I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there

Needless to say, "Marvel geeks" John-John and I had a whale of a time when we went to see Deadpool & Wolverine on its opening night in Leicester Square last night!

It's perhaps not a film for the faint-hearted - true to the "Merc with the Mouth"'s previous movies, there's lots of blood and gore and fighting and swearing, but there's also also bucketloads of laugh-out-loud moments and innuendo. There's also some very clever digs at both 20th Century Fox (from whence the two characters originally got their big-screen spotlights) and Disney/Marvel (which recently bought Fox out) - and it's the latter's multiversal lore that provides the excuse to bring all the characters into the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. There's not only a slew of familiar characters from Deadpool 1 and 2 and X-Men films, together with the "Time Variance Authority" from Marvel's recent Loki television series - but also a joyful raft of very unexpected cameos, indeed... All that, and a splendidly evil villainess with an (ahem) interesting massage technique!

I won't spoil any of the plot - I'll leave it to you to get your own cinema tickets, or not as the case may be - but suffice to say, at a crucial moment in the film a very familiar and beloved choon comes into its own.

Thank Disco Madonna It's Friday!

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

Sweet, grey post-war reward paste

Today's kids, in addition to their bloody phones, can pick any fucking flavour ice-cream they want. When you were a child these were the options:

Vanilla
To a generation, this was ice-cream. Bright yellow, simultaneously watery and oily, and in its soft-scoop version the invention of a young scientist named Margaret Thatcher, it tasted of nothing, was definingly bland, and was a top-echelon treat.

Strawberry
Pink version of above. The strawberry taste was sickly and disgusting but it was a sensation. You knew you’d had it. You’d boast about it at school.

Chocolate
Didn’t taste like chocolate but nothing chocolate-flavoured did back then. Drinking chocolate didn’t taste of chocolate. Chocolate biscuits didn’t taste of chocolate. Still, it was the right colour.

Neapolitan
Vanilla and strawberry and chocolate, all in one tub? Astonishing and only for special occasions, like your parents’ anniversary or a neighbour’s divorce. Allowed you to confirm they were all essentially identical, and to mix them together for a sweet, grey post-war reward paste.

Raspberry ripple
Blew minds. There are grown adults still reeling at their first encounter of vanilla ice-cream shot through – in picturesque ripples – with deep, flavoursome raspberry. How? Why? Was Thatcher involved again? Does eating this make me a scab? But God help me I cannot stop.

Mint choc chip
Unavailable to the general public for decades, only sold through specialists, this was your mum’s ice-cream of choice. Green, sophisticated, containing real chocolate, as adult as smoking in bed, as luxurious as Imperial Leather soap. An After Eight in frozen form, you imagined Princess Margaret would have one, in a bath. Too raunchy for the Queen.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

London calling...

Another snippets post today, dear reader...

• Sports news: The Paris Olympics 2024 is looming, with the Opening Ceremony coming up on Friday. Will Slime Dion be the headline act? The world yawns. Cue a gratuitous photo of Tom Daley (and Team GB) again...

[click to embiggen, or even better, right-click and click "open in new tab"]

• Fashion news: The simply faboo Dame Zandra Rhodes has published her autobiography Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects. A must-have, methinks!
• Nature imitates art: In a strange twist - following last year's bizarre cult comedy horror film Cocaine Bear - real-life "Cocaine Sharks" have been discovered off the coast of Brazil. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...
• Sexy men in tight-fitting outfits news: John-John and I are off to see Deadpool and Wolverine on its opening night tomorrow - and an exceptionally-talented baker in Walsall has made a life-sized cake of the duo by way of a celebration!
• And finally: Happy Tequila Day! I can't stand the stuff myself, but it inspired a couple of great songs:

Xavier Cugat - Tequila

Jax Jones, Martin Solveig, RAYE, Europa - Tequila

And now, the weather: Muggy.

---

STOP PRESS:

Team GB diver Jack Laugher is getting very excited indeed about the games to come, it seems!

You came up from behind me and I knew

Sad news of the departure of the dance-floor diva Evelyn Thomas for the "Rush Poppers Room" in Fabulon yesterday sent me hurtling down a time-slip-wormhole...

