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Friends are cheaper than therapy
Cheer up!
Your friends love you - they really do!
Cath Tate brings you over 50 beautifully tinted vintage photos, each paired with the perfect witty caption to reveal your friendships as they really are.
Designed to lift your spirits and remind you what friendship is all about, this hilarious book is for kindred spirits everywhere.
Your friends love you - they really do!
Cath Tate brings you over 50 beautifully tinted vintage photos, each paired with the perfect witty caption to reveal your friendships as they really are.
Designed to lift your spirits and remind you what friendship is all about, this hilarious book is for kindred spirits everywhere.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 2, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 6, 2019
Brilliantly funny! Cath Tate has done a superb job in superbly tinting these quirky photographs - some that one cannot believe were really taken - that date from between 1880 and 1960 and then adding highly amusing captions to match the images.
The selection opens with four smiling Edwardian ladies sitting as though on a helter-skelter with the caption, 'Between me and insanity stand my friends'. Just how true is that one - I would most certainly subscribe to it.
A well-rounded lady, spooning a piece of cream cake ready to eat, comments, 'Life without cake is possible ... but pointless', another truism - for me anyway, I just love cake. A grumpy looking Edwardian lady stands by her greenhouse and says, 'Gardening, yoga and meditation and I still want to slap someone!' She obviously hasn't had her slice of cake!
A rather stylish, or unstylish perhaps, 1920s' lady poses on a chair with the caption, 'But who needs friends when you've got style?' And a gossipy 1940s' young lady is chuckling on the telephone and thinking, 'You'll always pick up more dirt with a phone than with a hoover' while four young ladies from the 1920s pose in rather Conan Doyle Cottingley fairies manner (so they're not real!!) and remark, 'Once you realise we are all mad, life starts to make sense'.
A rather stern 1890s' matronly lady sits in the garden suitably covered up and states, 'Nobody knows where I keep my hip flask', while a moody lady from the same period (looking rather like a female Oliver Hardy) has just got out of her bathing machine with the matching caption 'It's being so cheerful that keeps me going' - really? I'd hate to see her when she was not cheerful.
And the title comes from a photograph of two 1880s' women unsmilingly taking tea together supposedly confirming 'A good friend is cheaper than therapy' - I'm not sure it would work for these two, though! And the cover illustration relates to a caption, 'If you're not embarrassing your children, you're probably not enjoying yourself' and from my experience there could be some truth in that!
It is a good fun read and view.
31 July 2026
I am a huge Cath Tate fan both with her selected illustrations which are always so apt to the text and the sentiments that the text offers to prove the point that 'friends are cheaper than therapy'. So I often buy a copy of the book to give to my friends and when I do I am always tempted to read and view the contents again as they are always amusing. And I do hope that I have no friends that looks like the sour-looking clerical gentleman in the book whose caption is 'Even my imaginary friends don't listen to me.'
But I can't have anyone to whom I could say,'Will you be my Facebook friend?' because I do not indulge in social media, particularly if the other party resembled the disinterested lady in the supporting illustration! I can, however, relate to the two captions, and also the stylish persons featured, which are 'I like my parties cool and my friends hot' and 'I like my parties hot and my friends cool' - not that I am an avid party-goer but if I were ...
As I said in the initial review it definitely is good fun to read and hot/cool to view!
The selection opens with four smiling Edwardian ladies sitting as though on a helter-skelter with the caption, 'Between me and insanity stand my friends'. Just how true is that one - I would most certainly subscribe to it.
A well-rounded lady, spooning a piece of cream cake ready to eat, comments, 'Life without cake is possible ... but pointless', another truism - for me anyway, I just love cake. A grumpy looking Edwardian lady stands by her greenhouse and says, 'Gardening, yoga and meditation and I still want to slap someone!' She obviously hasn't had her slice of cake!
A rather stylish, or unstylish perhaps, 1920s' lady poses on a chair with the caption, 'But who needs friends when you've got style?' And a gossipy 1940s' young lady is chuckling on the telephone and thinking, 'You'll always pick up more dirt with a phone than with a hoover' while four young ladies from the 1920s pose in rather Conan Doyle Cottingley fairies manner (so they're not real!!) and remark, 'Once you realise we are all mad, life starts to make sense'.
A rather stern 1890s' matronly lady sits in the garden suitably covered up and states, 'Nobody knows where I keep my hip flask', while a moody lady from the same period (looking rather like a female Oliver Hardy) has just got out of her bathing machine with the matching caption 'It's being so cheerful that keeps me going' - really? I'd hate to see her when she was not cheerful.
And the title comes from a photograph of two 1880s' women unsmilingly taking tea together supposedly confirming 'A good friend is cheaper than therapy' - I'm not sure it would work for these two, though! And the cover illustration relates to a caption, 'If you're not embarrassing your children, you're probably not enjoying yourself' and from my experience there could be some truth in that!
It is a good fun read and view.
31 July 2026
I am a huge Cath Tate fan both with her selected illustrations which are always so apt to the text and the sentiments that the text offers to prove the point that 'friends are cheaper than therapy'. So I often buy a copy of the book to give to my friends and when I do I am always tempted to read and view the contents again as they are always amusing. And I do hope that I have no friends that looks like the sour-looking clerical gentleman in the book whose caption is 'Even my imaginary friends don't listen to me.'
But I can't have anyone to whom I could say,'Will you be my Facebook friend?' because I do not indulge in social media, particularly if the other party resembled the disinterested lady in the supporting illustration! I can, however, relate to the two captions, and also the stylish persons featured, which are 'I like my parties cool and my friends hot' and 'I like my parties hot and my friends cool' - not that I am an avid party-goer but if I were ...
As I said in the initial review it definitely is good fun to read and hot/cool to view!
July 8, 2020
my friend pat just read this to me on a zoom call and I wanted them to stop -- but they were relentless
November 9, 2019
That was a mildly funny book to gift to a friend.
July 8, 2023
Great book with hilarious drawings/photos and quotations, a good laugh at life.
January 5, 2019
Silliness. But fun silliness. Made me smile a lot, and chuckle on a couple of occasions.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews