Take a Break magazine - guess the story.

[GrapevineFires]

My mum used to buy it weekly. I haven't read one since my teens, but I had the urge this week to do some of the puzzles. I had forgotten all about the sensational, misleading headlines.

This week's cover headline: "Mum wanted a baby so she took my TWIN GIRLS. Only ONE came home ALIVE" (Capital words all TAB).

What do you think actually happened?

Anyone got any other 'gripping' headlines with a very different story?

@ReallySpicyCurry

I quit my job as a bingo teller so Dave worked all hours, providing for me and our triplets, LelliKelli, 4, and Rekjavik, 2.5. So I wasn't suspicious when he said he had to work that Saturday.

"I'll get that carpet slotted right in, good and hard" he said "Keep some of that takeaway for me, eh love"

I suspected nothing as I plated up his chicken balls and texted my best friend Val, 59, inviting her round for some cheeky fizz and a giggle. But Val didn't reply. That wasn't like her, I wondered

Ha, this is great!!

Val and Dave are now married with twins of their own

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

I remember every single story had to include the phrase "You see" at least once.

"I gazed into the mirror and carefully applied lipstick. Then I sighed sadly and did it again. I was a conjoined twin, you see. I thought no man would ever want me. That was before I met Mike. He was a carpet fitter with a twinkle in his eye and a cheeky chappie smile. Within a week, I had a pineapple growing in my stomach."

I just laughed my dinner out!!!!

I was bored with my perfectly nice jewelry holder that was an actual jewelry holder so I decided to tye together and paint / glitter Week old breadsticks Leftover from my nans buffet . Cost nothing and really brightens up my bedroom

And when the toothless love god Dave the potato first swans into their life, he gets ‘trilled’ at for being so damn hot.

Doesn’t deter him though, as he’s met the kids by tea time the next day and moved in by the following weekend.

‘It was fast, but the kids adored their new daddy and it felt so right’.

I recall one fab story was about a gardener who was shagging girls from the nearby girls only boarding school. He posed for this fab picture pointing up at the window where they would signal him from but he was pointing up with his spade hahaha

My two greatest ambitions are to write for TAB and to become a headline writer for the super soaraway sun. (The Sun one has been ever since Inverness Caledonian Thistle (tiny shit football team) beat Celtic (awesomely great top league football team) and the headline was 'Super caley go ballistic, celtic are atrocious.)

But I digress.

Mam had always been there for me, till I met carpet fitter Dave. His eyes always seemed to have an extra twinkle when she was around. I was so happy that someone liked my mam almost as much as I did. Till I went round to her house one day and found them rolling around on the new shag-pile.

I have been the subject of a double page feature in one of these mags. Can’t remember which one, it was one of those celeb goss/real life mashup ones

I had a subscription (my secret shame) but I cancelled it when I read a "story" about a lady who was in the shower when the water to the house got cut off. She had shampoo in her hair and couldn't wash it out. Hubby found a bottle of water and brought it to her, saving the day. That was the whole story. She didnt fall pregnant or marry a goldfish or anything.

No one walks downstairs. They 'pad'
No one works past two months pregnant.
Children 'chirp' , people who agree with you 'chime'
No diet works.

The obsession with fronted adverbials means that year 6 writing always reminds me of the style of TAB. "Laughing, I went downstairs.... grinning, I realised Dave was naked.... shocked, I saw he'd got his cock stuck in the hoover" etc.

The Top Tips make me laugh when someone wants to replace something like an ironing board cover but instead of going to Asda and getting one for a few quid they buy all sorts of fabrics and extras and spend hours. The finished project costs more than double what an ironing board cover would cost and looks like something even Blue Peter would reject.

I remember a woman who had a (younger male) lodger move in, they started a relationship and she couldn’t stop having orgasms. All the time. She went to a&e in the end and there was a photo of her diagnosis and the pair of them, him grinning, her looking a bit fed up. She took to wearing nighties all the time because they were loose and she thought they wouldn’t set it off. They were in it again a few months later and he had said all the older ladies in the local area had read about it and kept winking at him. I think the headline the second time was “She’s Still Going!” or something. That was about 15 years ago, a colleague used to bring the magazines in at lunch and we’d all read them. I sometimes wonder if she’s still going now, poor woman.

@x2boys

I remember reading a top tip years ago possibly not TAB but a similar type of magazine,when dusting those hard to reach skirting boards rather then bending down just pop an old pair of socks over your shoes and run your foot over the skirting board 🤣

That's brilliant! I'm definitely nicking that idea

Does the skirting board thing count as a top tip if you just do it anyway with your normal socks on?

@LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett

Does the skirting board thing count as a top tip if you just do it anyway with your normal socks on?

No, it has to be old socks popped on - or maybe popsocks?

Me and DD love the Take a Shite page on fb/instagram. It's hilarious.
A lot of the "nifty/trendy/jazzy" ideas look like things I used to make with 3 year olds when helped at a toddler group.

Just looked on the TAB website... there's a dating section! Does this mean we can all meet our own cheeky chappie Dave?!

It was a surrogacy story

Do you think the perennial TAB emphasis on Cheeky Dave's 'twinkle' is because

(a) most people have eyes, even if they're tubby, bald and have a face like a robber's dog, so it's not stretching the truth any more than TAB writers are comfortable with
and
(b) it manages to suggest without actual smut that Cheeky Dave is a stallion in the sack?

It's the most overdetermined twinkle in the media.

I remember one where she fell in love with a "Brad Pitt lookalike". He looked more like Sloth from the Goonies 😂

Also if you are overweight you "squeeze your curves" into a dress but if you have lost weight you "ease yourself into a slinky size 10"

I loved the “Boot sale tales”.
The amount of utter shit that could be made from somebody else’s shit .

I love them. There always seems to be a story about a woman who has fallen in love with a ghost who haunts her 1960s semi detached house.

wrong'uns always 'smirk'.
And those headlines where it says Dave the carpet fitter BEDDED MY TWIN and it turns out it was just some random girl who also has brown hair.

I don't mind the silly true life stuff but I absolutely hate when they warm over notorious serial killer/spousal murder cases. I'm more embarrassed to buy the mag when it's got something like that on the front. It just strikes me as ghoulish and prurient. I feel less like that about the true life stories re domestic abuse because these magazines do a really good job of hammering home what an abusive relationship looks like and that you can and should leave. That's an important message.

I remember one " Toilet had TEETH and EYES"

I remember a top tip in a magazine where the lady put sanitary towels in her shoes instead of new insoles. She was so pleased that they even had a sticky strip to keep them stuck down.