...back again to the year when her only major hit was everywhere - the year of strikes, of Yuppies, of Space Shuttles and of Band Aid, the year of "Frankie Say" t-shirts and Hi-NRG music, the year I came out - 1984!

For me, this year forty years ago was one of the very best for music in that (or any other) decade!

What other year can you name, dear reader, that saw the debuts in the Top 40 of a clutch of world-beating and eternally influential artists of the calibre of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Jimmy Somerville [with Bronski Beat], Gloria Estefan [with Miami Sound Machine] or Prince, or indeed the arrival of class acts like Scritti Politti, The Smiths, ZZ Top, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Alphaville, Van Halen, Propaganda, and of course Frankie Goes To Hollywood?

Making their first foray in the upper echelons of the charts in 1984 as solo artists were George Michael [although Wham! had a great year of hits as well], Alison Moyet, Freddie Mercury [Queen also had a huge resurgence that year], Philip Oakey, Limahl, Billy Idol, Malcolm McLaren and Ray Parker Junior. It was also the year that saw massive commercial success for a number of established stars such as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Paul McCartney, Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie, Deniece Williams, Billy Joel, Pointer Sisters, Spandau Ballet, Elton John, Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, The Specials (Special A.K.A.), U2, Eurythmics, Kraftwerk, Bananarama, The Cars, Style Council, Billy Ocean, Culture Club, Bob Marley and the Wailers and Depeche Mode.

So much of the very "gay-gay-gay" theme that year - be it Boy George and Marilyn's "gender-bending", an unapologetic drag star singing You Think You're A Man on Top Of The Pops, the Age of Consent LP, Pete Burns and Dead or Alive, or Relax - was forever underpinned by the aforementioned musical genre of Hi-NRG, with the likes of Hazell Dean, Divine, Maria Vidal, Laura Branigan, Sheryl Lee Ralph, The Weather Girls and their ilk all dominating the clubs and the airwaves.

So let's conclude with Miss Thomas's mega-hit, a classic if ever there was one - I can smell the Kouros and amyl nitrite as we speak:

Evelyn Thomas - High Energy

RIP, Ellen Lucille "Evelyn" Thomas (22nd August 1953 – 21st July 2024)

Bonnie's foot fetish?

We welcome with - ahem - open arms the world of work once again...

...to find another of those "you know you're getting old when..." moments.

For none other than the annoying "Vioet Elizabeth Bott" from the Just William television series of my youth, the overly-effervescent Bonnie Langford is 60 years old today!

Nowadays possibly better remembered as one of Doctor Who's companions "Mel", or maybe as a contestant on Dancing on Ice, or perhaps for her role as "Carmel Kazemi" in EastEnders, she is actually a brilliantly talented dancer and singer on a variety of stages - with a lot of talent in her extended family, being the aunt of West End actresses Summer, Scarlett and Zizi Strallen - including in panto, and as the star of productions of Guys & Dolls, Chicago, 9 to 5 and 42nd Street, as well as taking her turn in the faboo Sondheim tribute gala Old Friends in 2022 [and we saw her at the Sondheim 75th birthday gala Children Will Listen in 2005]. A trouper!

On this Tacky Music Monday, here she is in fine form, with a bevy of safety gays:

Bonnie Langford - Fabulous Feet

Many happy returns, Bonnie Langford (born Bonita Melody Lysette Langford, 22nd July 1964)

Have a good week, dear reader.

I got U

Sun is shining for a change, and I'll be spending a few hours this afternoon out in it, watering the garden again. No rest for the wicked!

Meanwhile, Our Patron Saint of the Vocoder Cher has been time-travelling - making surprise appearances in Mad Men, Red Dwarf, Sons of Anarchy, Secrets of the London Underground, and even singing karaoke with "Barry" in The Queen Vic in EastEnders over twenty years ago - as part of a relaunch/rebranding of cable channel UKTV as "U"...

Cher - 'U Stream' Ad Campaign

It's faboo!

I meant the next street. Not this man's lawn.

Sad news. A peerless comedy talent - whose deadpan delivery inspired generations of comedians who followed - Mr Bob Newhart has died, aged 94.

We never had any of his shows - radio or television - in the UK, as far as I am aware, but his "Best Of" comedy LP was definitely in our family collection when I was growing up...

...probably mainly for this immortal sketch of his (here - ahem - ably assisted my none other than Dino himself):

Dean Martin & Bob Newhart - The Driving Instructor

Utter genius!

RIP, Bob Newhart (5th September 1929 – 18th July 2024)

Happiness and loneliness

Hurrah! A weekend's in sight, and the sun is blazing out there. We have a quiet couple of days of pottering to look forward to (for a change), but there's always room for a party!

There was a bit of sad news earlier this week, as we heard that German DJ Thomas Brückner had departed for the rave tent at Fabulon [aged just 46] - but my, oh my! What a legacy he left behind with this banger - Thank Disco Tomcraft It's Friday!!

Tomcraft - Loneliness

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

The last thing we need is Sheeran clones

To the relief of many music lovers, Adele has announced she is going to take a big break from recording. Hopefully these artists will follow suit.

Taylor Swift
With the Eras tour and the Super Bowl and a ‘secret’ double album with a completely unnecessary 31 songs, surely we’ve reached Taylor Swift saturation point? Even if none of her latest songs are memorable in any way, it would make sense to at least cultivate some anticipation. A few decades would definitely be sufficient to make Swifties hungry for a dozen tracks about lame boyfriends with shit lyrics.

Ed Sheeran
Sheeran released two studio tracks last year alone. Can’t he give the listening public a well-earned break by putting down his guitar and loop pedal until, say, 2050? He seems like a nice, reasonable guy, so if everyone tells him that a hiatus will give new acts a chance to flourish, he’ll listen. He’d probably even offer to mentor them, although the last thing we need is Sheeran clones churning out songs called Limerick Lady which are exactly as bad as that sounds.

Madonna
There’s no denying that Madge’s discography contains many bangers, but they came out decades ago. In fact Holiday isn’t too far from a half-century. Seeing her still scraping along and churning out records is like watching an elderly shelf-stacker toiling away in the Co-op. She should be enjoying her retirement in peace, eating biscuits and not releasing tracks that will generously be remembered as ‘culturally irrelevant’.

Liam Gallagher
There’s only one way people want to consume the music of Liam Gallagher, and that’s when he’s joined by his brother and belting out hits from 20-odd years ago. And since that’s never going to happen, he’s better off putting his musical activities to bed and finding some completely new interests. We’d all definitely be more interested to hear how his tomatoes are doing than listen to another instantly forgettable vanity project with John Squire.

Kylie
Every now and then you think you’ve escaped the clutches of Kylie’s earworms, but then she unleashes another disco hit that will rattle around your head for weeks. Why does she keep releasing them? Doesn’t she have all the money she’ll ever need? The world has even moved on from her saucy videos. We have Dua Lipa for that now.

Chris Martin
Yes, even cynics were somewhat heartwarmed by Coldplay’s epic Glastonbury set. But maybe that gig should have acted as a triumphant send-off, with everyone waving as Chris Martin disappeared into the sunset like a less-popular Shane. The vacuum his absence would create could then be filled by musicians with edge and charisma, or simply nothing at all. That would be absolutely fine compared to more Coldplay.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Opera Queens, bathhouses and Vicky Edie - once more

The fact that it would have been the 110th birthday today of the celebrated soprano Miss Eleanor Steber has prompted me for a second time to re-visit an ancient post of mine [originally from my MySpace years, and relocated with all the others to my other blog Give 'em the Old Razzle Dazzle] from 2008. The original was in the immediate aftermath of a literary event I attended called "The Lavender Library", at which Mr Paul Burston had enthused about one of my own favourite books of all time, Queens by Pickles, from which I had just rediscovered...

...a passage from the chapter Cruising at the Opera in which "The Opera Queen" - who is "wild about applause, always yelling 'Brava' whilst all about him bellow their ignorance of gender" - has a bitchy conversation at the opera house with his friend:

Friend: "Just look at those diamonds! Look at them! She must be rolling in it! She looks a bit like Margaret Dumont, don't you think?"
Geoffrey: "Some women are so camp, aren't they?"
Friend: "What! They're hysterical! Talk about camp, dear - just give me Eleanor Steber at the Continental Baths! Have you got that album?"
Geoffrey: "Oh, I've tried everywhere. Everywhere! Deleted now!"
Friend: "Oh God, yes! I found mine in New York, actually. Ten dollars. I can't remember when I was so thrilled! Shall we have a little troll upstairs? You never know what you're missing in this place!"
Geoffrey: "I love walking up this staircase. It's so Joan Crawford, isn't it?"

