Bristow: Miss Pretty

You are in:

Outside C-Ps

Miss Pretty of Kleenaphone

The ultimate sex symbol, she sweeps up from time to time in her little pink van to stimulate the frustrated imaginations of the massed ranks of C-P workers. She appears very early on in the strip, in August 1962, as announced by Bristow thus:

Strip 151 was published in the Evening Standard in August 1962. Apologies for poor quality of scan

Bristow is rapidly disillusioned. Not only does she ignore him but Sampson of Sales goes on a date with her instead in a scene from Bristow (1966)

This strip was published in Bristow (1966). It was not published in the Evening Standard

. A rather similar episode follows when Fudge calls Bristow into his office just as Miss Pretty is about to service his phone and when he comes out she has gone strip 1606

This strip was published in the Evening Standard in April 1966. This scan is from the Sydney Morning Herald October 1966

But true love cannot be denied. The sight of her Kleenaphone van wobbling to a halt outside the C-P building stimulates another rush of hormones and Bristow is one again ready to throw himself at her feet. The trouble is that being in love does tend to interfere with other things - like work strip 4292

Strip 4292 was published in the Evening Standard in January 1975 and in Bristow Latest. This scan is from the Melbourne Age January 1975

Just hanging round with a dirty telephone never seems to work. But Bristow has no more luck when he actually tries to talking to the delightful young sanitiser - he should learn not to pose as a brain surgeon strip 4521

Strip 4521 was published in Living Death in the Buying Department. The Evening Standardwas not published on the day (27 November 1975) that matches this strip number. This scan is from the Sydney Morning Herald December 1975

. In any case on those days he has spent extra time preparing, he is more likely to be fobbed off with her plain (to put it mildly) colleague, Miss Dimmitty,

(Extract from strip 2585 published in the Evening Standard in July 1969 and in Bristow (1970).

whose fun in life is disentangling the knotted cords of the office phones. Meanwhile he is liable to find his colleagues doing the dirty on him behind his back - strip 2571

Strip 2571 was published in the Evening Standard in June 1969. This scan is from the Sydney Morning Herald September 1969

We never get to see Miss Pretty but thanks to the pursuit of her by the post-boy, we do get Bristow's description: a girl in a turquoise uniform with hair the colour of ripened wheat, dark fringed blue eyes and a rosebud mouth.

Miss Pretty pursues her career for many year, leaving a trail of moonstruck clerks clogging up the C-P sickbay with unrequited love symptoms. Then disaster strikes when Bristow hears one day that not only is Miss Pretty married, she has children. At a stroke his ultimate romantic fantasy has been destroyed. Savour this moment strip 10475

Strip 10475 was published in the Evening Standard in June 1999

The fashion for engaging outside contractors to clean office telephones was at its height in the 1960s. Perhaps in the days of shared telephones there was a case for having a device that could harbour germs regularly "sanitised", as they quaintly put it. Though why the regular office cleaners did not do this is hard to understand. Those of us with longer memories may recall the days when uniformed young women would wander round the office, a-spraying here and wiping there. But fashions change and who bothers to have their phones professionally cleaned these days? And have we all died of the plague? Well no, or I wouldn't be sitting writing these words, would I? There is nobody now trading under the name "Kleenaphone" (as far as my cursory web search could tell), so an opportunity for some bright spark, but perhaps once there was.

Top