Bathing Beauties and Seaside Spectacle

The Bathing Beauties strand returned the visual language of the British resort to public view: swimwear, parade, posing, music and the slightly formal cheerfulness of a seaside promotional photograph. Club Shepway used that familiar language in the present tense, among the town's changing seafront venues and street activity.

The programme sat beside other public events rather than apart from them. It carried the seaside's staged glamour back through the promenade, the Leas Lift and the wider social setting of the resort.

The Bear's beach-group appearance belongs with the Club Shepway bathing strand, not with the Hotel Burstin cabaret papers. He borrowed the picture format as he did so many other public occasions: by appearing in the frame and assuming that this settled the matter.