Well, apart from being a brilliant observation of the interplay between queens - it could be Madam Arcati and I and our friends chatting - this set me thinking. Just who is/was Eleanor Steber? And could it be true that an opera singer (if that is indeed who she was) actually performed at the most notorious of the sex-club bathhouses in New York in the 70s? The home of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow (who started out as an act there)? So off I went on a web search to find out more...

Eleanor Steber, who died in 1990, was indeed an American operatic soprano - one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States. Before her, most of the biggest stars of opera were European. Noted particularly for her performances of Wagner, Mozart, Puccini and Richard Strauss, she rose to prominence in the 1950s with the Metropolitan Opera, and performed at Bayreuth.

A bit of a high-living party-loving girl, her voice suffered towards the end of her career, but not before she paid a tribute to some of her greatest fans - gay men - by performing at the Continental Baths in 1973. And to top the whole search, I have found a copy of the original recording online!

Listen to or download the whole album as an MP3

Eleanor Steber live at the Continental - track listing:

• Mozart: Zeffiretti lusinghieri (from Idomeno), Ach, ich fuehl's (from Die Zauberfloete), Come scoglio (from Cosi fan tutte);
• Charpentier: Depuis le jour (from Louise);
• Puccini: Quando m'en vo (from La Boheme);
• Massenet: Scene and Gavotte (from Manon);
• Sieczynski: Wien, du Stadt meiner Traeume;
• Kreisler: Stars in My Eyes;
• Lehar: Medley from The Merry Widow;
• Puccini: Vissi d'Arte (from Tosca).

Edwin Biltcliffe, Piano; Joseph Rabb, Violin.October 4, 1973.

It is strange listening to this very old and very camp recording of a bygone gay era - before AIDS and the hysteria it whipped up closed bathhouses like this forever.

In particular, I found it very interesting how much Ms Steber's speaking voice must have influenced Bette Midler when she created her character Vicky Edie (from whence came my own epithet "Dolores Delargo the Toast of Chicago!").

But those reflections aside, I most enjoyed finding this beautiful vocal performance intact and online. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

And, SIXTEEN YEARS on from the original post, I still hope you do...

Eleanor Steber (17th July 1914 - 3rd October 1990)

Obscure objects of desire

On my shopping list:

Well, it is my birthday next month...

And you're gonna finish on top!

A view up my back passage. [click to embiggen]

Groo. Another weekend just whooshed by...

By good fortune, it would have been the ground-breaking lyricist Dorothy Fields' birthday today - the woman who broke the "glass ceiling" back in the early 20th century, writing dozens of songs with the likes of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Cy Coleman for musicals ranging from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers era to Annie Get Your Gun to Sweet Charity.

On this Tacky Music Monday, what better way to wake us all up than a bit of tap-dancing, courtesy of the lovely, leggy Tommy Tune - and one of Miss Fields' splendidly upbeat numbers?!

Tommy Tune - It's Not Where You Start

Have a good week, dear reader.

Found wanting?

[click to embiggen]

Madam Arcati and I concluded our "choral triptych" - we saw Faure's Requiem in March, and Verdi's Requiem in June - at the Cadogan Hall last night, with the biggest and most OTT of the lot, William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast.

Famously, the piece requires a huge vocal ensemble (last night's production had two choirs - Epsom Choral Society and the Barnes Choir), and just about every instrument in the orchestral canon. Indeed, the renowned wit and esteemed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (who was very sniffy about the work as it was about to receive its premiere) said to the young William Walton: "As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?" So he did.

It's impressive, that's for certain, if not exactly my "cup of tea" either. It's based upon one of those dramatic Old Testament stories full of smiting: the Jews are in exile as slaves in Babylon and the tyrant Belshazzar commits sacrilege by taking their sacred vessels for his guests and concubines to use at a lavish feast, bringing damnation upon his head. It includes the original source of the phrase "the writing's on the wall" - "You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting." Belshazzar's subsequent death and the fall of his empire become the cause of great celebration for the Jews. Noisily.

