Sure you all know by now that I'm mad keen about the nude human body (when I'm drawing a life model, it irks me if they even have a watch or pendant on - I want it all OFF!). But I also love a bit of lingerie, and no one wears stockings and a pair of French knickers better than Jane, a character who graced the pages of the Daily Mirror in the middle decades of the last century.
Jane is a reluctant secret agent packed off on missions by her incompetent bosses and invariably losing some if not all of her clothes in the process. I first came across her as an impressionable teen when I was searching among my dad's books for something to read. He had a paperback which collected a few of the stories. One in particular caught my attention: "Nature in the Raw", in which Jane has to visit her aunt, who is staying at a place called the Sunkiste Nature Camp:
As a teen with a febrile imagination, already fascinated by exhibitionism and voyeurism, Jane was just the kind of character I could relate to, and I loved the gauzy lingerie in which she went about her top secret missions. Although sometimes she didn't even get to keep that:
The paperback my dad owned was a TV tie-in to a BBC adaptation that ran briefly in the early 1980s, starring Glynis Barber. Click here to see one of the stories on YouTube.
In terms of humour, visuals and acting style, it now seems pretty dated and old-fashioned, obviously, but then there's certainly not much else like it, so if you're a fan of nostalgic cheesecake, innocent sauciness and twanging garters, it's worth a look. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Jane has a dachshund! Sweet!
I'd love to see Jane going intrepidly into action, jiggling her bits, once again - maybe in a really camp stage show! I'm up for writing the script. Anyone fancy playing Jane?
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