Carmen Dene
Always a good idea to start at the very beginning. The main pic is the cover of the issue of BEAUTIFUL BRITONS I clapped eyes on in a shoebox on the window sill of a backstreet corner shop newsagent in the town of Taunton, Somerset where I grew up. It wasn’t a current issue but one of a small number of Town and Country publications on clearance. I cannot remember how much it cost, but I fumbled for sufficient change to be able to walk away with it, stuffed conveniently out of site in my jacket pocket. Suffice to say it was markedly different from the nudie mags we used to pass around surreptitiously at school (I went to a boys school). It was something of an epiphany as the contents would make a sufficiently durable impression for me to pursue a calling in that direction much later on down the line. I was by no means the only one. Ironically, the coy but beguiling picture of Carmen Dene on the front and the three inside (of which I reproduce one here) were not what you might call stereotypically ToCo fare. ToCo’s USP was of course a countrywide sweep of exclusive amateur models pictured in fields, woods and houses who didn’t need to get all their kit off. Carmen didn’t fall into that category, though I don’t think there were ever any fully topless pictures of her. Carmen straddled that divide between girlie mags and TV and film (in the latter, pretty decoration mostly). In the caption to her cover shot of Parade March 1966, it is revealed she had already appeared in Ghost Squad (a new one on me), Maigret and Dixon of Dock Green at the age of 22. The black and white image is a stock ABC Television publicity shot.