The People's Friend

[stevezodiac]

For no other reason other than that it was published by DC Thomson (actually its John Leng and Co - Thomsons came along a couple of years later) here is a very early PF cover. I found it in my storage unit yesterday and couldn't even remember ever owning them (I have three issues). It's quite large so doesn't quite fit the A4 page.

[colcool007]

And it's still going! One of the artists on Spaceship Away does a nice trade in covers as it his "day job". The covers are or to be more precise were always scenes from the country. It may have changed, but I would be surprised as the People's Friend or for those of us North of the Border would say, the "Freendy" was always good at sticking with its' core ethos, mainly romance stories for Mums or elderly spinsters!

However, the adverts are a bit more colourful these days!

[stevezodiac]

The inside of this issue is completely text. A friend of mine has just submitted a short story to the PF. The other two copies I have do not have the wraparound advertising covers. A lot of Victorian magazines had two covers the outer one usually being Red or Green. It was all adverts and made no mention of the content so could be removed without any loss to the copy of that issue. And the second cover had the price and number/date so it was hard to tell whether or not there ever was an outer cover.

[Kashgar]

For many years the covers of the People's Friend have shown painted rustic scenes of churches, harbours, village squares etc and according to the by-line have always been the work of a singularly long-lived artist named J Campbell Kerr. Of course this nom de plume has hidden the identities of a number of real artists, one in particular being Douglas Phillips, who as well as clocking up over 1000 covers for the PF was also an artist on the THomson boy's papers between 1948 and 1966.

[chrissmillie]

Those are wonderful wonderful ads.

Writing for the People's Friend, eh? Never considered that line before. Must check it out. After all, that's where Pat Mills started. Wish I could read some of those stories...

[felneymike]

I bought an issue of this once just to see if i could write for it for some extra change. Never got around to reading it though.

Whilst even it's owners would call it a "magazine" these days, it is in reality the last, and longest-lived, story paper! If only the Union Jack had still continued i might have been pleased XD.

There is also a "People's Friend" and "My Weekly" pocket library that can usually be seen with the papers in Tescos. I was going to buy one once that was set in World War 1 (a mum on the home front, of course). But it was £2!

[stevezodiac]

By sheer coincidence the editor of the People's Friend had her letter published in yesterday's Times - here it is:

[Kashgar]

The People's Friend has also had its own annual since 1944. Published in A5 format it was a follow on from Thomson's A4 Annie Swan Annual which they published between 1924 and 1943, the year of Annie Swan's death. Indeed the first People's Friend Annual includes the cover by-line 'Incorporating the Annie Swan Annual'. And like all other Thomson annual publications produced up to 1965 none of the Annie Swan Annuals or the first twenty People's Friend books were dated on the cover.

[stevezodiac]

There is something old fashioned and warm about Thomson's Women's magazines. Incidentally I came across (in the storage) the first five issues of a Thomson magazine from the 80s called Celebrity. It was almost a glossy magazine version of the Weekly News and had a double page-full colour set of comic strips. I'll scan them on here soon. Any idea how long Celebrity lasted? Got two copies of issue 1. I always bought multiple copies of first issues completely out of avarice even though ebay was decades away.

[Kashgar]

Steve the more I hear about your collection 'storage' sounds something akin to you stumbling around in Tutenkamen's tomb a la Howard Carter bedazzled by 'wonderful things'.

[stevezodiac]

Yes I met my mate Steve on Saturday for our fortnightly pilgrimage to HMV in Oxford Street and he said he'd like to have a butcher's at my storage unit as he is fascinated by the idea. To recap I got divorced in 1993 and sold my house putting the entire contents into a locked up storage unit. I finally got it transferred to a local unit last year where I have a key and daily access. Still lots of furniture to get rid of so can't access many of the boxes but there are roughly 30,000 comics in there as well as hundreds of albums and singles. As I unearth more gems I'll scan the most intersting stuff here to share with you. Also over the twelve years it was locked away I bought many of the comics again just so I could see them again so have a lot of doubles. I have just scanned the Celebrity magazine and the comic strip pages in particular. Here they are: Cover and page one of strips on this page and page two of the strips on the next. The Pussy Muldoon is quite an interesting departure for DC Thomson very much in the Modesty Blaise style. What happened to John Richardson the artist of this strip?

[stevezodiac]

Page two! Nice to see the cartoonist Wing getting a name check, he still submits stuff to the Weekly News today.

[stevezodiac]

I should have put the Celebrity magazine on a seperate thread as forum members will see the People's Friend heading and not bother to read the latest. Shame as I thought there might be a response to the comic strip section.

[Peter Gray]

my response to the strip!!
woof whistle...

[chrissmillie]

Sheez! That is one of the worst magazines I've ever seen. Steve Davis, Princess Di and Felicity Kendal - not quite my interest!