A cup of ambition

Dolly Parton has been contracted to play just the bit of 9 to 5 that everyone knows for the duration of her Glastonbury set.

The country star will sing the line about pouring herself a cup of ambition before moving straight into the middle of the song.

She will be allowed to dance on stage, as long as her footwork is straightforward enough for a layperson to replicate after eight pints of cider.

A Glastonbury spokesman said: “This contract will stop any punters from getting bored and throwing cans of Carling at her head.

“We’ve also had to warn her not to talk about her children’s literacy programme, otherwise the crowd will get restless and leave to get their faces painted or to see if there’s anyone you can still buy M-Cat from.”

Festivalgoer Nikki Hollis commented “Acts should be forced to sign contracts like this. When I saw Blondie at Latitude, they were shit – they didn’t play the one song I know, "I Touch Myself".

“We had been really looking forward to hearing it. Blondie should listen to her fans, and do her research.”

Dolly Parton said: “I am thrilled to be playing Glastonbury, and happy to sign anything as long as I get a Winnebago to put my wigs in.”

The Daily Mash.

Of course.

Read the real [surreal?] announcement about Dolly's Glastonbury appearance in The Independent.

Such a rumour

Phew. A busy ol' week draws inevitably to its close, as does February... as does the excellence that was Camden and Islington LGBT History Month!

Last week, it was gay ancient Egypt and Victorian sexology. This week I have been enthralled by Kenneth Halliwell, Rachael Jones and Marlene Dietrich (more of that later, no doubt), and tonight we have the rip-roaring finale - the "Glamour Factory" Ball (featuring Lana Pillay, vintage fashion, a drag show, music, magic and performance art)!

To kick off the party in traditional fashion, we are overdue a dose of the late, great Donna Summer. We could also do with another jaw-dropping bit of "literal choreography" from Legs and Co.

So here they are together, in an unforgettable performance from 36 years ago this week, with Rumour Has It - Thank Disco It's Friday!

Legs & Co - Donna Summer - Rumour Has It

Have a great weekend!

Donna Summer official website

Café culture, Indiana style

Rachael Jones is a remarkable woman.

Not merely for the fact that until a few years ago, Rachael was living as Eric, a married man with three children, in a "redneck" Bible-belt community in the MidWest, but also for the fact that - on finding herself somewhat shunned by "mainstream" employers, and without any capital or even culinary experience - she opened her own business there, in the middle of Bloomington, the "Gateway to Scenic Southern Indiana."

Rachael's Café - with its mission "to bring understanding, education, and acceptance over a cup of coffee" - was born. And when British overseas student of drama Lucy Danser stumbled across the place she was so inspired, she wrote a play about it!

“The reason the café exists, is when she was living as Rachael, she couldn’t find a job anywhere... no one would accept her,” she said. “So she took out a loan from a friend and put everything on the line to bring the cafe to life. It was the bravest thing I had seen anyone do."

And Paul and I went to see the second show in the London première run of Rachael's Café last night.

"For anyone relatively unaware of what being transgender means, this ordinariness, this ability to see things as they are without great angst, without reference to sex, without the remotest tinge of the bizarre, is probably the greatest strength of this play." - Andie's Place.

It is often confusing how to react when one explores of the unknown; in this case, heterosexual transgender identity. From many perspectives - straight, gay or otherwise - this particular way of life is extraordinarily complicated, to say the least. It is a mark of just how admirable Rachael really is, and the skill of Graham Elwell who portrays her so brilliantly, that none of these complications and confusions seem to matter when we are drawn into the "conversation" with this gentle character. Eric/Rachael had more than his/her fair share of tragedy, not least the devastating affair between his wife and best friend, suicide and bullying in the family, and the eternal angst of being a parent with a "secret", and she shares them all with us as if we were her true confidants.

It is a tour-de-force of acting by Mr Elwell, to sensitively portray a real-life person (who was herself waiting in the wings, which must have been even more nerve-wracking!) and her calm and composed dealings with bigots and bullshitters, running a business single-handed, the agonies of a new wig, and the trials of acceptance by her own children, with such dignity and poise. All this, and in heels, too!

Rachael's Café is an astounding piece of drama, worthy of far greater things than the - admittedly charming and fab - off-West End venue of the Old Red Lion Theatre, and I sincerely hope it gets the critical attention it deserves.



