Fiesta (magazine)
Fiesta magazine is a British soft-core pornographic magazine, published by Galaxy Publications Limited.[1] It is a sister publication of Knave.[2]
Launched in 1966, Fiesta quickly became Britain's top selling adult magazine. Dubbed "the magazine for men which women love to read", the monthly magazine's readers were responsible, in the early 1970s, for creating a phenomenon that has been adopted in magazines worldwide: Readers' Wives.[3] Central to this theme is the monthly "Readers' Wives Striptease" section, which shows a set of photos of a supposed wife or girlfriend of a reader being photographed by Fiesta undressing (often, but not always out of everyday clothing) to full nudity.[4] The Readers' Wives section was the subject of a song by John Cooper Clarke on his album Disguise in Love.
Mary Millington modelled for the magazine in 1974, prior to her exclusive signing to work for David Sullivan's magazines.[5]
As well as its Readers' Wives and photographic girl sets, Fiesta is built around a core of readers' letters from men and women. The mix is spiced by male-interest features, cartoons and reviews, sexy puzzles and a regular erotic horoscope, together with Firkin, an underground-style comic strip drawn by Hunt Emerson and written by Tym Manley.[6]
Nicholas Whittaker, journalist and author of Platform Souls, Blue Period and Sweet Talk, worked for the company from 1980 to 1982, when he left to go and work for Paul Raymond Publications, where he played a major role in establishing the new Razzle magazine. His experiences at Fiesta and Razzle are the subject of his book Blue Period.[7]
See also
References
- ^ "Galaxy Publications Limited".
- ^ Fiesta – Official website
- ^ Pratt, J. (1986). "Pornography and Everyday Life". Theory, Culture & Society. 3: 65–78. doi:10.1177/0263276486003001006.
- ^ Fiesta, Volume 43, Issue 9. Page 70. ISSN 0265-1270
- ^ Simon Sheridan (24 January 2015). "King, Queen, Knave…". Mary Millington: The Official Website of Britain's Legendary Sex Goddess.
- ^ Fiesta, Volume 43, Issue 9. ISSN 0265-1270
- ^ Blue Period, Whittaker, Nicholas, Gollancz, London, 1997
Further reading
- Attwood, F. (2002) 'A very British carnival: Women, sex and transgression in Fiesta magazine', in European Journal of Cultural Studies, 5 (1) 91–105.