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Sir Andrew Davis - Belshazzar's feast: Then sing aloud to God (Finale) [Walton]

It is, of course, another phrase from that original story [later repeated in one of the Psalms] that has become even more famous in popular culture - not least in this eternal classic. I couldn't possibly imagine two more polar opposite pieces of music - but hey, that's the way my mind works!

Boney M - Rivers of Babylon

---

PS

It's France's greatest day of celebration, Le Quatorze Juillet (or Bastille Day)...

...so here's some coq gaulois, for your delectation:

Ooh, la, la!

New, nuevo, yeni, laatste

It's Saturday, it's grey and humid, and it's time for a little sojourn into some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late...

First up, something (relatively) new that is actually really quite old! It's also quite appropriate, since one of its creators Pino D'Angiò died last week. This track was originally produced way back in 1990, became a worldwide hit when it was remixed by Jam'n'Spoon in 1992, and has gone on to become a trance classic, with perpetual remixes and re-workings - right up to 2022, with this one:

Age Of Love - The Age Of Love (Charlotte de Witte & Enrico Sangiuliano Remix)

In complete contrast, here's a faboo "fusion" between the traditional music of Kenya and Western musical genres, released at the turn of this year, but - despite the fact that Madam Arcati's been raving about it for months - it's taken me this long to actually feature here:

Zerb and Sofiya Nzau - Mwaki

Veering back towards potential chart territory [whatever that actually means these days, in a world where merely watching a video on YouTube can actually count towards a place in the charts for the song it is promoting], here's Our Princess Kylie in collaboration with some lesser mortals (on what is, tbh, not much of a song, but I am prepared to give it a few more listens...):

Kylie Minogue (with Bebe Rexha & Tove Lo) – My Oh My

I was strangely drawn to this rather stylish lady, with her modern and rather glittering tribute to one of our fave genres, Disco...

LEXXE - Disco Witch

Miss Katy Perry pleases feminists everywhere by singing a song about female empowerment while jiggling her breasts at a camera:

Katy Perry - Woman's World

"Big Willy" is back! - with a rather jolly choon [for a change]:

Will Young - Light It Up

And finally... Saving the best to last, Dame Sophie of the Ellis-Bextors deigns to help out one of her continental acolytes - with spectacular results!

Felix Jaehn ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Ready For Your Love

As ever, dear reader, I'd love to know your thoughts...

It's a musical, natural high

We're almost there, folks...

As another weekend looms, it's grey and murky again here in London, just in time for the big outdoor events: the finals of Wimbledon, the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park (Stevie Nicks tonight, Our Princess Kylie tomorrow), the Wireless festival closer to us in Finsbury Park (Nicki Minaj tonight, Doja Cat on Sunday) - and the football final in Germany...

Us? We're going to Cadogan Hall again tomorrow, for William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast!

Meanwhile, let the celebrations with which we always greet the end of a week commence - starring the magnificent tonsils of Edwin Starr ["born in Tennessee, found fame in Detroit, died in Nottingham"], a pair of dead-eyed dancers with crispy flicks, and a song that was actually in our charts this week 45 years ago - and Thank Disco It's Friday!

Edwin Starr - H.A.P.P.Y Radio

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

Sans regrets, sans mélo'

Happy National Bandoneón Day! [If you happen to be Argentinian...]

Forgive the esoteric reference, dear reader - bandoneón is merely the local version of what we know as an accordion. Not normally an instrument of interest, given its corny association with buskers, fiddle bands and gypsies, nevertheless it has been a contributory factor to quite a few choons of which we are very fond.

Like these:

Grace Jones - I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)

Edward Maya feat Vika Jigulina - Stereo Love (Molella Radio Edit)

Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere

...and - I really cannot believe I have only ever featured this all-time house fave here at Dolores Delargo Towers once!

Lamur feat. In-Grid - Tu es foutu

[Every time we have a house party, this one of the mainstays on the playlist - as our whole gang does (or attempts to) do all the dance moves along with those lovely Pierre et Gilles models...]

