I wanna be tall, tall, tall

Slowly, slowly, the weekend is coming...

We have some jolly japes to look forward to, as tomorrow we're off en famille to leafy Fulham for a barbecue day at our chums Jim & Jude's place.

Meanwhile - it's time to get the party started!

Sharing the day with another ill-assorted slew of names, including the notorious Richard III, Mahatma Gandhi, Groucho Marx, Graham Greene, Donna Karan, Rex Reed, Bud Abbott, Annie Leibovitz, Sting (who is 75 years old), Don McLean, Anna Ford, Trevor Brooking, Mike Rutherford, Tiffany (who's 55), Robbie Nevil, and - ummm - Badly Drawn Boy...

...it's Phil Oakey of The Human League's birthday!

You might argue that this is an unusual choice for my traditional end-of-week dance slot, but I used to dance my tits off to it when I was a young aspiring New Romantic - so let's Thank Disco Synthesizers It's Friday!

The Human League - Empire State Human

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

Of another sad loss, an erect bloomer, a bad boy on the High Street, wool, living pink, a sperm factory and a can-can

RIP Dame Esther Rantzen, presiding hostess of the wildly popular satirical consumer affairs programme That's Life! for 21 years, charity campaigner and national treasure.

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Monster plant news: For the first time in the venerable botanical gardens' 260-year history, a giant Agave montana is about to flower at Kew. It can grow to around 5m/16ft tall, so should be spectacular - but after it does so, it dies. Doomed after erecting. Like Cecil Colby or Kemal Pamuk.
• Bad boy of fashion news: In a surprising move, none other than John Galliano has designed a new collection for Spanish high street chain Zara! Judging by everything else Zara sells, you'd need to be young and really skinny to wear any of it...
• Sheep news: Happy Shetland Wool Week! Unfortunately, famous knitter Tom Daley didn't put in appearance. Dammit.

[click to embiggen]

• Think Pink! news: A bizarre pink house that has been erected in Kentish Town (near Camden in London) was recently featured on Channel 4's Grand Designs programme. I think it looks like something out of Dr Seuss's 5000 Fingers of Doctor T myself - which gives me a perfect excuse (as if any were needed!) to feature one of my all-time favourite uber-camp clips!

Hans Conried - Do-Me-Do Duds (The Dressing Song) [The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T]

• Speaking of weird homes news: A couple in Great Abington, Cambridgeshire have been forced to demolish the home they built instead of a horse semen laboratory, for which they had planning permission from the council.
• And finally: In Bordeaux today, 168 dancers attempted to set a new world record for highest number of participants in a can-can routine! [link is to a news site in French] I wonder if Buster Bloodvessel of Bad Manners was amongst them?

And the weather? Very pleasant, sunny and warm, considering we have arrived in October...

Red hot chili Pepper

You know you're getting old when...

...you discover that one of our favourite super-cool divas, Miss Angie Dickinson (remarkably) blows out 95 candles on her cake today!

As a kid in the middle of the 1970s, with power cuts, hyper-inflation and general pessimism in the UK, I loved settling down to watch some preposterous American cop show for escapism [Columbo, Banacek, Cannon, Starsky & Hutch and so on] - and Police Woman was one of the best. I often dreamed what it would be like to live in Angie Dickinson/"Pepper Anderson"'s glamorous world of sleek Halston outfits, Martini cocktails and "woman-in-peril" missions. Sigh.

By way of a little tribute, the classic theme music - and those legs:

Police Woman opening titles

...but who knew she sang [after a fashion]? I suppose, married as she was for years to Mr Burt Bacharach, it was unavoidable:

Angie Dickinson & Burt Bacharach - I'll Never Fall in Love Again

Many happy returns, Angeline "Angie" Dickinson (born 30th September 1931)

Put a big shiny ribbon on fuck all

China’s Xi Jinping has stunned rivals by bribing Trump with two adult panda bears. How are other world leaders going to beat that?

Anthony Albanese, Australia
You can’t top Oz when it comes to exotic animals, mate. We’ll give him a numbat, a duck-billed platypus, a Tasmanian devil, a breeding population of chlamydia-infected koalas, a couple of cassowaries, a dropbear and a genuine boxing kangaroo that hops around and beats shit out of people. All on the condition he leaves us the fuck alone.