When Rachael herself emerged after the play, she immediately captivated us in person as much as her portrayal. As Lucy said in her recent blog, "she’s aware that people need gentle handling to deal with the unfamiliar". With sublime grace she answered all questions and comments from the audience, no matter how "left-field", and left us all with a lasting example of how - no matter how hard, no matter how challenging it may seem - we all have to live our life as we truly are...

Rachael's Cafe trailer

Rachael's Café is on at the Old Red Lion, St John Street, Islington until Saturday 15th March 2014.

Camden and Islington LGBT History Month 2014

The story of the failure would be very much more interesting

From Philip Hoare's article in The Guardian:

In January 1959, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell began their campaign of theft. Starting at Hampstead Central Library on Finchley Road, north London, and moving on to libraries in Islington, they stole books of every genre, but with a particular taste for what Orton called "rubbishy novels and rubbishy books".

Back in their flat, the pair pasted pictures of male nudes, toys and budgerigars into surreal positions on the book jackets. Musclemen vied with monkeys on staid theatrical memoirs. Sybil Thorndike, the grande dame of British theatre, was replaced with a bare-breasted Henry Moore sculpture...They also added outrageously rewritten copy to the book's dust jacket flaps. Orton's humour is particularly evident in these typed blurbs. The overheard conversations that he would weave into his plays were rehearsed in what were capsule Orton dramas in their own right. Dorothy L Sayers's Gaudy Night is perverted with "Lord Peter Wimsy" urinating behind a bush after visiting a "Transvestite Den". Other would-be Sayers readers were promised underage sex and dildoes rather than a cosy detective story.

"Adding text to pervert and to ridicule became easy play," writes Ilsa Colsell in Malicious Damage, a new book analysing the collaborative art of these two men – a unique partnership that has been hitherto overshadowed by Orton's later success as a playwright. Colsell, an artist herself, sees Halliwell as Orton's mentor, the man who introduced him to aesthetic and literary theory. Indeed, Halliwell referred to themselves as "a genius like us", like a kind of Gilbert and George before their time.

Halliwell, six years older than Orton, met his partner at RADA in 1951. The men soon moved in together and began writing novels and plays – as well as pursuing their library transgressions. But as Orton's celebrity and success took over, Halliwell increasingly came to see himself as an artist, and he expanded their collages into the room the two men shared in Islington.

Mr Halliwell later attempted to introduce collages of his own creation into the serious art world - with disastrous consequences, as the art world largely pooh-poohed his works. One of his surviving pieces [many are lost, presumed destroyed after the pair's deaths] has been purchased for the Halliwell-Orton collection at Islington Museum, and it was with this as a backdrop that I went along [on Tuesday 25th February, as part of Camden and Islington LGBT History Month] to the launch of Ilsa's book - and for a fascinating discussion (in conversation with esteemed LGBT historian Dr Matt Cook, whose fab lecture I attended for IDaHo in May 2013) on whether it is time, at last, for a re-examination and "rehabilitation" of Halliwell's reputation.


'Untitled' - Kenneth Halliwell

As Ilsa and Matt acknowledged, all perspectives on the lives of Joe and Kenneth are intractibly marred by the way the pair met their end - Orton's head smashed in by Halliwell; Halliwell's suicide - but those close to the pair, including Joe's agent the indomitable Peggy Ramsay, his sister Leonie, and friends including the award-winning actor Kenneth Cranham [who was in the audience and contributed to the discussion], always pointed out a simpler reality: their love, and the longevity and mutual interdependence of their relationship. Joe was the younger man, in awe of Kenneth at first - the man who introduced him to great gay literary works by the likes of Firbank and EF Benson, et al - and they collaborated on most, if not all, of the plays, scripts and even the collages that made them famous.

In hindsight, Ilsa argues, Kenneth's collages themselves were unnecessarily derided by art snobs - motivated in part, no doubt, by the perception that Halliwell was somehow trying to "cash in" on Orton's success - and should be seen as inheritors of a great tradition of work in this style, echoing others such as Kurt Schwitters and Peter Blake. In summation, Kenneth Halliwell - the person rather than the killer - is unfairly maligned.

As Peggy Ramsay observed: [Joe and Kenneth's] lives were destroyed, one through success and the other failure... [yet] the story of the failure would be very much more interesting".



