Innocent teenage girl magazine Jackie that changed the lives of millions forever

A long time before the internet, mobile phones or , there was only one place where went for consolation or advice - Jackie.

The iconic teen magazine became a beloved best friend to British girls for decades, at its peak selling over a million copies a week and influencing a whole generation.

Even today, women who grew up swooning over stars from the Beatles to the Bay City Rollers still remember Thursdays - the day its pages full of girly tips, teenage gossip and colour pin ups of their heartthrobs dropped through their letterboxes - with a twinge of excitement.

The UK’s first teen magazine, Jackie launched 60 years ago this year, and now a new anniversary tribute ‘bookazine’ promises to relive some of the magic and bring readers “back into a of glitter, hairspray and heartthrobs”.

First sold on January 11 1964, at the height of Beatlemania and just ten days after the first Top of The Pops aired on BBC1, the glossy magazine indulged every teeny bopper girl’s dreams.

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A mock-up had been produced the previous year to test the market, called Elvis, Cliff and All, which included a double page devoted to the loves of Presley’s life and posters of Warren Beaty and Clint Eastwood.

Girls could also construct their “perfect boy” from cut-out hairstyles, eyes, noses and lips belonging to Roy Castle, Jess Conrad and Cliff Richard.

The small print run placed in selected newsagents proved a huge success with schoolgirls and work began on the new magazine, Jackie, a name chosen from a list of common girls’ names.

But the title nearly had to be dropped after, in November 1983 and just after the first edition of Jackie had gone to press, president John F Kennedy was assassinated, and serious concerns were raised about the publication bearing his widow’s name.

They went ahead with an initial print run of 500,000 copies, with the first issue featuring a picture of Cliff Richard and giving away a free ‘twin heart ring’.

Before long, Jackie had become Britain’s undisputed teen bible, with girls lapping up fashion tips, beauty secrets, photo love stories and the latest on pop stars such as Marc Bolan, David Essex and Donny Osmond.

By the mid-70s sales regularly hit 600,000, and far more for special editions. A Jackie with a free poster of David Cassidy to coincide with his UK tour on October 21 1972 sold a whopping 1.1m copies.

Meanwhile, girls wrote thousands of letters to the magazine each week, especially to its legendary agony aunts Cathy and Claire, actually fictional characters. Readers were given an address in London’s Fleet Street, but few knew that the publication was actually produced in Dundee by DC Thomson, publishers of the Beano and Dandy.

Initially titled ‘Jackie for Go-Ahead Teens’, within five years it had been rebranded ‘Jackie for Young Lovers’ - but still kept its old-fashioned innocence.

Sandy Monks, who along with other staff members replied to Cathy and Claire’s letters in the early 1970s, remembered: “Most were about boys, how to get one, how to get rid of one. So we had leaflets printed which we went out to readers explaining all about the working of these mysterious creatures.

“We had leaflets for a variety of other problems and the leaflets which were most popular were the one on Boys and the one on Busts. Readers were obsessed with their busts, or lack of them.”

Sheila Prophet, 69, who worked on the magazine for four years from 1972, remembers: “There was always a bundle of mail to be opened and answered, so we were all Cathy and Claire.

“We had these standard things we would say to them, like ‘there’s plenty more fish in the sea’, or ‘join a youth club’.

“We weren’t much older than the girl writing to us. I was 19 and no-one in the office was over mid-20s, so we knew what they were going through. We did feel a responsibility to the girls writing letters, and there was a doctor you could consult if you got a letter you were concerned about.

“But it was mainly fun, and incredibly innocent looking back. It was about romance, not sex, and the pop stars were all squeaky clean back then too.”

Sheila remembers the magazine’s popular giveaways. “One of the most successful was a plastic heart brooch, you could wear it as a complete heart which meant you’d found love, or as a broken heart so you were either heartbroken or looking for love.

“For one edition we gave away a floppy disk with a message from David Cassidy saying, ‘Hi, I’m sitting here in my cabin here in California’, and at the end he went ‘I wanna wish you all a happy Christmas and whole lotta lurve.’

“That issue sold incredibly well, he was the biggest teenage heart throb at the time. One of the first things I remember doing was going to Glasgow where Cassidy was singing, standing on the top floor chucking T-shirts to girls which were all signed ‘love David’. The girls went wild.”

One of the popular features was a pop star poster which came in three parts, with the head and shoulders always on the last week.

But the idea, the brainchild of Nina Myskow, who became Jackie editor in 1974, didn’t always go to plan.

Nina, who went on to star in talent show New Faces, remembered: “In those days printing wasn’t an exact science and we’d often end up with a face the colour of boiled lobster and hands would be dusky tanned. Or we’d get sad packages back through the post asking why Donny had ended up with 10 fingers on each hand. But readers loved those posters.”

Jackie was still selling hundreds of thousands of copies by the 1980s, with a 15-year-old Fiona Bruce appearing as a teenage model in the Photo Love romance picture stories. Fiona, now Question Time presenter, was regularly seen agonising over boyfriends and flitting between male crushes.

Scottish actor Alan Cumming also appeared, aged 19, in the 1984 photo story Horsing Around.

But by the early 1990s the magazine and its format began to look old-fashioned, and sales soon slipped to around 50,000, when DC Thomson announced the magazine’s closure after 1,538 issues.

The final issue, featuring and Brad Pitt, in 1993 cost 50p.

Former editor Nina said the magazine helped a generation of girls navigate the awkward teenage years. “We produced a mag girls enjoyed and trusted. We were a big sister. It laid a foundation, gave them a good grounding. That’s what I’m proud of,” she said.

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