Web Page No 2624

12^th October 2019

Tit Bits

 1^st Picture: 1946 Christmas Cover Joseph Stalin

2^nd Picture: 1955 a young Dame Joan Collins

3^rd Picture:  1982 Summer Special

4^th Picture: Montage of Tit Bits covers

Tit Bits

Tit-Bits from all the interesting Books, Periodicals, and Newspapers of the World, more commonly known as Tit-Bits, was a British weekly magazine founded by an early father of popular journalism George Newnes on 22nd October 1881.

This was the magazine that no one appeared to buy but everyone seemed to read. It was the tatty and dogeared magazine that young teenage boys giggled over in the hairdressers as they waited their turn. There was always a plentiful supply of old back number to look through.

In 1886, the magazine's headquarters moved from Manchester to London where it paved the way for popular journalism — most significantly, the Daily Mail was founded by Alfred Harmsworth, a contributor to Tit-Bits, and the Daily Express was launched by Arthur Pearson, who worked at Tit-Bits for five years after winning a competition to get a job on the magazine.

From the outset, the magazine was a mass-circulation commercial publication on cheap newsprint which soon reached sales of between 400,000 and 600,000. Like a mini-encyclopedia it presented a diverse range of tit-bits of information in an easy-to-read format, with the emphasis on human interest stories concentrating on drama and sensation. It also featured short stories and full-length fiction, including works by authors such as Rider Haggard and Isaac Asimov, plus three very early stories by Christopher Priest.

Virginia Woolf submitted her first article to the paper in 1890, at the age of eight, but it was turned down. The first humorous article by P. G. Wodehouse, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", appeared in Tit-Bits in November 1900. During the first world war Ivor Novello won a Titbits competition to write a song soldiers could sing at the front: he penned Keep the Home Fires Burning.

Pin-ups appeared on the magazine's covers from 1939 but fully clothed and by 1955 circulation peaked at 1,150,000. At the beginning of 1973 Tit-Bits lost the hyphen from its masthead. In 1979 Reveille (a weekly tabloid with a virtually identical profile) was merged into Titbits, and the magazine was briefly rebranded as Titbits incorporating Reveille. This however long title was dropped in July 1981 and it reverted to just plain Tit Bits. On 18^th  July 1984, under its last editor Paul Hopkins, Titbits was selling only 170,000 copies and was taken over by Associated Newspapers' Weekend. At the time, the Financial Times described Titbits as “the 103-year-old progenitor of Britain's popular press”. Weekend itself closed in 1989.

In All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton, the author contrasts Tit-Bits with the Times, saying: "Let any honest reader... ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of The Times, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of Tit-Bits, which is full of short jokes."

Reference to the magazine is also made in James Joyce's Ulysses, George Orwell's Animal Farm, James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being, H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon and AJ Cronin's The Stars Look Down. It has been also mentioned in Stanley Houghton's play The Dear Departed. HG Wells also mentioned it in his book Experiment in Autobiography. In the closing scene of the classic British comedy film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) starring Alec Guiness, the protagonist Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) is approached by a journalist (Arthur Lowe) from Tit-Bits.

The magazine name survived as a glossy adult monthly Titbits International.

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Peter

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News and Views:

On this day 12th October 1960-65:

On 12/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance and the number one album was Tottenham Hotspur. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £not very interesting and 13.68 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was No Hiding Place (AR).

On 12/10/1961 the number one single was Kon-Tiki - The Shadows and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Heller's Catch-22 published.

On 12/10/1962 the number one single was Telstar - The Tornadoes and the number one album was Best of Ball Barber & Bilk. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 12/10/1963 the number one single was Do You Love Me? - Brian Poole & the Tremoloes and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 12/10/1964 the number one single was Oh Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was XVIIIth Olympics in Tokyo

On 12/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.