True colours - and lots of 'em!

“Somebody did complain to me and tell me that my clothes were so loud they couldn’t hear me sing.”

“The women back in the 80s had beautiful cheekbones, thick eyebrows, big smiles – you know, everything I didn’t. I was upset that I didn’t look like them, but I find people that have a fat face like me figure how to work with it. You can do a lot with a plain, blank face.”

“On my darkest days, I wear my brightest colours.”

“You know, I do speak the Queen’s English. It’s just the wrong Queens, that’s all. It’s over the 59th Street Bridge. It’s not over the Atlantic Ocean”.

You know you're getting old when...

...you discover that the adorable Miss Cyndi Lauper is seventy years old today! Gulp.

An oft-overlooked talent, she's not just the multi-million-selling post-punk-popstrel we know and love, but also the Tony-award-winning genius behind the global phenomenon that is Kinky Boots: the musical, and a staunch gay rights advocate and campaigner to boot.

Here's just a mere soupçon of the the lady's brilliance:

Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper - Threepenny Opera [Tony Awards 2006]

Cyndi Lauper - She Bop

Cyndi Lauper - I Drove All Night

Facts about Cyndi:

• She was born Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper in Queens, New York, of German, Swiss and Sicilian-American descent.
• Miss Lauper worked in a thrift store to earn extra money until her first solo album She’s So Unusual was released in 1983, when she was 30.
• In 1977 she damaged her vocal chords and was told by doctors that she would never sing again, and underwent intense vocal coaching to restore her voice.
• Unexpectedly in 2010 she had a change of musical direction, releasing Memphis Blues - which became the most successful blues album of the year in the USA, remaining at #1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart for 13 consecutive weeks.

Many happy returns, Cyndi Lauper (born 22nd June 1953)