A real Contessa

Happy 62nd birthday today to the lovely model, actress, singer and former Mrs Dennis Waterman, the Polish aristocrat's daughter Miss Rula Lenska.

A statuesque beauty, she was famously the "face" of Alberto VO5, has made many appearances on the small screen (particularly here in the UK) and on the West End stage, and confirmed her position as "a friend of the gays" when she toured with The Gay Men's Chorus as their MC.

I once ran headlong into the lady's décolletage while she and then hubby were filming an episode of Minder in Cardiff - and my word, is she impressively tall!

It is, of course, for her starring role as "Q" in the kitschy cult 70s series Rock Follies that we love her the most - those glittery costumes, the boots, the hair! Many happy returns to one of my favourite beautiful ladies...

Rock Follies - Stairway

You know, you come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!

I often wondered what happened to the career of that wonderful Welsh singer/actress Sue Jones-Davies...

I remember Sue vividly as the "interloper" whose gravelly alcohol-fuelled vocals first added to, then ultimately destroyed the fictional band "The Little Ladies" in Rock Follies of 77. I was impressed with her voice then, and even more so when she appeared later in Victoria Wood's excellent sketch Keep on Shopping.

She famously appeared as the brilliantly-named Judith Iscariot, Brian's girlfriend in Life of Brian.

Bizarrely Sue is now the newly-elected Mayor of Aberystwyth(!) in West Wales, and her first action is to call for a lifting of the town's ban on the Monty Python film.

I'm not making this up, you know... Read the BBC article

Here's some of the memorable moments from Sue's career:

Rock Follies of '77

Victoria Wood show - "Keep on Shopping"

Monty Python's Life of Brian - I want to be a woman