Squeeze that box, folks!

Never being boring

You know you're getting old when...

...you realise that the godlike genius that is Mr Neil Tennant is (scarily) 70 years old today!!

All hail...

Here are just a few of our favourites from his long and estimable career:

Pet Shop Boys - Rent

Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind

Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing

Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin

The one that makes me cry:

Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring

Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Pet Shop Boys - I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing

Pet Shop Boys - Heart

Pet Shop Boys - New York City Boy

And finally, the one that started it all:

Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls

"You should always celebrate your successes because someone else will celebrate your failures."

"An issue I've had is: is it possible to be a pop star without selling sex? And ultimately I think to have mass selling pop music it is not possible to do it without selling sex. That's why I think we're not as successful as I think our music could be."

"We do politics through satire. I think when you get activist pop, that's the problem."

"A lot of what used to be known as gay culture - broadly speaking, homoeroticism and being camp - has been brought into mainstream culture. I think we should be moving to an era where it's just sex."

"The first club I ever really went to was this club on Neal Street, in London. It was a gay club – we used to pronounce it ‘Shag-o-ramas’, but it was spelt Chaguramas. It’s the name of a Spanish sheep or something."

"It's fundamental that what we do only exists in our own universe. When you like Pet Shop Boys, you are in our world."

Neil Francis Tennant (born 10th July 1954)

Every paperclip was precious

Generation Z colleagues not taking their job seriously? Sit down and terrify them with tales of a primitive time when the working conditions were as antiquated as the haircuts:

The reliance on fax machines
You think the photocopier’s insanely large and impossible to reload? Once we had a device called the fax machine, the Satanic spawn of a cantankerous printer and a vengeful, screeching demon trapped in a landline. Everything important had to be sent over the unreliable monster including your timesheet. Sent it wrong? No money for you.

Endless paper
Where do arriving faxes go? Your in-tray. And once you’ve laboriously entered their data? Your out-tray. What about the ones that are a bit hard? Someone else’s desk. Where does this leave your working environment? As choked with paper as the scene in Harry Potter where a million letters come down the chimney.

Cubicle servitude
Hot desking is the modern hell, but being fenced in with furry corkboards was a more taunting torture. No amount of faded family photographs pinned to these barriers could replace the longing for the world outside or stop hours dreaming of the scent of grass, the feel of sunshine, the memory of any colour other than grey.

Tippex was real
Amending a form? There’s no delete in this world. Instead, open yourself up to a lifetime of substance abuse by cracking open the potent biohazard called Tipp-ex. Nearly the worst of all the white liquids, it fixed imperfectly, took too long to dry and made it look like a pigeon had shat on your suit. But combined with a photocopier made forgery easy.

No personal phone use
Not your mobile phone, they didn’t exist. The phone that sat on your desk all day, that you spent all day making calls from, was as closely monitored for personal calls as your internet is today. Make one quick call to your bank and you’d be given a verbal warning and made to pay back 45p.

Territorial stationery wars
In the bygone land of analogue, every paperclip was precious. Feeling emotionally attached to a specific stapler was normal, as was the need to label your own personal hole punch and stroke it lovingly. Until one morning you came back and it was all gone, raided and scattered across a floor’s worth of desks and you never trusted again.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

I Got Myself an Angel

Sigh, indeed.

Monday comes around so quickly - especially when the weekend was a complete washout.

As we gird our loins for another week of unbridled joy in work, it's worth noting that it would have been the birthday of a remarkable (and oft-overlooked) favourite lady here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Miss Della Reese!

We adore her "Cha-Cha-Cha" album (of course), and her appearance alongside fellow divas Ethel Merman, Ann Miller and Carol Channing on The Love Boat is the stuff of legend - see my post on the sad occasion of her departure for Fabulon for that - but on this occasion, it's to her venture into the world of Scopitone we turn for a true Tacky Music Monday treat!

Della Reese - If I Never Get To Heaven (Scopitone)

Have a good week, dear reader.

