"Many Americans pride themselves as a nation of being the first and the best. Well, let me tell that isn't always so and that when it comes to providing an eyeful, whichever side of the Atlantic Ocean one finds themselves, the Blackpool visitor to the seaside often wins out!
I learned yesterday of the recent death of Pat Stewart, who became a 1950's iconic seaside image and the bedroom pin-up of every schoolboy with an ounce of testosterone going spare. All the boys over 10 years of age had a photo of 17-year-old Pat on their walls or a copy of 'The Picture Post Album' which had a picture of Pat in her spotty dress hidden beneath their mattress.
The image of Pat helped to make her world renown and to launch a show-business career. She later went on to work with Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Joan Collins and the comedian, Benny Hill. She also became one of 'The Tiller Girls' who danced at the 'Blackpool North Pier' in 1951.
Pat, who died a great grandmother expressed her wish to wear her famous polka-dot dress at her funeral. On that day in question, as cameraman Bert Hardy clicked, a sea breeze lifted Pat's skirt, allowing the saucy seaside snap to become an iconic image worldwide. It is reported that the editor of the Picture Post magazine initially banned the photograph for being 'too risque' and when it appeared two weeks later for public consumption (or should that be more aptly described as pubic attention), Pat's 'underwear' had been airbrushed out. Pat, who came from Featherstone in Yorkshire revealed just before she died that, 'It wasn't my knickers in the picture as I had a swimming costume on underneath the spotty dress.I was just young and enjoying life.'
Back to the Americans who like to come first and finest in whatever they do before us Brits. On this occasion, however, it would appear that the great and glamorous Marilyn Monroe thought to hijack Pat's moment of gushing innocence three years after Pat's spontaneous experience on the Blackpool seafront.
It just looks like 'Fings ain't what they used to be.'" William Forde: May 11th, 2017.