Searching for Bobby Simpson

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in Tuesday's Living/Arts section about advice columnist Mark Godes misidentified the writers of ''Dear Abby" and ''Ann Landers." Ann Landers was the pen name of Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer. Abigail Van Buren was the pen name of her twin sister, Pauline Esther Friedman.)

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story about Mark Godes in yesterday's Living/Arts section misidentified Jeffrey Zaslow's syndicated column. The column was called ''All That Zazz.")

Dear Bobby Simpson:

I had the most amazing job when I was just 12 years old. Can you believe it -- I was the youngest newspaper advice columnist in America! It was heady stuff for a young boy from Chelsea whose parents were divorced, the only Jewish kid in a big Catholic school. I published a book, I had the same agent as Larry Bird, I was on ''Donahue" and ''Good Morning America." ''An Ann Landers for teens," the San Francisco Examiner called me.

But here's my problem: I quit when I turned 19 and went off to college. Now I'm 35. I have a pretty good job doing marketing communications for a financial services company, but I want my old life back! I liked giving out advice, I liked the attention. But nobody's hiring white male advice columnists. I can't get arrested in this town. What do you think I should do?

BUMMED OUT IN BOSTON

This is Mark Godes's, or ''Bobby Simpson's" story in a nutshell: You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

Twenty-three years ago, Godes was a precocious eighth grader at Swampscott's Hillel Academy who lived across the street from the Chelsea Record newspaper. He used to hand-deliver his letters to the editor, the legendary Andrew Quigley, who printed them and encouraged the boy to write more. Godes liked seeing his name in print so much that he dreamed up the idea of writing an advice column for young people and sent some samples to the floundering, Hearst-owned Boston Herald-American, precursor of the Boston Herald.

Editor Ken Hartnett seized on the idea for a cheap, promotable gimmick; ''Dear Bobby Simpson" was born. ''It's just the kind of thing we would do, hire a 12-year-old," says Hartnett, laughing at the memory. ''We would corner the 12-year-old market -- reaching the 35 year-olds, that was another matter." Hartnett warned Godes not to use his real name on the column. ''So I chose Bobby for my favorite member of 'The Brady Bunch,' and 'Simpson' because O.J. was my football hero," Godes explains.

''Bobby Simpson" had a good run. Godes, sometimes accompanied by his mother, made the tour of the television's fanciest green rooms. ''I did a lot of shows with teen beauty queens," Godes recalls. In 1984, Dell Publishing put out a collection of his columns. For a time, sports agent Bob Woolf represented Godes, and there was serious talk of syndicating the column, or creating a television miniseries based on Godes's life.

Re-reading the columns is like watching ''That '80s Show": ''Tell your friend he must stop copying your homework assignments"; ''Just because you found your sister making out with your boyfriend, this gives you no right to make out with her boyfriend." Godes/Simpson was earnest, and committed to saying the right things: Don't do drugs; you're probably too young to have sex; respect your elders. Just as someone once observed that Al Gore was an old person's idea of what a young man is, Bobby Simpson was a clueless parent's idea of what a teenager is.

In 1990, Godes quit the column to get his English degree at Suffolk University. He freelanced for a few years, then fetched up at Dalbar, a mutual funds consulting firm, where he has worked for more than a decade. ''I didn't appreciate the opportunity I had at the time," he says. ''I looked at 'Bobby Simpson' as a passing phase. Now I've become very set on relaunching my column."

Easier said than done.

Yes, Godes has a new agent, and yes, Godes has a new portfolio of sample columns that discuss pornography, ''hooking up," and premature ejaculation -- subjects that might have made Bobby Simpson blush. Godes says he wants to write a ''casual, hip dating column." But the samples he is showing resurrect the earnest tone that sounded more natural coming from an adolescent than from a man who claims to have ''been on the dating scene for many years" and who is still living with his mother.

To be fair, Godes is earnest and old-fashioned where affairs of the heart are concerned. ''Maybe it's because I'm an only child, but I don't view dating as an opportunity for a short-term relationship," he says. ''Mentally, I'm always asking, 'Is this somebody who's marriage material?' I've had a couple of long-term relationships, but I just haven't met the right person."

Not surprisingly, Godes is having trouble getting back into the advice biz. ''It's hard to get syndicated, no matter what category you're in," says David Astor of Editor & Publisher magazine. ''If he's having trouble breaking back in, that's part of the reason. And there is the stereotype that advice columnists have to be women."

Indeed, practically all of the big-time advice columnists are female. The Ann Landers column, now Annie's Mailbox, is written by two of the late Landers's female assistants. The daughter of ''Dear Abby," Jeanne Phillips, now writes her mother's column. (''Abby" and ''Ann Landers" were pen names for twin sisters Esther and Pauline Lederer.) Ann Landers's daughter, Margo Howard, writes the syndicated ''Dear Prudence" column, and newcomer advice mavens Amy Dickinson (''Ask Amy") and Carolyn Hax (''Tell Me About It") are starting to make inroads into the lucrative Lederer sisters' turf.

One of the few men writing a syndicated advice column is 32-year-old, Chicago-based Harlan Cohen, who mailed, faxed, and e-mailed his ''Help Me, Harlan!" column to newspaper editors for eight years until King Features signed him in 2003. ''It's a category dominated by females," he notes. Many of his large newspaper clients such as The Dallas Morning News and The Seattle Times run his column in conjunction with one of the above-mentioned female writers.

''There's something to be said about having a male point of view," Cohen believes. ''Even if it doesn't drip testosterone, it's still coming from a man's head." Jeffrey Zaslow, who wrote the Chicago Sun-Times' syndicated ''All That Jazz" column for 14 years, remembers that ''women wrote in like I had the owner's manual for men. 'Why does he scratch himself there?' would be a typical question."

Godes feel strongly -- too strongly, perhaps -- that the Herald in particular should pick up his new column. ''I gave them some of the best years of my life. Would it have killed them to take a chance? I'm not asking to be on the front page." Herald features editor Linda Kincaid, who runs Hax and Dickinson, vaguely remembers Godes's recent pitch, then lays out the cold truth facing every newspaper editor in the country: ''The first thing I have to ask about any new feature is, 'Can I afford it?' " she says. ''In an era of budget cutting, the answer is almost always 'no'."

Recovering advice maven Zaslow, now a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, may be the only man in America who feels Godes's pain. ''I know where he's coming from. It is an intoxicating profession, it's the greatest game on earth -- I still miss it terribly, and I have a good job."

''The problem is that the advice column really doesn't exist anymore," Zaslow continues. ''These days if you have dandruff you just Google it. No one would write a letter to a newspaper asking why it collects on your shoulders."

After a pause, Zaslow asks: ''Is Godes a good-looking guy?" Answer: yes. ''He should get a reality show about a young guy trying to get back in the advice game. That's probably something you could sell."

Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com.