This was a brilliant and absorbing evening, and one which I was very glad to attend.

Ilsa Colsell's 'magnum opus' Malicious Damage is available from Donlon Books, price £35.

Camden and Islington LGBT History Month 2014

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

Had she lived (and she had a bloody good go - surviving almost to her centenary!), the marvellous cabaret singer and civil rights activist Miss Elisabeth Welch would have been 110 years old today...

On such an auspicious occasion, I have no qualms at all in featuring, for a second time, this scene described by George Melly as "arguably the campest, most sparkling moment in the history of cinema".

A most appropriate song for a grey Wednesday, it's Stormy Weather (from Derek Jarman's The Tempest (1979):

Elisabeth Welch - Stormy Weather

Elisabeth Welch (27th February 1904 - 15th July 2003)

Alexis plays Crystal!

We finally got around to watching the fantabulosa grand finale of the wonderful ITV series Benidorm last night, and it surpassed itself on the camp comedy front, tying up loose ends (and loose morals) with a raft of guest appearances...

..not least that by "Dame" Joan Collins (as the redoubtable Crystal Hennessy-Vass)!

[2019 UPDATE: all clips gone from the interwebs]

We love Benidorm! I am going to miss it.

Let's Go Classics

A "classical" musical interlude on this wet Tuesday - it's Ludwig van Beethoven as you've never heard him before...

Takeshi Terauchi - Für Elise (Let's Go Beethoven YeYe)

Groovy!

Takeshi Terauchi

Pravo! Pravo!

Oh dear. Another weekend over and done with, and it's back to the toil...

Never mind, let's cheer up the gloomy mood on this Tacky Music Monday with one of our favourite Italians, Miss Patty Pravo (and her gay sicurezza)!

She didn't want to do it, apparently. Neither did they.

Patty Pravo - You Made Me Love You

Patty Pravo on Wikipedia

A night with Jesus

Madam Arcati and I had a fabulous and rather unexpected night out yesterday, as I had landed some last-minute tickets to see a live Cuban music band in the swanky Matcham Room in the glittering Hippodrome Casino on Leicester Square.

Advertised as a "Celebration of The Buena Vista Social Club", Jesus Cutiño Y Son de Cuba (for it was they) is an ever-revolving line-up of musicians from Cuba, Columbia and Peru - and they were absolutely superb!

As individuals, each of the players would be at the top of their game, from the effervescent female vocalist (and mistress of the guiro and maracas) to the wonderful brass section, the keyboard player and the drummers/percussionists, but together they constructed an authentically complicated and thoroughly captivating sound - with a range of Son, Timba, Salsa Romantica and Afro Cuban rhythms, some composed by frontman Jesus Cutiño, and some classics from the aforementioned Cuban superstars.

Charm personified, Sñr Cutiño took requests, flirted with the (female members of) the audience, and, despite the singular poshness of the venue, got everyone up dancing!

We had a ball! Here's a short video I took last night (excuse the sound - we were up in the gallery):

...and here's Sñr Cutiño's "home video" for Mulata Rumbera:

Jesus Cutiño - Mulata Rumbera

Jesus Cutiño and Son De Cuba

Hippodrome Casino

Popadoodle-doo

OK, OK, it's time to feature once more another selection of newer choons that I have recently encountered, for your indulgence...

During the benighted Sochi Winter Olympics, many, many protests against Vladimir Putin and his thugs with their continued disgusting anti-gay stance have come to the fore. With calculated timing, here's a new remix by out-gay Israeli superstar Offer Nissim of the 1980 hit by Dschinghis (Genghis) Khan - Moskau, which is superb:

Offer Nissim ft. Rockinson - Moskau

In a similar but more blatant vein, the marvellous Norwegian Annie (with Bjarne Melgaard) has released a highly-charged protest against the Putinistas, with Russian Kiss... “Show your love for the lovers, the others, the fighters, outsiders, people like you.” Indeed!

Annie ft. Bjarne Melgaard - Russian Kiss

Speaking of "in-yer-face", here is the latest from the ever-challenging Sharon Needles, and she's Dressed To Kill, alright! “This isn’t a fucking costume, this is a way of life!“

Sharon Needles - Dressed to Kill

Of all the comebacks one may have anticipated from mega-stars of the 1980s, who would have thought that Berlin (of Take My Breath Away fame) would have resurfaced three decades later with a genuine stomper of a track?! Here is the magnificent Animal to prove us all wrong...

