The Naked Truth

A few years ago, I invested in this, the authorised biography of George Harrison Marks. I wished I hadn’t. It was by far the worst book I have ever read. I should qualify that. I didn’t read the whole thing, putting it down after a couple of chapters. That was all I could take of him bigging himself up while the author stood back in awe. The blurb on the back cover was a giveaway. “George Harrison Marks appreciates women like other men appreciate pocelain, paintings, cigarette cards or trading stamps.” Are you having a laugh? It goes on: “One question he has often been asked: ‘Be frank, Mr Marks. Do you sleep with your models?’”. I didn’t get far enough to find out (and was quite frankly not bothered). To be honest, his pocket books never did much for me, being somewhat artificial. They didn’t have the genuine girl-next-door allure of ToCo Publications and their fun-filled fetishistic element. The other thing was ToCo did not allow their photographers to shout themselves from the rooftop (and have themselves photographed with their models). We know about Fullarton, Shaw and Howard at the pinnacle now, but you’d be hard pushed to know about them at the time.