Vladimir Putin, Russia
Fuck animals. I will give him what any dictator truly craves: territory. Ukraine is part of Russia obviously, nobody disputes that, but once it has been reunited with the motherland my forces will march on and when we conquer the EU we shall award him whichever countries he should choose. We just need to get past this bit we’re stuck in. Any day now.

Kim Jong-un, North Korea
From one lonely leader to another, I shall give the gift of friendship. Understanding. The empathy of another man who has hit the peak, who has climbed higher than lesser men ever could, and still craves the world’s respect. We will hold hands.

Lee Jae Myung, South Korea
Typically cheap gift. If what Trump truly desires is exotic pets, we shall give him the most exotic of all: his own K-pop band. Called QEEDTH, they will comprise four boys and five girls raised in complete isolation from all human contact, trained to perform sterile hip hop in a foreign language and never to make eye contact.

Andy Burnham, UK
Britain doesn’t have any exotic animals because it is at heart a deeply boring country. But we do have music, so I’ve given him Adele, Morrissey, Robbie Williams, Ian Astbury and Matthew Murphy, lead singer of The Wombats. Hopefully he won’t realise they all already live in LA so I’ve put a big shiny ribbon on fuck all.

Javier Milei, Argentina
I give him penguins – Gentoo, Magellanic, Rockhopper and King varieties – the steamer duck, the Cobb’s wren, and many, many sheep. And I also give him the territory these animals live upon, Las Malvinas or as you call it, the Falkland Islands. Try getting that back off him, Britain.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Now you see it...

[click any pic to embiggen]

...now you don't!

Yes, at last, that pair of bastard weed trees next door are gone - and we are thrilled!

Next job: get rid of the neighbours, their screaming "demon spawn", their stinky barbecues, and their fucking yappy dog.

Here's an appropriate song for a Tacky Music Monday, methinks - those outfits! the stoned stares! - now we have all that sky...

5th Dimension - Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In

Have a good week, dear reader.

Life in plastic, it's fantastic

After a tortuous two-and-a-half-hour journey to even get to the venue [the Piccadilly Line was down for "planned maintenance", our local train line was (as we only discovered when we got to the station) completely up the creek and trains cancelled, so we had to get a bus to Finsbury Park to connect with the Victoria Line, all of which took over an hour, and when we got there that line was itself running a haphazard service so we were crammed in like sardines, before getting to Oxford Circus to change for the Central Line], we had a fun time again at our "film club" evening. We managed to watch two films, despite the delay, and I had never seen either of them - the hilariously slapstick Clue, with its great cast including Lesley-Anne Warren and the late, dearly-departed and sadly-missed Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn and Eileen Brennan...

...and Barbie, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling! It was a surprising, clever, and brilliantly performed movie indeed, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Missing from its soundtrack, for some inexplicable reason, was Aqua's mega-hit tribute to the classic doll - and, it being Sunday, I was delighted to discover that "our house band" here at Dolores Delargo Towers had indeed done a version of it!

Postmodern Jukebox feat. Morgan James - Barbie Girl [Vintage Beach Boys-style Aqua cover]

We love Postmodern Jukebox.

A thimbleful of a voice?

"It’s a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate." Julie London

It is the centenary today of the birth of the Queen of the sultry laid-back style we call "Sunday Music". A pin-up girl during WW2, the young Gayle Peck was inevitably destined to become a star. Born into a vaudeville performing family, Miss Peck was working as a lift attendant when she was "discovered" by Hollywood agent Sue Carol.

However, it took a few more years before the renamed Julie London emerged into the musical spotlight with the multi-million-selling Cry Me A River - an eternal standard of the late-night music genre.

Her movie career never really made the same kind of impact and, as with so many of her contemporaries, Miss London turned to TV - with numerous special guest appearances on shows hosted by Bob Hope, Pat Boone, Dina Shore, Jack Benny and the like, as well as her own TV specials. She was one of the stars of US paramedic drama series Emergency! for many years before she retired from regular performing.

But what a legacy she left..!

Julie London - Let There Be Love

Julie London - Perfidia

Julie London - Cry Me A River

Julie London (26th September 1926 – 18th October 2000)

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PS:

On this most gloriously sunny late summery day, we're off en masse to go and sit in the function room of The Perseverance in Holborn/Bloomsbury for another of our lengthy drinking sessions film clubs.

Shame it's not in a beer garden, really...