Berlin - Animal

Courtesy of the lovely Henry over at Barbarella's Galaxy, here's a slice of Aussie-Greek Eurotrash, in the busty form of Vassy. We're All Mad! Apparently.

Vassy - Mad

As if we could lower the the tone much further... OK, let's give it a try, in the capable hands of Miss Cherie Lily:

Cherie Lily - Body

And, finally... How about a combination of not one, but two of Swedish crazy person Alexander Bard's bands - Gravitonas and Army of Lovers - on one track?!

Gravitonas ft. Army of Lovers - People Are Lonely

Enjoy - and, as always, let me know your thoughts!

El Soul

Thank heavens. The weekend is only a short few hours away, and for that fact I am immeasurably grateful...

To celebrate, let us get our greenest of green flared jumpsuits on and get funky - with Augusto Algueró and Bocaccio Soul (the theme from hippy move Tuset Street, starring our own, very lovely and dearly missed Sara Montiel)...

Thank Disco It's Friday!

Augusto Algueró - Bocaccio Soul

[Short but sweet...]

Have a great weekend, folks!

Falling on my head like a new emotion

This week is dragging, and our brief respite from the dreadful weather which meant yesterday was quite spring-like is apparently about to be broken, with a cold front from the Atlantic on its way...

Let's have another timeslip moment - a trip back to 1984 again, for a most appropriate song for today from the Eurythmics!

Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again

Fabulous.

We're off to another LGBT History Month event tonight, curated by the fabulous Petrie Museum of Egyptology, called Defining Desire: labels and sex in ancient and modern worlds, so at least that is something to look forward to!

Camden and Islington LGBT History Month

But is it art?

One of the most famous images from Brighton (after the Pavilion and the Pier), graffiti superstar Banksy's tribute to Britain's gayest city, "Kissing Coppers" has been hacked out of its home on the wall of a grotty music pub and sold in America for $575,000 (£345,000)!

I'm not sure why the anonymous buyer didn't just get one of the myriad reproductions - on mugs, posters, t-shirts, placemats, mouse mats, keyrings or tote bags. There are even "kissing coppers" wall clocks...

Read the article in The Guardian.

Sock it to me, sock it to me

I am still struggling to lift my mood on this first week back in work, so please indulge me as I continue my quest for a real pick-me-up.

What better way to provide it today than with a fully-fledged vocal contest - between Mama Cass Elliott and the (then) gorgeous (Sir) Tom Jones? Proud possessors of a fine set of tonsils, both.

This is magnificent!



The tunes: One Night, Do Right Woman Do Right Man, Love Me, A Big Hunk Of Love, Respect and I Guess I'll Always Love You.

Cass Elliot official website

Tom Jones official website

There's a ligh-i-i-ght...

Edina: "God, I hope you're not inviting that bloody, bollocky, selfish, two-faced, chicken bastard, pig-dog-man, are you??"

Saffy: "You could just say 'Dad!' I'd still know what you meant!"

Sad farewells today to actor and producer Christopher Malcolm, best known as Saffy's gay dad in Ab Fab, who has died aged 67.

Facts about Mr Malcolm:

• He was born in Aberdeen, was raised on a farm in British Columbia, Canada, and at 19 he returned to Britain to live with his grandmother in Essex.
• In his younger days he he shared a flat with Malcolm McDowell.
• He was the original Brad Majors in the Rocky Horror Show in the West End in 1974.
• He starred in films such as The Empire Strikes Back, Labyrinth and Highlander.
• Just days before his death, his latest project Oh What a Lovely War opened in London to glowing reviews.

And here he is as Brad, with Belinda Sinclair as Janet, on the original Over At The Frankenstein Place:

The Rocky Horror Show - Christopher Malcolm & Belinda Sinclair - Over At The Frankenstein Place

RIP, Christopher Malcolm (19th August 1946 – 15th February 2014)

How can anything survive, when these little minds tear you in two...

Oh.

My.

Gawd.

