''Fiesta'' was a British

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adult magazine Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines or sex magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as i ...

published monthly by Galaxy Publications Limited. It was a sister publication of '' Knave'' magazine, launched two years later. Launched in 1966 by the British photographer

Russell Gay Russell Gay (born ) was a British glamour photographer. He was known in the 1950s for his discovery of the model Sabrina. In 1957, Gay was described by '' Art and Photography'' magazine as "the UK’s top glamour photographer". In the 1960s, und ...

, ''Fiesta'' quickly became Britain's top-selling adult magazine. Dubbed "the magazine for men which women love to read", the monthly magazine's readers were responsible, in the early 1970s, for creating a feature that has been adopted in magazines worldwide: Readers' Wives. Central to this theme was the monthly "Readers' Wives Striptease" section, which shows a set of photos of a supposed wife or girlfriend of a reader being photographed by ''Fiesta'' undressing (often, but not always out of everyday clothing) to full nudity. The Readers' Wives section was the subject of a song by

John Cooper Clarke John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet and comedian who styled himself as a "punk poet" in the late 1970s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums and performed on stage with punk and post-punk ...

on his album ''

Disguise in Love ''Disguise in Love'' is the second studio album by John Cooper Clarke, first released in 1978. (It followed '' Ou est la maison de fromage?''). Most of the tracks are spoken over musical accompaniment provided by Clarke's band The Invisible Gir ...

''. As well as its Readers' Wives and photographic girl sets, ''Fiesta'' was built around a core of readers' letters from men and women. In addition there were male-interest features, cartoons and reviews, sexy puzzles and a regular erotic horoscope, together with ''Firkin'', an underground-comics style cartoon strip drawn by

Hunt Emerson Hunt Emerson (born 1952) is an English cartoonist. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s. His many comic strips and graphic novels have ...

and written by

Tym Manley Tym or TYM may refer to: * Tym (Ob), a river in Krasnoyarsk Krai and Tomsk Oblast, Russia * Tym (Sakhalin), a river on Sakhalin Island, Russia * Alice Tym (born 1942), American tennis player * Stanisław Tym Stanisław Aleksy Tym (; 17 July 1937 ...

Mary Millington Mary Ruth Maxted (née Quilter; 30 November 1945 – 19 August 1979), known professionally as Mary Millington from 1974 onwards, was an English model, call girl and pornographic actress. Her appearance in the short softcore film '' Sex is ...

modelled for the magazine in 1974, prior to her exclusive signing to work for David Sullivan's magazines.

Nicholas Whittaker Nicholas Whittaker (born 1953) is a British writer of non-fiction books on popular culture, often incorporating autobiographical extracts from his own life. He was born in Shrewsbury and lived in Burton upon Trent until 1975. Whittaker has worked ...

, journalist and author of ''Platform Souls'', ''Blue Period'' and ''Sweet Talk'', worked for the company from 1980 to 1982, when he left to go and work for

Paul Raymond Publications Paul Raymond Publications is a British publisher of softcore monthly pornographic magazine titles, including '' Escort'', '' Club International'', ''Mayfair'', '' Men Only'', '' Men's World'' and '' Razzle''. The company's lawyers scrutinise the ...

, where he played a major role in establishing the new '' Razzle'' magazine. His experiences at ''Fiesta'' and ''Razzle'' are the subject of his book ''Blue Period''. Sales of ''Fiesta'' were 238,000 in 1991 but had dropped to 162,000 in 1996, mirroring the decline in the market for softcore magazines at that time. Nevertheless, in the mid-2000s it was still the country's top selling adult magazine. ''Fiesta'' ceased production in 2020, after 54 years of publication. see final issue, Volume 54, No. 4. Note: this page combines entries for this magazine with the unrelated 1956-era magazine.

See also

References

Further reading