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Bobbie (Jennifer Eccles) on the cover of Knave Vol 9 no 8, I think 1977



Back in the later 1970s I was studying graphic design at Manchester School of Art and used to walk back into Manchester town centre to catch my bus home. More or less on St Peters Square there was a large bookshop and newsagents that had one of the broadest selections of books, newspapers, alternative comics and - most importantly for me - girly magazines available on any local high street, running the gamut from soft cheese cake mags to full-on open cunt and arse mags plus the odd bit of continental hardcore now and then

I wasn't a fan of 'Knave', I found it a pale imitation of Men Only, which at the time was, along with Club International, my favourite girly magazine.

But the evening I went in and saw this Knave cover it stood out to me from the broad selection on the top shelf - I noticed it immediately, it stood out from the rest of the mags like a pair of bared Double Ds in a Convent. 'Bobbie' the girl on the cover (better known as big tit porn star Jennifer Eccles) just cried out 'knead my firm young titties' from that cover.

As I've mentioned in posts above I'm a bum man rather than a tit man but there have always been some models, some girls whose tits impress me. 'Tits' is too small a word. Titties, Knockers, Bristols, even Boobies are all nearer the mark.

'Bobbie' attracted me for another reason - she, and her bristols in particular, reminded me of a delicious fellow student known with good reason as 'Big Mandy'.

As usual with my 'eyes out on stalks' purchases I couldn't wait to get home to my student bedsit and have a wank over 'Bobbie'. And once through my door I didn't wait, I sat on my bed, whipped out one of the hardest hard-ons I've ever had, pumped away like fury over the photos of 'Bobbie' and squirted with such force that my spunk hit the ceiling above me and then dripped down over the duvet cover.

Sadly I never got off with Big Mandy but I regularly returned to the Knave set of 'Bobbie' and knocked many a one out imagining I was feeling up Big Mandy's tits and then shagging her brains out.

I've realised looking back over my posts in this thread that quite a few of my 'Eyes On Stalks' purchases were motivated by covergirls who reminded me of girls I knew and desired in real life.

Please note that the cover above and the set immediately below were posted by member mayfair1975 in the VEF Knave 1960s-1970s thread so if you like the photos please click through and leave thanks.

Originally Posted by mayfair1975

If this set of 'Bobbie' causes stirrings in your trousers there are more photos from the shoot in The Old Hacker's post in the Jennifer Eccles VEF thread including a few of her fingering open her twat-lips.

Originally Posted by Sharkhunter

The thing about cover shots back "in the day" was that they were taken and/or selected as cover shots. PG-rated, but with that frisson of excitement that got your sexually active mind racing. I imagined Adele slowly dropping that bra, releasing her bouncy tits.

These days cover editors have no imagination with their selecting an random shot and putting dots or stars over the model's nipples. Ugh.

My 'back in the day' was before your 'back in the day' so I started my girly mag life with different expectations and in the 1970s and very early 80s when I was a committed porn hound in the first flush of girly mag buying I can assure you that although cover shots were deliberately chosen and intended as cover shots, back then the covers of many if not most mainstream girly mags were relatively explicit, by which I mean never mind girls in their bras or with nipples dotted out - the 70s cover girls were often tits out, nips on show, bum full on, cameltoes, the girl sometimes plainly fingering herself through her knickers, more or less see-thru knickers with crotch full on to the camera, tufts of pubic hair sometimes peeping out of knickers, and so on.

All on the cover, mainstream girly mags all on the top shelf of many a local family newsagent. Despite these fairly explicit cover photos the covers managed to look classy because the photographers were skilled and the designers of the magazines were prepared to put effort into the design of the mags. At one point in the 70s Men Only was one of the best designed, high production value magazines in the world and that's including mainstream non-girly, non-porn magazines.

From 1980 onwards UK covers became increasing prudish, as did the photos within, at least at the Men Only/Knave end of the shelf. as did British society, an effect I think of the combination of the prudish Thatcher government on the Right and joyless and easily offended second wave feminists on the Left.

Originally Posted by Sharkhunter

There are no classy mags left in the UK anymore, and Club was pretty much shoved out into the wilderness at the end of 2009. The only, and I mean only, magazine worth buying these days is Hustler's Barely Legal. No fake tits and no tattoos for a start.

How many girly mags and even hard-core mags are there left in the whole world, classy or not? They were falling like dominoes already when I bought my last wank mags in 2009 and those mags were so poor compared to what I'd known and to what I was able to find for free online that I decided never again to buy a wank mag.

Every two weeks for a good long part of 2000s, a time when I wasn't in a permanent relationship, I used to go into the centre of Manchester to scope out the new wank mags and videos, UK and US. I'd had a previous habit of doing this in the early to middle 90s and the decline and reduction of titles was already very visible monthly throughout that time.

In my youth I'd bought UK mainstream girly mags that ranged from soft through explicit posing to full on fucking. These magazines often had moderately explicit covers of the sort I mention above. In the 80s I mostly bought magazines like Escort and Razzle for the 'fun girls spreading' aspect or I bought C*C*C full-on hardcore mags.

Escort in the 80s did have a run of - for me - eyes on stalks covers that were as good as or even better than the photos of the cover girl inside



but as the years passed by even Escort covers eventually became polite and the magazine's contents began to feel seedy and joyless.

The topshelf mags had become too tame for me, far more tame than they had been for most of the 70s and far less stylish, the girls far less elegantly dressed, far less explicity posed in the tamer end of the mags, and posed in far more predicable ways.

By the 90s the only mainstream girly magazines that I bought regularly were Men's World and the US version of Club and I bought those only because I was a Jo Guest completist.

I can't remember any top shelf purchases that I've made since the turn of the 90s that were motivated by 'eyes out on stalks' covers in conventional newsagents. There were plenty of covers that did have my eyes out on stalks but they were bought from specialist back street outlets specialising in niche tastes such as oriental girls, public nudity, bottom-spreading or the rash of 'Barely Legal' type mags that suddenly proliferated after the US Government insisted that models provide two age-related IDs after the she-who-must-not-be-named under@ge modelling/porn scandal (talk about the Law Of Unintended Consequences).

I realise I'm coming over as a grouch on this subject; in a nutshell, I'm saying that the decline of eyes on stalks covers started a very long time ago. The web sped up the decline but it had already begun by the early 80s as can be confirmed by looking through the VEF threads for the various UK girlies.

Right, that's my grouch over.