Mother Tells You How was one of Girl's most popular and longest-running strips. Each week Mother would teach her exemplary-in-every-way daughter, Judy, one of life's essential skills, such as how to decorate biscuits, how to prepare a grapefruit or how to do the washing up.
Where Girl's more famous companion comic for boys, Eagle, featured new inventions and clever conjuring tricks, Girl had Mother telling Judy how to make a shelf-tidy. Eagle subscribers read about shark fishing off the coast of Australia, while their sisters would turn to Mother Tells You How for wise words on how to care for goldfish.
Girl readers weren't to have their little heads filled with science they didn't understand, conjuring tricks for show-offs and tales of danger on the high seas. They were kept busy sorting out their small odds and ends into a shelf-tidy, and experimenting with unusual sandwiches.
Mother Tells You How appears to be an over-the-top 50s spoof, but is in fact a wholly genuine period piece, and it's its authenticity that provides such high comedy in our very different times.
