Vintage selfie shows a Rugby pioneer - The Rugby Observer

Vintage selfie shows a Rugby pioneer

Rugby Editorial 9th Jan, 2015 Updated: 27th Oct, 2016   0

A PICTURE of a Rugby couple which is almost a century old has taken the internet by storm after it appeared to show the first ever use of a ‘selfie stick’.

In an age of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter the selfie, a picture a person takes of themselves or with friends, is increasingly becoming an everyday part of modern life.

But a photo Rugby couple Arnold and Helen Hogg took of themselves in 1925 became an internet sensation this week after it showed the selfie stick is perhaps not as new as first thought.

The sticks, which allow the picture taker to get more people into the shot, had been regarded as a new phenomenon and have only been available to purchase in recent years.




Celebrities have posted pictures of themselves taken using selfie sticks at events like the Oscars which have subsequently gone global.

But the photo of Arnold and Helen Hogg, revealed by their grandson Alan Cleaver, in which Arnold has made the mistake of capturing the stick in the shot, appears to show the practice is somewhat older than first thought.


His grandfather was a renowned entertainer and a musician who played piano at the Empire cinema.

Mr Cleaver told the BBC Arnold, who died in 1972, wouldn’t have been sore about missing out on any potential selfie-stick royalties.

He said: “It’s always been a favourite photo of the family.

“He’d have loved the attention the photo is getting now, more than 100 years after his birth, because he was that sort of guy – very off the wall, very entertaining.

“It’s wonderful that the rest of the world is delighting in the humour of this situation.”

Actor Bradley Cooper’s selfie at the Oscars in 2014, which he used a selfie stick to take, went around the world.

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