alyna: Centefold Venus of the Month 9: February

Linda's centrefold from 33 years ago

We move outside the big two this month to return to February 1977 and the then 18 year old Linda Lusardi from Britain's Mayfair magazine.

Linda, or Lynda, as the pictorial had it, had been discovered by Photographer John Allum's wife model, and later photographer herself, Joanie.

Photographers John and Joanie Allum today

Linda was born in Palmer's Green in North London (now more famous for the fact that it has the largest Cypriot population outside Cyprus) and at the time this pictorial appeared she was still living with her parents in nearby Winchmore Hill.

Linda tweaks her self into action

Linda was about to make her first Page 3 appearance in The Sun newspaper and would later be voted "Best Page 3 girl ever" in 2005.

As we mentioned in a post over on The Adventures of Triple P we are not entirely convinced by her looks later in her career but feel that here, as a teenager, her face was somewhat softer than it became later. She certainly displays her magnificent 35C-23-34 figure to advantage in these pictures.

Girls and poles, eh?

Later in her career she denied ever doing full frontal shots but even in those pre-internet days it didn't take long for pictures from this shoot and another even more explicit set from Fiesta (under the name Suzanne) the following year to resurface. UK Penthouse republished some of these shots together with some from Fiesta in 1985. She also appeared in some continental magazines so fibbing about it was hopeless, especially as she appeared under her real name in this pictorial!

Lovely back view

Latterly, she has had a successful career as an actress. She had a role on dreadful Yorkshire based farming soap Emmerdale back in 2007 but left in 2008 to "concentrate on her family". Only yesterday, however, she said she would like to go back to Emmercale. Obviously the family is not as exciting as a regular pay cheque!

Linda is one of the most searched models on The Adventures of Triple P site so although we are not a huge fan we are, as ever, very happy to deliver what our discerning readers want.

One problem, that seems to fox many people, however, is how to spell her surname. We get a baffling collection of alternative spellings: Lusadi, Luserdi, Lucardi (obviously not Italian speakers as that would be a hard "c") etc.

February 1977 cover

Here we have the cover of the issue in question. Below we can see a shot done at the same time which Agent Triple P remembers with great affection.

Calendar girl

This was used in a calendar which must have appeared in 1979 as we remember this picture being in it. It was on the wall of the office in Heathrow Airport where Triple P worked for a time between school and university. It was very much our favourite picture of the twelve.

Needless to say you couldn't have a calendar up in an office like this anymore as the politically correct "wimmin" (or even worse, politically correct men) would make you take it down.

There were a number of women working in that office at that time and none of them objected to the calendar at all and in fact used to join in the debate about who was the best girl. We seem to remember that Linda's picture was everyone's favourite.

Splendid!

In fact, when Triple P left one of the girls in the office gave us the page from the calendar as a goodbye present! She was also suggesting that perhaps we could take some pictures of her. However, she was 28 at the time and Triple P was only 18 so we found her far too intimidating to follow her up on it, sadly, as she was a very finely contructed young lady indeed.

Mayfair issue 1

Mayfair is now the most collectable mens' magazine in the UkK, consistently going for highr prices than its contemporaries. We recently saw this first issue being advertised at around £500. The magazine was first published by Fisk publishing in August 1966 riding on the back of the success of Penthouse, which had first appeared in Britain the year before.

The brainchild of Brian Fisk, the editor was Kenneth Bound who would stay at the helm until 1990. The magazine was very succesful and in 1968 it took over its slightly earlier (1964) rival King. In 1982 Robert Maxwell tried to buy the title from Fisk's widow. At this point the magazine's circulation was around 430,000 a month. Maxwell said: 'It is the Playboy of the British magazine world. It is not a "girlie" magazine - the best evidence of this is that it is the only one of its type which WH Smith distribute as well as Playboy.'

Bound, however, launched a management buyout and ran it for another seven years before selling to Paul Raymond publications who thereby acquired their last main rival (circulation was nearly 300,000 copies a month at this point).

Mayfair is still published but is more explicit than in the Fisk/Bound era. Unlike the Paul Raymond publications it never really followed Penthouse down the explicit genitalia route in the mid seventies and these pictures of Linda are typical of the level of explicitness shown from the magazine in the late seventies.

Agent Triple P is, of course, a completist so will finish this entry with half a dozen pictures taken by John Allum during the shoot which didn't appear in the February 1977 magazine.