying to access the hidden nut at the bottom!

Right, I’m off to cleanse off my slept-in foundation, shave my face hairs and await the arrival of red roses.

Ooh, here he is now!

Gotta dash,

Love Fiona xx

PS My new novel, The Full Nest, is coming soon on March 13! You can pre-order your copy here!