It is my first day back to the office for over a fortnight, and, just as I was getting used to lie-ins, lounging round in my dressing-gown and generally doing bugger all for a week after getting back from Spain - it is time to get back to the grind, to the daily traffic jams on the bus journey, to the hideous office, and to what unfortunately passes for "reality". Oh joy.

Let's have something suitably melodramatic and camp - it's the ultimate masterpiece by yesterday's birthday boy, the dearly-missed Gene Pitney ...A Town Without Pity!

Gene Pitney - A Town Without Pity

I almost feel better now, singing along to that...

Gene Francis Alan Pitney (17th February 1940 – 5th April 2006)

A lorra, lorra laughs

From the BBC:

Sheridan Smith is to play singer and TV presenter Cilla Black in a new three-part drama, ITV has announced.

The actress will star as the famous Liverpudlian in the drama, by Jeff Pope, which will "capture the essence of 1960s Liverpool".

It will look at her friendship with Ringo Starr which brought her to the attention of Beatles' manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin.

Cilla, written by Pope - who, along with Steve Coogan won a Bafta for his screenplay for the film Philomena, will follow her journey from a young typist under her real name of Priscilla White, to meeting and befriending Brian Epstein and then recording and launching her career at Abbey Road studios.

"Her life story is fascinating," said Sheridan. "I'm so excited and can't wait to start filming."

Should be fun...

And here is the lady herself, with our favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers, You're My World:

Cilla Black - You're My World

Cilla Black official website

Here am I, here you are

Pssst! I sneaked in another day - making this a full fortnight-and-a-bit holiday - before returning to work tomorrow (groan). But we all need a bit of cheer at the start of the week, so...

Who better to lead the celebration on this Tacky Music Monday but Sweden's finest - the magnificently gruff Fröken Zarah Leander, and her anthem Wunderbar?!

Zarah Leander - Wunderbar

Have a fab week, everyone...

Zarah Leander on Wikipedia

He's outrageous, he screams and he bawls

In his otherwise serious article criticising the excessive fascination of eugenicists scientific researchers into the existence or otherwise of the "gay gene", Alex Andreou in The Guardian adds a comment that I found quite amusing:

"The genes in question are "chromosome 8" and "Xq28", which makes complete sense, since they both sound like names of Soho gay bars. I'm fairly sure I went to Xq28 once."

But seriously, folks! Gay gene or no gay gene, I agree with Mr Andreou - why don't these "experts" concentrate on the identification of medical interventions for genuinely important human traits, such as the predisposition towards cancer, or Alzheimer's, and leave their obsession with what we get up to in bed out of their equations?

Anyway, here's an appropriate song, methinks:

David Bowie - The Jean Genie [Top of the Pops 1973]

Read the article

Let marimba rhythms start to play

On what would have been the birthday today of the fabulously camp Cesar Romero (long-renowned for his affairs with many of Hollywood's leading men, especially Tyrone Power - and for his (ahem!) enormous chorizo) what better way to celebrate but with this rather faboo number from the musical Weekend in Havana?

Let's go with the flow, as he apparently captures the heart of Miss Alice Faye with a Romance and Rhumba - much to the chagrin of the very gorgeous John Payne. But of whom is Mr Payne actually jealous, one wonders?

Cesar Romero/Alice Faye - Romance and Rhumba

Cesar Romero (15th February 1907 – 1st January 1994)

Out of the Blue

Our Princess performed a surprise gig (to promote her new album Kiss Me Once) last night, in a tiny pub in London's trendy Shoreditch - just a short hop from where we live - and we missed it!

Into the Blue out of the blue, in "The Old Blue Last":

Kylie Minogue - Into the Blue (Live at the Old Blue Last pub)

Goddamit...

Read the article in the Huffington Post, and a typically gob-smacked review in the Clash hipster magazine.

Kylie Minogue official website

Caress her?

I may still be on "holiday" (if not - unfortunately - in Spain, but in London, where the skies are so grey I feel my tan fading as we speak...), but it is another end to another week, dears - and it's time to party!

Quite what kind of party we'd be letting ourselves into in the company of the remarkable chica talentosa Señorita Susana Estrada - superstar of post-Franco sexual liberation in Spain, nude stage performer, "glamour model", porn actress and singer, whose string of chart hits included gems with titles such as Quítate el sostén ("Take off your bra") and Voy desnuda ("I'm naked") - I don't rightly know...

