28 10 07 195 W, 1 I - + 2 - 4 Steve Strange - Etcetera...
Etcetera the short-lived magazine from D C Thomson. The first interview I ever wrote for it was with the outrageous cross-dressing film/disco star, Divine. It was an odd choice, really. D C Thomson was not a company that was known for welcoming the outrageous. To give you an example of just how un-outrageous they were, they used to have an in-house rule that forbade the use of the word ‘pregnant’ in their magazines (being too vulgar), and favouring the word ‘expecting’. My interview with Divine was all about how he kept getting felt up strange men in bars... !
After the first two or three issues, Etcetera cut anything that smacked of the outrageous and went instead for features on cooking and knitting. Meanwhile, the competing title, Mizz went on to sell by the truckload.
Anyway, the page above comes from issue 2 of Etcetera - at a time when men in makeup were still considered fitting for their readers to see. This provides me with a flimsy excuse for linking to this fab video of Visage’s The Damned Don’t Cry...