A Regular Royal Queen

Today would have been the 80th birthday of the late, much-missed Mr George Logan, better known (of course) as "Doctor Evadne Hinge" [pictured left, above] - one half of one of the most enduring British drag acts of all time. By way of a celebration, here's an extract of my post way back in 2009:

Hinge and Bracket [for it is they] first became a double act with their regular bookings in the early 70s every Sunday lunchtime at a gay Kensington restaurant run by the iconic April Ashley. Their earliest breakthrough into the mainstream, however, was their smash hit appearance in 1974 at the Edinburgh Festival.

Patrick Fyffe (Dame Hilda Bracket) and George Logan (Dr Evadne Hinge) both had brilliant operatic singing voices, and their evocation of middle class gentility in the mythical "Stackton Tressel", suffused with smutty double-entendres, kept their flame alight until they were "discovered" by the BBC in 1977 - resulting in hit radio series such as The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket, followed by The Random Jottings of..., and At Home with....

As well as gracing us with their TV commercials for sherry, they appeared in two Royal Variety Performances, their own series of "Gala Evenings", starred on The Good Old Days, landed their own prime-time TV series Dear Ladies, and made a number of records. They also appeared in a televised Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus in 1983, conducted by Placido Domingo and starring Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde.

Our own precious copy of the Best Of Hinge and Bracket is often on an evening's playlist, not least for the pair's superlative versions of We'll Gather Lilacs, Zigeuner and A Regular Royal Queen.

Sadly Patrick died in 2002; George moved to France to run a guest house - and departed to join him in Fabulon just last year. But we will never forget the sheer joy that Hinge and Bracket gave us...

Perfect "Sunday Music".

George Logan (7th July 1944 – 21st May 2023)

Hinge and Bracket official website

He drinks a Lager drink, he drinks a Cider drink

Another snippets post today, dear reader:

• A little less mascara: Parisian drag cabaret club Chez Michou, which inspired La Cage aux Folles (the Jean Poiret play, the classic 1978 French film and its musical adaptation), is set to close its doors for good after 68 years. [Read my tribute to Michou over at the Dolores Delargo Museum of Camp]
• A.I. Zombies news: Audiobooks "read by" the voices of dead stars such as Judy Garland, James Dean and Sir Laurence Olivier have been launched by an AI company in London.
• Marsupial-cuddling controversy: A koala sanctuary in Australia where high-profile guests from Taylor Swift to Vladimir Putin have been photographed with them has banned cuddles with the animals.

• Hidden secrets news: Our new Prime Minister was a bit of a Goth?
• And, finally...: Hippopotamus can fly?

We are also apparently at the end of Alcohol Awareness Week. I'm aware of it, in large quantities! So are this lot:

Chumbawamba - Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down)

¡Olé!

Another long, busy and tedious week is heading for its demise, thank heavens!

Ironically, only yesterday I commented to Ms Scarlet "Just be thankful it's not pissing it down, like it usually does during Wimbledon fortnight". Lo and behold, it's been doing just that today, and the weekend doesn't look much better either. Must be the post-election gloom, now we've ousted one out-of-touch load of shifty politicians and replaced them with another...

Let's take our minds off it all, start planning for our traditional end-of-week party, and visit warmer climes to revel in the company of a truly - ahem - talented Spanish diva, and her homosexuals de seguridad - and Thank Disco It's Friday!

La Polaca - Olé de la Mar

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

I've got you in my heart, I got you in my head

Ignoring the UK general election and the US Independence Day completely... as our "summer" weather carries on in the bizarre pattern that it usually does in the UK at this time of year [it was considerably warmer at midnight last night than it was at midday yesterday], let us travel back in time to another unsettled yet rather warm year...1999!

Twenty-five years ago [gulp!] this month, it was indeed very dry and sunny, but thunderstorms were everywhere. That didn't stop us partying, of course!

Can these "songs of the summer" really be that old??!! Fuck.

A.T.F.C. Presents OnePhatDeeva - In And Out Of My Life

Basement Jaxx - Rendez Vu

Fragma - Toca Me

Vengaboys - Boom Boom Boom Boom

Afro Medusa - Pasilda

A quarter of a century?! Where did that go?

Hornpipes

Gosh. In all the excitement of Saturday's Gay Pride, we neglected to notice that was also Armed Forces Day!

Pride in London 2024 - Quick march!

Better late than never...