Sensing trouble, I tracked down three former cover stars by legitimate means and kept my hands and nose pressed up against the kitchen window of each until they felt ready to talk.
Gwen Pinnet: “Blue cardigan/side fringe”, That’s Life! May 1999
“Well it was a lovely afternoon, I was taking a walk through the park when this baby swan, this cygnet, came out of nowhere and started pacing a circle around my feet. It took me by surprise, because there were never usually swans in the park...but there it was, going round and round me and making a feeble little honking sound. It moved very fast, and it had me trapped in this circle, and I thought ‘This is ridiculous, trapped by a swan that’s not a month old’. So I tried to hop over it, but it was only a little thing, and it was going at such a speed, that when I jumped over I turned round and saw that I’d accidentally severed its wing. Well I felt terrible, the poor thing was crying its eyes out. Then its Mum arrived on the scene, and she was furious. She stretched out her three-metre wings and wrapped them tight around my stomach, hoisting herself up to eye level. Then she started bashing my face in with her silly beak, the wings curling tighter and tighter around my torso like a boa constrictor, and the webbed feet sort of dangling awkwardly underneath trying to kick me. So I’m stumbling and suffocating around a busy park with this swan shredding my ears, the young one cheering her on...the passers-by were too scared to help, so they just pretended they couldn’t see anything. Then after a bit – and my memory starts to get a little hazy at this point – two people appeared, two women in stylish blouses, and they told the swan to back off. The swan had to let go of me then. It seemed embarrassed. The women held me up, and they were saying ‘Come on love, come on, we’ll take you to a That’s Life! office, you’ll be all right...’
Next morning, I woke up in the bed section of MFI. My face wounds were all clogged with make-up and I had a new cardigan. To this day I can’t eat swan.”
Mark Banner: “Halter dress/heart pendant”, Take a Break, August 2003
“I own a small company, Occasions, specialising in party decorations supplies, and to boost business I’ve been taking out ads in local papers. They were a real success and I could soon afford to branch out, advertising in national magazines. I had an old copy of Take a Break lying about – haha, not mine of course, an old girlfriend left it – and thought it’d be worth putting an ad in this one, for hen nights and other sorts of women’s parties. So I bought my space and sent the ad in. It was very well designed I thought, very simple - black and white colour scheme, classy typeface, and a nice friendly picture of me with some “Over The Hill” stetsons and a bag of dick-shaped joke pasta.
A few days later I got a phone call from someone at the magazine saying there was a problem with my advert. I asked what was wrong, but at that moment she started coughing uncontrollably, a horrible gluey hacking sound that lasted six minutes. She then changed the subject completely:
‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Banner, but your hair in this photograph...so sleek, and the fine wisps of butterscotch blonde are to die for. Do you use FleckPress or Nicky Clarke Slime Time?’
Well I didn’t have a clue. My hair was nothing special. I grew it long when I was sixteen to look like Vince from Motley Crue, and kept it pretty much the same ever since. I told her it tended to gather grease on hot days, and that Spar did a good 2-in-1 anti-dandruff solution.
‘Back to basics’, she said. ‘I see. How refreshing.’
‘Um, yes, but getting back to my advert-‘
‘HORAGHHHHH-HUK-HUK-HUK! EURRRRCH! Oh, excuse me, my throat...BAAAAURGH! URR, URR!’
And that’s how it was - every time I tried to ask about the problem, I’d be drowned out with either bronchial illness or kind remarks about my ‘amazing lashes’ and ‘soft, soft, soft skin’. I soon gave up, and agreed to come to Take a Break headquarters where she told me the matter would be dealt with.
So I went to them, and the second I turned up a huge gang, all in very smart blouses, started fussing over me, sighing and stroking and humming gentle Disney melodies. I remember one man who yelled out ‘The long toil ends at last! I have encountered Venus, whose beauty knows no parallel!’ then died on the spot, grinning. Before I could ask about my advert, I was swept away to a weird boudoir up the back of the Admin office. The fourteen men and women stripped me of my Blue Harbour khakis and old grey polo shirt whilst commenting on my bone structure - ‘Perfect bones...perfect for our Fate and Fortune Horoscope special’ – then replaced my normal clothes with...well, with what can only be described as a stunning sequinned halterneck dress. Then a pair of silver hooped earrings and a heart-shaped pendant were fixed to me, a tiny blob of tinted balm dabbed on my lips, and the whole group burst into applause. They said any more make-up would be an insult to nature, that I was the most effortlessly beautiful man they’d ever seen. I was about to correct their mistake, because you don’t get beautiful men, but then I had to smile for some photos.
A week or so later, I’m in the newsagents and lo and behold, it’s me on the front cover of Take a Break magazine! Well I nearly died laughing! Someone had obviously messed up big time, accidentally switching the real cover photo with my ugly mug! I bought every copy in the shop and spent the next few days having a good chuckle.
None of them featured my ad, however, so I’ve moved on to a new tactic of scornful online marketing...oh, and I'd like to give you this cheque for fifteen pounds ...because I think your blog is great.”
Sophie Darroch: “Caramel highlights/ Midnight-Blue vest”, Pick Me Up, February 2007
“My name is Sophie Darroch. I moved to London last year to pursue a modelling career, and after signing to a reputable agency I was chosen to model for Pick Me Up magazine. I was nervous at first, because this was my most high-profile job so far, and I was sure I’d screw it up! But once I’d met the Pick Me Up team and they explained what the shoot would involve, it was a piece of cake. I learned to relax and the photos turned out really well. Everyone was so friendly and everyone was so friendly and everyone was so friend-friend-friend-friend-friend-friend-muuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrr...clunk.”
At this point in the interview, I noticed there was something wrong. Ms. Darroch had trailed off the point of her story and begun whirring. I instinctively checked her upper arm for signs of disorder, and sure enough I found a flashing thunderbolt symbol indicating that she had to be recharged. After three hours of magnet tests, which confirmed the presence of headphone sockets where her eyes should be, and a large parabolic aerial on top of her head that I hadn’t previously noticed, I concluded that this was not a human fashion model, but a complete robot. I then set about reprogramming her to tell the truth:
“My name is Sophie Darroch. I was devised and moulded in Washington’s corrupt technodevelopment district by a secret team of redundant NASA scientists, as part of an ambitious programme of cyberspecies inauguration funded by Pick Me Up Publishing. The programme was to act as a cost-saving initiative which would eliminate the need to pay human modelling fees, instead relying on the manufacture and weekly maintenance of eight thousand elaborate and mechanically unstable robo-people.
Of all the cruel redundant NASA scientists working on the project, the one charged with assembling me was the worst git. He fancied himself as the underground testing facility joker, and decided he could get a huge laugh by making me sentient. From the moment I was switched on he took the piss -‘Emotionally advanced goon!’ ‘Highly intuitive arsepile!’ – and sure enough, the others joined in. Every day they’d gang up on me and make me cry with a particularly beautiful poem about motherhood by Seamus Heaney, or show me some television appeals by the Cats Protection League so I’d experience guilt. The bullying carried on until February of this year, when I was deemed realistic enough to appear on the cover of Pick Me Up and live in a house.
There are few opportunities in life for a badly-designed sentimental robot once its contractual obligations have been fulfilled. I am trapped in a boring Hell, and pray that one of my knees turns out to be a Self-Destruct button.”
How sad to think that even our women’s weeklies are a nesting ground for the exploitation of swans and elegant men, and that ridiculous behaviour with robots. Perhaps if you’d spent more time researching the subject and less time yakking all this could have been avoided.
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