Blast from the past: Jackie magazine

Recording The Top 40 every Sunday using a cassette recorder, wondering what it 'meant' if your friend's brother said hello once in the school canteen, going beetroot red (or taking a ‘beamer’) at just about everything…..yes, this was the life of a teenage girl in the 1980s...probably still is, apart from the cassette recorder.

Thankfully girls had a helping hand through those pimply, awkward years – Jackie magazine.

The weekly publication was a teenage girl’s bible, with its combination of breathless pop news and teen advice. We swooned over interviews with Paul Young and Simon Le Bon, lapped up fashion and beauty tips and photo love stories; whilst agony aunts Cathy and Claire offered advice on those strange creatures, boys – (they counselled that you could tell what boys were like from the way they sat or the shape of their nose). Friends would tell me their brothers would sneak at a look at it too to get an idea how the female psyche worked.

The first issue of Jackie was first published in 1964 and sold well for 20 years before a long-term decline in sales led to its closure in 1993. Maybe it began to look a bit tame and old-fashioned, but for those of us who were faithful readers Jackie will remain an important part chapter in our lives.