Iconic seaside tradition in danger of dying out for good after entertaining holidaymakers for over a century
GUARDIANS of Britain’s seaside heritage have put out an SoS – Save our Saucy postcards.
For well over a century, holidaymakers have chortled over risqué postcards on sale in resorts around the UK.
But in these days of texts, social media and the easily offended, the saucy postcard is in danger of dying out.
Organisers of the annual Seaside Heritage Network’s Bucket and Spade Awards have included the near-the-knuckle postcards on their list of seaside traditions to cherish.
Dr Allan Brodie, of Bournemouth University, an expert on the history of Britain’s seaside towns says: “Social media is going to spell the death of the seaside postcard.
“When you are on holiday in the UK, you see a lot of people looking at these cards.
“But I’d like to know how many people buy a postcard nowadays.
“They are part of our unique seaside history and we should not lose them for ever.”
One place you can still see them is in Britain’s only saucy postcard museum. So The Sun put on its knotted hanky and took a ticket to Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
The Museum of Rude, as it is nicknamed, is dedicated to the work of Britain’s “Picasso of the Pier” Donald McGill.
This man, who looked like a Victorian bank manager, produced 12,000 saucy designs and sold almost 200million postcards in a near 60-year career.
McGill was a complex character.
He spent his days drawing cartoons about sex and boozed-up holidaymakers, but quit one company he worked for because of his bosses’ drinking and womanising.
Brian Harris, 77, chairman of the historic society that runs the Museum of Ryde says: “Some of the other artists were vulgar and still are. You can still get very rude postcards today.
“But McGill was a much nicer sort — just on the cusp of vulgarity. We have all got memories as children of our mums and dads dragging us away from the card stands.
“Then they’d spend half an hour laughing over the postcards themselves.
“Later, when you grew up, you understood what they’d been laughing at.”
During World War II, George Orwell, author of dystopian novel 1984, studied McGill’s work.
Orwell wrote: “More than half, perhaps three-quarters, of the jokes are sex jokes, ranging from the harmless to the all-but-unprintable.
“Next to sex, the hen-pecked husband is the typical joke. There is no such thing as a happy marriage. No man gets the better of a woman in an argument.”
But saucy postcards became so controversial that in 1953 thousands of them were seized by police in shop raids in seaside towns all over the country.
In Ryde, the local vicar complained, and 5,000 cards were confiscated and destroyed.
The following year, McGill was prosecuted under the obscenities act and 21 of his cards were banned.
The Museum now sells those banned cards to tourists.
Brian says: “They are quite tame by today’s standards, and McGill always argued that they were innocent — unless you had a dirty mind to get the joke.
“In those days, it was more about morality. The fact that a girl didn’t know the name of the father of her child was a moral problem, and that sort of thing wasn’t allowed.
“Donald McGill really put the seaside postcard on the map. It’s not only me saying that.
“Ronnie Barker — of the two Ronnies — and the film director Michael Winner were both avid collectors of McGill’s postcards.”
Sales of saucy postcards have dropped dramatically in recent years — partly because of technology.
Brian says: “They were the text messages of their day — you could send a short note to friends and family on them and it would get there the same day.
“And the naughty designs were like modern-day memes.
“They are part of our history and well worth saving.
“We don’t want them to be lost and forgotten.”
*You can vote for saucy post cards in the Seaside Heritage Network Bucket & Spade Awards on https://seasideheritage.org.uk/bucket-spade-list/vote-for-2024-winners/
Voting closes on August 31.
Winners will be announced on September 16 in Weston-super-Mare.