Nevertheless, it is (appropriately, maybe, for Valentine's Day) in the company of the lovely lady and her soooo macho dancers that we begin the celebrations, with Acaríciame ("Caress me") - Thank Disco It's Friday!

Susana Estrada - Acaríciame

Have a great weekend, peeps!

Totty of the Day

Happy 40th birthday today to Robbie Williams!

Although all of Take That were yummy in their own way (Mark was ever my fantasy), Robbie was the eternal "naughty boy" - the one you just knew would "give you one" out the back of the club, by the fire escape...

So I make no excuses for featuring again my favourite gay softcore pop video, with the man himself and the rest of the boys looking their best, ever - it's Pray:

Take That - Pray

Robbie may be annoying, he may sometimes have an unerring faith in his own talents that belies some of his output, but yes! I'd still do him.

"I am not as bad as people would suggest. Not as good as I would like to be."

Robert Peter "Robbie" Williams (born 13th February 1974)

Stop - is this reality?

The world is awash with technology, most of it the size of a bar of soap these days - yet it is barely forty years since the first mobile phone call; thirty years since the first Apple Macintosh computer; twenty-eight years since Windows 3.1 (the first version in colour); twenty-five since GPS satellite technology, Sim City, Lotus Notes and the Nintendo Game Boy; and a mere twenty years since the official launch of the free "World Wide Web", with its (then only) browser Netscape.

Google is only sixteen years old, Blogger is fifteen, Wikipedia is thirteen, Amazon and Facebook are ten, eBay and YouTube are is nine, and Twitter is only eight...

To divert us from thinking about all this, let us embrace the far more comforting futurist visions of the fantabulosa Trans-X - with their only hit, from way back in the early 80's - it's Living On Video:

Trans-X - Living on Video

Give me light
Give me action
At the touch of a button.
Flying through hyper-space
In a computer interface.
Stop - living on video
Stop - integrated circuits.
Stop - sur un faisceau de lumieres
Stop - is this reality?

Travelling in a light beam
Laser rays and purple skies.
In a computer fairyland
It is a dream you bring to life.
Stop - living on video
Stop - integrated circuits

Living on video - sur un faisceau de lumieres
I see your glittering blue eyes
You look at me with a smile.
It's a computer fantasy
It is waiting for you and me.
Living - living on video
Living - living on video

Living - living on video
Living - living on video - stop

I adored this song then, and I adore it now - which is more than I can say about the pace of technological progress!

Once upon a time, not so long ago

More birthday greetings today, to another "national treasure"...

...Bagpuss! The "saggy old cloth cat" who came to life 40 years ago and has captured the hearts of generations of children since his first awakening back in 1974.

The creation of that genius of children's TV, the much-missed Oliver Postgate, its quaint stop-go animation provided the world with yet another nostalgic classic - one that unfortunately is in serious danger of being ruined forever by a CGI remake for today's impatient and less discerning audiences.

Here for your delectation is the very first episode - the Ship in the Bottle:

"Once upon a time,
Not so long ago,
There was a little girl and her name was Emily.
And she had a shop.
There it is.
It was a rather unusual shop because it didn't sell anything.
You see, everything in that shop was a thing that somebody had once lost,
And Emily had found,
And brought home to Bagpuss.

Emily's cat Bagpuss.
The most important,
The most beautiful,
The most magical,
Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world."

Sigh...

More Bagpuss, courtesy of Charlotte Runcie in The Telegraph.

I might as well have said I was going to go on the streets

From Catherine of Aragon to Queen Victoria, from Margaret Lloyd George to Margaret Meldrew, Annette Crosbie has been a staple of our screens for seven decades, and is quite rightly regarded as a "national treasure".

Happy 80th birthday today, Miss Crosbie! Here is one of those classic moments of comedy for which she is most famous, playing the ever-patient stooge to the irascible Victor Meldrew:

The Valley of Fear: Frozen cat

Facts about Miss Crosbie:

• Her parents were horrified at her choice of acting as a career: "I might as well have said I was going to go on the streets! In those days, acting was a profession that involved men putting on your make-up. It was a huge bombshell for them," she said.
• As a young woman, she had a fling with none other than Richard Burton.
• Her daughter Selina Griffiths played the drunken daughter of old Noreen in Benidorm
• Nowadays she is a dedicated campaigner for the welfare of retired racing greyhounds, as well as president of the League Against Cruel Sports.

