Absolutely fascinating current affairs programme from 1972 looking at advice columnists - Dr Stephen Black talks to Marjorie Proops of the Daily Mirror, Evelyn Home of Woman, Claire Rayner of Petticoat and Jane Firbank of Forum, who between them "deal with more than 100,000 letters a year". Most of these columnists have multiple assistants helping them and an office full of reference books and box folders stuffed with pamphlets and newspaper cuttings to do with physical and mental health, sexual problems, etc etc.
Dr Black puts some sticky questions to the ladies about responsibility and authority (do they have any training?). They reply earnestly, self-deprecatingly, but ultimately persuasively about their role in relieving anxiety and loneliness, especially for readers who don't live in cities with counselling services readily available.
Probably the most interesting for me was Jane Birbank of Forum, in part because of her astute comments about sexual misery and sexual ignorance, but also because it reminded me of the very existence of Forum, "the journal of human relations" aka "the international journal of human relations".
Despite the lofty title and the journal-style format, Forum was a publication put out by Penthouse, so an extension of Bob Guccione's porn empire. You might then be forgiven for suspecting that this "journal" was actually a reversion to the days when prurient reading matter would mask its salacious purpose by pretending to be simply in the business of being "informative" - even posing as an expose that all righteous-minded decent folk should read to keep abreast of wrong-minded behaviours.
But looking at the contents pages below, there seems to be mostly material intended to be enlightening and therapeutic: articles about erotic optimization, body knowledge, marital health, the need for legal reform, for a changing of attitudes and opening of minds. The great post-Sixties drift towards permissiveness and relaxation of the super-ego.
So Forum was equal parts erotica and sexology (about sex but not exactly sexy).
It was also a commercially shrewd move into the burgeoning market of self-help literature, books and periodicals dedicated to personal growth and spiritualized sensuality / sensualized spirituality.
C.f. The Joy of Sex. But also not so far from Our Bodies, Ourselves.
I don't remember ever opening a copy but I knew of its existence and could probably have benefited from the information contained within.
One thing, though - there is something rather unsexy about the lugubrious color palette: all those dingy purples, mulberries, ochres, musty oranges and mossy greens. Kind of similar to the Biba fabric palette.
The drawings are not very aphrodisiacal either.
When they went to glossy photographs on the cover, though, it was even more off-putting
"Is Your MP Good in Bed?"
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