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Fish and chips, 99 Flakes, and sand in your shoes… there’s nothing quite like a British seaside holiday. And if you grew up visiting places like Blackpool, Brighton or Bognor (like many of us did here at Sky HISTORY), chances are you’ve giggled at a postcard with a buxom cartoon lady and a red-faced man.
Naughty? A bit.
Tasteless? Often.
Iconic? Absolutely.
Seaside postcards are part of the great British holiday tradition. Right up there with overpriced rock and losing your sunglasses on the beach. But how did these little rectangles of innuendo come to be? And why did we become a nation so obsessed with sending smut through the post?
The very first postcards weren’t cheeky at all. In fact, when they arrived in Britain in the late 1800s, they were strictly practical. They were mostly used by businesses and the very sensible Victorians to pass along short messages.
But things started to loosen up around the turn of the century, thanks in part to the rise of the seaside holiday. And of course, helped along by the completely natural human infatuation with sex. With train travel expanding and the idea of annual leave catching on, working-class families started flocking to the coast for a bit of rest, sea air and (if you were lucky) sunshine. It didn’t take long for postcards to become part of the experience.
Fast forward to the 1930s and you’re in the heyday of the saucy postcard. These weren’t just cutesy images of donkeys on the beach or pastel-painted piers. They were full-blown comedic artworks, often featuring double entendres so blatant they barely counted as innuendo.
Enter Donald McGill, the undisputed king of the genre. A cartoonist with a wicked sense of humour and an eye for the absurd, McGill churned out thousands of designs featuring hen-pecked husbands, buxom landladies and innocent situations taken entirely the wrong way.
These postcards were cheap, cheerful and designed to make you chuckle (or blush) when they arrived in the post. McGill alone produced around 12,000 designs which he cheekily referred to as a ‘skit on pornography’
. Needless to say, he definitely made his mark in the erotic art genre. You could buy his postcards at almost any seaside newsagent and pop them in the post to your nan, your mates or your secret crush. Around 200 million Brits did just this!
And yes, they were a bit of a rebellion. In an era of stiff upper lips and strict moral codes, a saucy postcard was a safe, silly way to push boundaries without actually causing offence. Not quite as raunchy as posting a sex toy, but definitely a little spicier than your average greeting card.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the cheeky charm of McGill and his contemporaries. Throughout the 1950s, local councils and police forces started cracking down on what they saw as public indecency. Postcards were seized, shops were fined and McGill himself was dragged into court under the Obscene Publications Act. To be fair, the act dated to 1857, so it was a little archaic to say the least. He was almost 80 years old at the time, which makes the whole thing even more absurd.
The postcard survived, but it had to tone things down. By the 1970s and 80s, the popularity of saucy seaside art began to fade, replaced by more wholesome images of sunsets, sailboats, donkeys and polite greetings.
Still, the legacy lived on. The humour that McGill helped pioneer can still be found in everything from satirical cartoons to bawdy pantomime jokes. And you’ll still spot racks of old-school postcards in souvenir shops up and down the coast.
Fewer people send postcards in the age of WhatsApp and Instagram Stories, but there’s something undeniably charming about them. Today you’ll find cheeky postcards in seaside gift shops, vintage stores and framed on café walls. There’s even an entire museum dedicated to McGill in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Proof that a well-placed innuendo never really goes out of fashion.
Want a little piece of history? Next time you’re down in Brighton, Scarborough or Weston-super-Mare, pop into a gift shop and pick up a saucy postcard. Send it to a friend or stick it on your fridge as a reminder that British holidays (and British humour) have always had a bit of naughtiness to them.
History’s full of unexpected (and sometimes tongue-in-cheek) surprises. Just ask love-hungry historian Katie Kennedy, host of saucy new show History Crush. Or if you want more deep dives like this straight to your inbox, subscribe to the Sky HISTORY newsletter.