Annette Crosbie OBE (born 12th February 1934)

Happy landings on a chocolate bar

And so farewell then Miss Shirley Temple, who died yesterday.

I used to run screaming across a room to switch her films off, so I am unlikely to want to play anything from the back catalogue of the lady herself.

Instead, here's someone called Pwnny with her cover of On the Good Ship Lollipop - in the style of Tennis Court by Lorde (whoever she is):

Pwnny - On the Good Ship Lollipop

RIP Shirley Temple Black (23rd April 1928 – 10th February 2014)

So very Knef, my dear

One might have imagined that on this first Tacky Music Monday back from our holiday, we would be bringing to the fore some sparkling and scary Spanish glamour-puss to perform for us - but no!

One of the bar owners in La Nogalera being German, we spent one rather fabulously camp evening on a diva performance fest, with videos featuring the vocal histrionics of Misses Garland, Piaf, Streisand, Springfield, and... Fraulein Hildegard Knef!

Here she is, complete with mustachioed safety gays and twirling dancers, and a Tapetenwechsel (whatever that means)...

Hildegard Knef - Was ist man ganz ohne Liebe... (Ich brauch' Tapetenwechsel)

Wunderbar!

Hildegard Knef

While you were out...

We've been away for a week. What have we missed?

Whilst we experienced windy conditions and a couple of damp days in the south of Spain, hellish storms were sweeping across the UK, according to all sources. So glad we missed it. Hallelujah.

The world bade farewell to Maximilan Schell and (very sadly) Philip Seymour Hoffman. And lots of Syrians, as their shocking civil war continued.

David Cameron said a veiled "fuck you" to the Scottish campaign for independence, and US envoy Victoria Nuland made a less veiled "fuck you" comment about the EU.

Nutcase popmeister Prince appeared in a "surprise" live gig in the relatively tiny environs of Camden's Electric Ballroom. And the Tube staff are on strike. Again.

We missed celebrating the 45th birthday of the faboo Michael Sheen, the 50th of Billy Mumy (the little boy from Lost in Space), the 89th of Patron Saint Elaine Stritch, what would have been the centenary of William Burroughs, and the 105th anniversaries of the birth of heartthrob Ramon Navarro, the Brazilian Bombshell Carmen Miranda and that of Coronation Street matriarch Annie Walker aka Doris Speed. The fact that other birthday celebrants during the week, Dora Bryan (91), Patrick McNee (92), Zsa Zsa Gabor (98) and Denis Norden (92) are still alive astounds us.

Oh, yes. And this happened...



Along with outspoken support for gay rights issues during the launch of Russia's supposed flagship sporting event from Google, AT&T, Skins sportswear and American Apparel, here is Channel 4's tribute to the benighted Sochi Olympics:

Gay Mountain (Channel 4 ident, 2014)

Be fabulous, be free
We honour our Queens
And follow the rainbow which leads to the east
Gay mountain, gay mountain
Be proud on gay mountain
Gay mountain, gay mountain
Good luck Gays, on gay mountain
Mens and all Mens and Womens and all Womens
Come together tonight, sing with pride
Gay mountain, gay mountain
Be proud on gay mountain
Gay mountain, gay mountain
Good luck gays, on gay mountain!

Enough said, I think.

I'm forever blowing bubbles

Hola guapos!!

We are back from our sojourn en España (although not yet back at Dolores Delargo Towers). As is traditional, I always like to bring back a souvenir for your delectation - of a typically tasteful variety of course - that we have collected on our hols...

Hot from the fleshpots of La Nogalera, here's the lovely Sebastian Castro - whose Bubble has apparently caused quite a stir:

Sebastian Castro - Bubble

What a nice young man...

Sebastian Castro website

Bang, we're off!

By the time you read this, my little chums, we will be crammed into our EasyJet seats hurtling towards Spain.

I will not be here for next Tacky Music Monday but, by way of a postcard - and just because I love you - here's something rather joyful from Almodovar favourite Victoria Abril (replete with "safety maricons" and inevitably dodgy broadcast quality), it's Bang, Bang, Bang!

Victoria Abril - Bang, Bang, Bang

"Normal" service will be resumed on our return, the week after next...

Hasta la Vista!