Pollster
Taki
New York People Weekly is America's, or rather Time Incorporated's answer to Nigel Dempster. Since it began publishing five years ago this week, People has sold 465 million copies Needless to say, the magazine is making a fortune writing about what it calls interesting and newsworthy personalities. People resembles Time magazine in format and is composed of about a hundred pages of gossip and pictures. Its style is less biting than that of England's premier chronicler. In fact some people insist that Dempster wrote in People — like style when he was around five years old.
Nevertheless, in order to celebrate its fifth anniversary of making millions, People conducted a readers' poll. High life — never a column to lag behind even the richest of rival organizations — conducted a similar inquiry. People asked the opinion of 465 million people. High life asked the Spectator's Americz n readers. Because of tax reasons I cannot divulge their number, but there are enough of them to make up two football teams, five a side. The two polls differed on every finding but one. Here are the results: People's first question involved Jackie 0. It asked the men if they would like to marry her and the women if they would like to be like her: 78 per cent of the men answered, rather ungallantly, that they could not afford her, thus saying No; 88 per cent of the women stated emphatically that she was too old, thus saying No also. High life's poll agreed with these findings. But for different reasons. Ten out of ten men said they would rather marry Onassis than her, while no woman reader of the Spectator wished to be like her. (There are no women readers of the Spectator in America.) Winners of the beauty contest among the Beautiful People: 465 million women readers voted Robert Redford first, Burt Reynolds second and Paul Newman third. The latter outpolled the first two by three to one in the 50 to 55 age group according to People. Male readers voted an actress of a TV series, Jaclyn Smith as the prettiest, with model Cheryl Tiegs second. The over-Pepsi generation votes helped Elizabeth Taylor come in third.
People, predictably enough, found the most boring man on T.V. to be a sports announcer, Howard Cosell, and the most boring woman Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Spectator readers did not agree. The malapropistic Cosell was found to be the least boring, if only for his inventiveness with the English language, and Mrs Majors a pleasure to look at simply for her tonsorial advantages. Our readers found the most boring man to be Walter Cronkite, a newsreader with a false avuncular look. The most boring woman Mizz Lillian Carter, the negroid looking mother of the clown Billy Carter.
One third of the People readership agreed that Gay Power should be suppressed, while 90 per cent of High life's readers thought Gay Power should be not only enhanced but subsidised by the State.
The acute differences which separate the readers of People and the Spectator were never more obvious than when politicians were rated. People readers overwhelmingly voted Billy Carter the most trustworthy. (He tells it like it is). Second came Teddy 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it' Kennedy (he provides jobs for many girls as secretaries); and third came Richard Nixon (he could have burned those tapes but didn't). The High life poll found Jim Callaghan to be the most trustworthy, followed by Harold Wilson, with a surprising Anthony Eden close behind. The last question asked by People magazine was a most important one. It asked readers if they thought Muhammad Ali was self-promoting and a loud-mouth. People readers found him to be 'egotistical but positive', as well as a 'braggart but artistic'. Our own poll differed tremendously. Ten out of ten readers thought Muhammad Ali to be over-age, dressed perennially in black, too tough on the poor Shah, and not willing to buy British jets.
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