The other week I bought the 1980 Daily Mirror Book For Girls, because I am cool and great.

Although I’m not as cool and great as the girl on the cover, who is doing the universal hand gesture for “look at how cool and great I am. This guy, right here”.

A traditional feature of hastily cobbled together cash-in books is the ‘A-Z’ section, and the Daily Mirror Book For Girls is no different. The first item in this book is ‘THE ABC OF BEING A GIRL” – a comprehensive guide to having a fanny in 26 easy steps, providing those steps mostly involve apples, and that whoever wrote this is quite bad at spelling.

Before we dive in, I should point out that I keep nearly shortening ‘Daily Mirror Book For Girls’ to ‘DMBFG’, but my brain keeps wanting to write ‘DUMFUK’, because I am 12. Sod it, that’s what we’re going to call it from now on.

Now, without further ado – DUMFUK!

A is for apple! Because of fucking course it is. Apples are a universal ‘good thing to put’ when you can’t think of anything else. The only other A’s you see in these things are ‘acne’ and occasionally ‘Acapulco’. Anyway, apples cure all diseases, enable you to fly, and will make sure that hunk Steve fancies you. Bonus points for referring to people as ‘overweights’.

If the picture is anything to go by, B is for ‘bored of sitting around waiting for your dentist to stop being Hitler’:

C is for colour – make sure you don’t buy clothes that look shit. I can’t really comment on this, since I am currently wearing a salmon pink Saved By The Bell t shirt.

D is for diet! You should pay attention to this bit if you’re an “overweight”. Curiously, they don’t recommend eating apples, but they do recommend pointless flailing of limbs to keep you full of “go”. I don’t want to be full of “go”. I want to be full of chips. Also, you are not a booklet, DUMFUK.

E is for eyes – only read this section if you have eyes. Otherwise, skip this section. They’re implying apples again.

F is for feet! They’re really playing it safe with this – they could have done “F is for fanny”, but they didn’t because they chickened out, and they were too busy thinking about apples.

G is for mixed messages. I refer you back to A, where DUMFUK revealed its disdain for “overweights”. I think they must have had a change of heart between A and G, because now they’re telling you it’s just puppy fat, and that you shouldn’t bother doing anything about it. I prefer this, so this is what I’m going to believe. I’m not an overweight, I just have puppy fat, at 34. Good.

H is for hair, and also ‘holy shit my scanner needs a wipe’. It’s not very interesting anyway – ‘wash your hair sometimes you disgusting scrotum’ is about the gist of it.

I is for idols! AKA “I don’t know, let’s just pull some names out of a hat.” Has Marty Kristian from The New Seekers ever been the idol of a teenage girl? His son is in Doctors sometimes.

J is for jewellery! “No, not tiaras.” Yeah, the 80s were terrible for girls showing up to school in a tiara.

K is for knitting – WITH GIANT FUCKING NEEDLES.

I’m curious to know the difference between a pull-on hat and any other type of hat.

L is for legs – avoid setting them on fire.

M is for make-up! “Always persuade Mother first!” Was this list written by a 75 year old man?

N is for nails – hand and toe variety, not B&Q variety.

Now we’re at the halfway point, it’s time for an intermission! What the fuck is this and why.

moving on…

O is for the outdoors. Nothing makes you feel more healthy than fresh air and exercise! Apart from apples. They’re probably not talking about dogging, but you never know.

P is for personality… apparently. Not sure why they’ve then gone on to just write about how you look.

Q is for quiz! We have some awesome quizzes coming up in DUMFUK! (More on these in a future post.) Our awesome quizzes include “Which kind of apple are you?”, “How much do you love apples?” and “Who said this – an apple or The New Seekers?” Using this for Q is a massive cop-out, and I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.

R is for rinsing – this could have been easily covered under ‘hair’. Shame on you DUMFUK, and also I’m not sure I want squeaky hair.

S is for shoes – it’s not for sex, snogging, or any of those other disgusting things. They probably weren’t talking about dogging earlier. Anyway, shoes go on your feet, the end.

T is for trousers. I fully expected them to say something like “Don’t worry, girls can wear trousers too! PERSUADE MOTHER FIRST!” Wait, hang on – “rolled up to the knee with bright coloured socks and clogs”? Are you trying to get people beaten up? Imagine if someone at school went round dressed like that, talking about The New Seekers. Fucking hell.

U is for umbrella – fun fact – umbrellas can be dangerous, which is something I didn’t know. Maybe they’re talking about those umbrellas that shoot lasers at people you don’t like the look of. Also – if you are given one as a present, test it out in the shop first. These people.

V is for variety, when it could have been for Vagisil.

W is for washing. I’m worried about how much they think their readers need to be told to do the most basic things. “Have a wash occasionally so you don’t smell like sweat and TCP, like everyone does in 1980.”

X is for… wait, no it fucking isn’t, you massive cheating cheats. This is only marginally better than just pretending the letter X doesn’t exist, which I’ve also seen in these things. To be fair, they probably couldn’t find a type of apple than began with X.

Y is for you! Here we have the Jeopardy question for “What is a personality?”, followed by a reminder to actually have a personality. If you don’t have a personality, simply create the appearance of one by wearing a fun scarf.

Z is for ZZZZZZZ – still kind of cheating, but not as much as X. Sleeping is a good thing to do, as it lets you block out all those horrible thoughts you have when you’re awake. Try to sleep whenever you can, especially when at work, or when operating heavy machinery.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this super fun A-Z, because I haven’t. Next time, I’ll be looking at the exciting and empowering comic story ‘Here Come The Space Girls!’, mostly because I just had a look through the book and I can’t actually see any quizzes, the fucking liars.