A sprat to catch a mackerel

In the 19th century, it was possible to buy international reply-paid postal stationery so that you could write to someone and they could reply for free, writes Richard

Stenlake. Around the late 1960s/early 1970s, the concept was turned on its head with the Post Office Business Reply Service and Freepost, whereby the recipient, usually a business promoting its products or services, only paid a fee dependent on how many items of mail it received back.

I have a big pile of these reply-paid postcards from their golden age of the 1970s. Like many ‘modern’ cards, they are a bit unloved just now, but the 1970s were 50 years ago (sorry I had to break that to you), so they are definitely vintage, even if Lulu, now aged 75, hardly seems to have aged at all. In April, she embarks on her ‘Champagne for Lulu’ tour to celebrate a career spanning over 60 years. In the 1970s, she modelled for the Freemans catalogue. Freemans’ main selling point was that you could buy on credit with the payments collected by a nationwide army of hundreds of thousands of catalogue ladies. The catalogue was produced until 2023, finally killed off by credit cards and the internet. Freemans survives as a website.

The previous owner of my cards resisted the temptation of a scratch-card postcard and their choice of free gift from Brian Mills if only they had sent for a catalogue. Other Freepost card advertisers included electricity company Manweb and Cunard. The Persil card illustrated comprises four sturdy postcards with a tear-off serrated edge. The last card was to be returned Freepost by teachers to obtain a resource pack for Persil Funfit, an initiative to encourage fitness in children.