How times change! I’ve just discovered an article from the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.
Under the heading ‘What I Want In A Wife’, Cosmo asked: ‘What do Britain’s most eligible bachelors look for in a wife?’
The previous month, the magazine had been published in the UK for the very first time.
Back then, it was regarded as modern and cutting-edge, the voice of go‑getting feminism. Yet, nearly half a century on, it has the air of a museum piece.
One of the most poignant aspects of the feature is how many of ‘Britain’s most eligible bachelors’ were, in fact, secretly gay, obliged to pretend to be heterosexual.
‘I’ll know my ideal woman when I meet her,’ said the young Ian McKellen. ‘She’ll love the theatre, but not be an actress. She’ll love to argue, but won’t insist on winning. She’ll be beautiful, generous, stylish — all without trying. An aristocrat without a title.’
Then, perhaps semaphoring the truth about his sexuality, he added wryly: ‘She doesn’t exist.’
‘If I did marry,’ said Robert Carrier, a famously camp chef of the era, ‘it would have to be someone paper-thin — they say opposites attract — who’s able to eat and eat and still look sensational.’
Others were more openly misogynistic. ‘I think of an old-fashioned wife who knows her duties,’ said the gender-bending fashion designer Michael Fish. ‘I was once told you choose a wife like you choose a cow — so that there’s regular times when she comes in for milking. I wouldn’t want her trendy.’
Most of the heterosexual men interviewed were equally chauvinist. ‘She must be a first-class cook and not moan about the housekeeping money she wouldn’t get,’ said a champion weight-lifter called Brian Strange.
Today, even the most bullish male feels obliged to pretend to be a feminist.
Who now would dare issue these specifications for a future wife? ‘She’d have to be up-beat, punctual and independent, and never jealous. And positively, but positively anti-Women’s Lib.’ This was the trendy actor John Hurt, widely regarded as an easy-going liberal.
The classical pianist John Lill was no less uninhibited when it came to describing his perfect wife. ‘The best definition came from Denis Norden who wanted “a deaf and dumb nymphomaniac living above a pub”,’ he said.
I suspect he thought he had gone a little too far, as he swiftly delivered this clumsy backtrack: ‘Seriously, I prefer girls to look feminine and unneurotic rather than rattling skeletons. Give me a well-made, wholesome female any day.’
Hard to believe, but Cosmoplitan magazine included both Benny Hill and Jimmy Savile in this list of ‘Britain’s most eligible bachelors’. ‘I’ve lots of charming girlfriends’, said Benny Hill. ‘One I take to the theatre, one to boxing and one I leave at home as it’s more fun.’
Of course, every word ever spoken by Jimmy Savile is sinister in hindsight, yet there is something particularly creepy about his throwaway dehumanisation of women.
‘Marriage, like climbing Mount Everest, is a thing that petrifies me, he said. ‘She would have to look exactly like a Rolls-Royce Corniche drophead. But, seeing as I already have one, I’ll sit the next one out, thank you.’
Forty-eight years ago, the actor Oliver Reed was already regarded as a throwback, so the women of Cosmopolitan must have known the type of comment he would make. Sure enough, he rose to the challenge.
‘Femininity is important. I hate the bull-dyke Women’s Lib type of bird,’ he began, before adding: ‘The best women for me are those who have plenty of drive but in the end like to be dominated. I like a girl who can understand and then tolerate me, and, above all, she must have good knockers.’
The following month’s Cosmo carried a feature that now seems every bit as dated.
‘Do you sometimes feel that your performance in bed is great but your dialogue could be more effective?’ they asked.
Lines they thought suitable for grateful women to say to their boyfriends included: ‘Where do I send the cheque?’, ‘And to think I once thought I was frigid’ and ‘I reckon you could cope with six girls but don’t let me catch you near one of them.’
In these gloomy days, it may be worth remembering the perils of nostalgia.