Hilary Fannin: Dear Cathy and Claire, are you still out there?

‘Dear Cathy and Claire, I get so depressed when I think about growing up and getting married – the thing all girls are supposed to want. My 19-year-old sister is married and I don’t fancy her life at all. Her and Jim and the baby live in one room, she never cleans up and there are nappies drying everywhere. She used to be pretty and fun, now she’s a mess and never stops moaning. Is this what I’m going to be like in four years’ time?”

I was walking past a second-hand bookshop in Dublin last week when I was stopped in my tracks by a great big glossy softback book in the window: The Best of Jackie. I was at the till as fast as my cork-soled wedges could carry me.

The book, subtitled The Best Thing for Girls – Next to Boys!, is a compilation of the best of Jackie magazine, a publication aimed at 12- to 16-year-old girls, which was on the newsagents' shelves from 1964 to 1993, and in its heyday sold more than a million copies a week.

The magazine featured breathless pop news, funky fashion advice and revealing personality tests, Your Letters (each published missive earning the writer £1) and, of course, Cathy and Claire, the well-thumbed, much-discussed problem page.

Instruction manual

Jackie was an instruction manual for teen survival whose reach stretched to these dripping, gaberdine-belted shores. For those of us lolling around on our candlewick bedspreads in our Bay City Rollers socks, waiting for the test card to dissolve and The Partridge Family to start, it served a minor but indispensable social function.

How else were you supposed to know what to do when a boy stuck his tongue in your mouth or your marshmallow squares adhered to your baking tray or your favourite, and possibly only, pair of jeans needed a super-dooper knee patch?

Now, here in my hand, was 30 years’ worth of dreamy designs for bedrooms, step-by-step guides to disco dancing, deadly important horoscopes, essential expertise on holiday romances, sure-fire tips on how to be popular, potent advice on dusting down your dating techniques and seas of Donny Osmond snaps.

A whole ark of Clearasil-scented reminiscences came flooding back: of bus-stop break-ups and heart bruise, of pudding-bowl haircuts and baby-blue eyeshadow. And, alongside, ran a memory of yearning for something indefinable, something you could reach for but never grasp, something even more elusive than a crushed velvet midi-dress or the new David Cassidy single.Maybe it was simply a longing to be grown-up, to be independent, to taste freedom, to push beyond bedroom walls festooned with posters of boys in bell-bottoms, to move beyond familiar streets.

Conformist advice

Not that Jackie was going to lead the charge, judging by some of the conformist advice. Take this from a Jackie special on "problem boys", specifically "domineering types": "Traditionally men are supposed to be domineering and women are supposed to be gentle and submissive, so even if you think you are a women's lib girl, chances are that in your emotional life you're a cavewoman."

Or this from a feature extolling the virtues of anti-perspirant: “Dampness is a confidence ruiner. Clever girls know they’ll suffer nervous tension on holiday.”

Maybe it was time to start buying Cosmopolitan.

“Dear Cathy and Claire, I used to be really keen on my boyfriend, but now I’ve gone off him. Trouble is it’s my birthday next week and I know he’s bought me a solid gold locket that I admired. Would it be really bad if . . ?”

“Dear Cathy and Claire, My boyfriend’s brother is 25 and he’s married, he’s really nice to me and puts his arm around me when we go to visit him and his wife. I keep hoping he’s going to ask me out. Do you think he will?”

Dear Cathy and Claire, are you still out there? Still ready to dispense advice, to tell us to drink plenty of water and get plenty of sleep and learn to say no and stand up for ourselves?

“You’re in control of your own life, you can make it as good or bad as you like!” you wrote in response to that young girl whose sister was drowning in marital disappointment and drying nappies.

We were listening, you know. Honestly. But sometimes it takes more than a denim knee-patch to sew us back together.