School Friend had a mixture of comic strips and stories and later joined up with Girl's Crystal.

Sorry to be pedantic but I seem to remember that Schoolfriend joined up with June and became June and Schoolfriend in the mid sixties.

Are you going to put "pink" on your list? Who, having read her, could forget Sugar Jones, the rock star who appeared to be young and posh but was, in truth, an old bag with a cockney accent? -and was, therefore, a bad person.

Have you thought about doing a piece about the splendid toot that comics give out? Is it the same toot ? (bet it is, more or less) - Metta

At some point this magazine either joined up with another or changed its name, because I used to read it when it was called "June & School Friend", which would have been in about 1970.
- Barbara

School Friend was around long before the 1950s - in fact, it was first published in 1919. However, it folded after about fifteen years, and was re-launched in 1950. For more information on School Friend and other schoolgirl magazines, look at "'You're a Brick Angela' A New Look at Girl's Fiction from 1839-1975" by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig. - Squit

Ah yes, School Friend. Her most enduring legacies were the Storyteller, the pipe-smoking teller of spooky stories and Bessie Bunter, the sister of Billy Bunter. Bessie Bunter is the guzzler of Cliff House boarding school. Her brain (of which she shows nothing of in her schoolwork) is always coming up with sneaky ideas to swipe food, dodge classes, or raise money. These sometimes work out well for Bessie (after a fashion), or she ends up guzzling something even better than she anticipated. Other times things backfire, and she ends up writing lines or doing some other punishment task meted out by the headmistress, Miss "Stackers" Stackpole.

Bessie and the Storyteller were so popular that they survived two merges - School Friend merging with June, then June with Tammy. When Misty merged with Tammy in 1980, Bessie shifted from a regular weekly to a character to be seen "from time to time." When Jinty merged with Tammy in 1981, Bessie's days were well and truly numbered, along with the Storyteller, Wee Sue (from the 1973 Sandie merge) and Molly Mills, who had been with Tammy from the first issue. - Briony

If you have any other information on School Friend please drop us a line.