womens magazine 'shock' stories are they really real ?

[romeolovedjulliet]

such thrilling titles like 'he shagged my mum then killed our neighbour' 'he raped me, i had quads but i love him' and such rubbish. the mags really have gone down the last upteen years judging by the titles. if this shit was written on here ifwould get deleted as troll fodder.
aibu to think this way ?

Yes. Everyone goes to bingo in TAB-land.

I used to read it in the fricking launderette, which makes me sound like an Eastenders character and I still don't know anyone who regularly goes to bingo!

My friend has done one. Hers was 100% over dramatised.
Her headline was along the lines of “I died whilst giving birth, and my friend saved me” when the actual story was that she went into the hospital for an induction, everything was going perfectly fine. Her husband had to leave (to collect her other 3 children) he would be back shortly and so she rang me to sit with her. She’s fine, when suddenly I noticed her gasping for air, turned out she’d had a panic attack. I pressed the button on the wall And the drs came in to sort her out. Her hubby came back and I slipped out, she had the baby about 3 hours later.
It was majorly over worked into a massive drama, but she got paid a LOT

Yes. Everyone goes to bingo in TAB-land.

It took me ages to realise what a 'bingo dabber' actually was. It was mentioned so frequently as though everybody would naturally know immediately what it was. I've only ever played bingo at the seaside as a child, where they had the little plastic doors to draw across the numbers as they're called.

Turns out it's a special kind of marker pen to help you play more bingo in less time. Some seasoned pros even have one in each hand and do two cards at once. Why not just put more numbers on each card?!

Are all of the trashy magazines - basically the same magazine in different covers - still going? I don't recall seeing so many of them on the magazine shelves these days.

I remember TaB, Chat, Thats Life, Real People, Full House - I think there was one more, but I forget the title. Do these still all exist? I know TaB's cachet was always the big-prize puzzles, but I wonder if that was chiefly intended as a shame-cover - like when men claimed to buy Playboy 'for the interesting articles'.

I haven't seen Real People or Full House lately, but I'm sure I've seen Chat and That's Life! at the tills.

Oh, another that is still going is Pick Me Up.

I wonder if they are owned by the same corporation/media company? Like newspapers often are?

Take a Break is owned by Bauer Media. The company has recently taken over a lot of local commercial radio stations like Absolute Radio abd Kiss FM. Chat is definitely a rival. It started off being owned by IPC which has been taken over by another company. TAB is the original and best. I don't know if sales have gone down now we all buy less printed media but they seem to have survived better than the more expensive 'glossies'.

Oh, another that is still going is Pick Me Up.

Thanks - that's the one I couldn't remember! Didn't they have a lot of cheesy ads at one stage with people singing along to the tune of 'Build Me Up, Buttercup' ?!

I don't know if sales have gone down now we all buy less printed media but they seem to have survived better than the more expensive 'glossies'.

I don't think they've ever had much of a web presence, have they? You'd need incognito browsing and eye salve afterwards

I subscribe to a magazine subscription service (Readly) and amongst the many weekly scandal sheets available are Best, New, Bella, Closer, Chat, Pick Me Up and RealPeople There are the golden oldies Woman, Woman’s Own and Woman’s Weekly. I have not yet opened an edition of the monthly edition of Take a Break Fate and Fortune or Chat -It’s Fate (which this month boasts a cover banner ‘ There’s a magic unicorn in my garden’), but if lockdown goes on much longer I might get desperate enough to check them out.

I'm sure I used to read Take a Break in the 1980s (on visits to my gran's house) and it was TOTALLY different. Mostly knitting patterns, boring short fiction and photos of cats, as I recall, though they still had the amazing tips on how to make a lovely drinks coaster out of your old handbag.

They must have had one hell of a revamp at some point.

"When I first met Lee, I instantly fell for his piercing blue eyes and cheeky smile"

Yes! It's always the eye colour and the cheeky smile (or occasionally hair colour), isn't it? Things which you could say about literally any human being, no matter how aesthetically challenged they might be.

I saw an old work colleague in one once and her story was horrible and sadly true. But I was a bit at her need to share it with the world tbh.

@Cherrybakewellard He had two sons with exactly the same name? Seriously???

[quote FancyPants20]@Cherrybakewellard He had two sons with exactly the same name? Seriously??? [/quote]
@FancyPants20 I shit you not. Same name, very slightly different spelling. So, so wrong.

I must defend the honour of TAB here, BeanbagMcTavish. That sounds more like Woman's Weekly. TAB was the first magazine in the UK to have the real life shock stories. There were one or two pages of fiction (long gone) and a few photos of readers' pets but I don't remember any knitting patterns

Quarentimespringclean That Readly app is amazing - Caravan Weekly, Midland Horse and Closer all on one app! Ideal for the larger family with diverse interests . Can you read all of them for £7.99? I suppose there'd be no time to do anything else.

That's hilarious! "And these are my sons, John and Jon..." Was he of below-average intelligence?

There’s a comedy series on BBC iplayer at the moment called “The Other One’ about a man who has two daughters with the same name who only find out about each other after his unexpected death. It’s quite broad humour so probably not for everyone but it’s made me laugh out loud often.

I remember reading about Chicken Shagger Man about twenty years ago. My favourite part was the way he concluded matters by chucking the semi-defrosted chicken at her and saying "It'll be fine once it's had a good rinse."

(Obviously I was only buying it for the puzzles.)

My favourite was how nobody ever just says "I lost weight". It's always "the pounds melted away"!

Quarantimespringclean

I bought Take a Break Fate and Fortune once because the cover headline was a man with a "haunted arsehole".

If you have it on the app, definitely read it. It was great.

Yes, they always have to use their own in-house cliches.

Nobody ever has a look around - their eyes scan the room.

There's never plenty of food - the table is always groaning.

Nobody is disbelieving - they simply roll their eyes.

No specified days, weeks, months or years elapse - everything just happens 'in time'.

Couples never split up - they always drift apart.

We've already established that nobody ever has sex - they romp.

Nobody has ever had a punch-up - they simply haven't always seen eye to eye.

Nobody has teenagers who are nasty vicious thugs - they're just rough diamonds (admittedly, they're no angels).

The stories are mostly true but the photos are lost likely not.

My friend years ago was a model. She posed for some photos for a magazine and was told she would be used in place of the woman who the story was about. It was a story about a girl who was addicted to tanning and was using injections and on sun beds every day. My friend is half Spanish so is darker skin toned and was given a dark spray tan for the photo shoot.

She was torn to pieces in the comments section about the story and the worst part was a close family member had suffered skin cancer plus she had also had a mole removed for suspected cancer and never left the house without sunscreen. Unless it came from a bottle she was never tanned.

Love It!

I knew there was one more - and IIRC, that one was the tawdriest of them all.