With Wimbledon just coming to a close, ten miles up the road from Agent Triple P’s house, we thought it would be a good idea to feature a tennis themed pictorial for June’s non-centrefold of the month.
This time we make a, so far, rare excursion into the pages of Mayfair and their June 1978 issue. Mayfair tended to feature two types of girls. Firstly, the home-grown slightly doughy looking efforts from this period. In a review of Playboy, Penthouse and Mayfair by Michael Wood in the Sunday Times magazine of April 23rd 1972 he described the Mayfair girls as having a “sad, raddled look, have their breasts awkwardly in string vests, or are doing splits over their beads or boots...the Mayfair girls look as if they know everything, and then some, and are very tired of knowing what they know.”
Occasionally they bought in a piece by a continental photographer whose girls were better able to match themselves against those in Penthouse, Club International and Men Only. They were never as explicit in their poses, however; Mayfair girls flashed their fur but kept their bits hidden.
This young lady, for example, doesn't look British at all and we doubt very much that she was actually called Tricia or Wilson.
The pictorial is relatively unusual for a magazine in that it is a chronological striptease.
Christer Flodqvist
These pictures were by photographer Christer Flodqvist who shot a number of glamour pictorials which appeared in the likes of Penthouse and Gallery in the Seventies.
The appeal of tennis clothes on women are easy to appreciate: very short skirts, socks and predominantly white colours. Triple P first noticed the effect when, during an unwillingly participated in tennis lesson at a local park he saw his former classmate S in her tennis clothes.
S had been Triple P's junior schools most talented recorder player and even at the age of eleven Triple P realised that she was considerably prettier than normal. Somewhere between leaving junior school and this encounter, when we were both about fifteen, she had turned into 5' 10" of leggy gorgeousness which her very short tennis skirt emphasised perfectly.
Around this time of year, with Wimbledon in full swing, all the yummy mummies rush around the local shops in their tennis clothes. Slightly pathetic really but very much appreciated by Triple P as their still-toned thirty-something legs are exposed for our delight.
The photographer doesn't seem to know much about the game or he wouldn't have positioned this resting between games bench in the middle of the court!
Of course the little white socks help the whole image significantly.
This girl, at least, has the tone in her thighs that means that she at least looks like a convincing tennis player.
This final picture Triple P recognises from somewhere other than this pictorial and is the reason that we chose this pictorial for our June non-centrefold. It's a very appealing photograph to Triple P!
