Over at the Museum of Camp, a truly magnificent socialite has wafted in...
Read about the wonderful world of São Schlumberger
"She had more than taste. She had audacity."
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Audacity exhibition
Over at the Museum of Camp, a truly magnificent socialite has wafted in...
Read about the wonderful world of São Schlumberger
"She had more than taste. She had audacity."
Witches and bitches
I'm sitting here drinking my hundredth cup of tea and smoking my thousandth fag - the sign of having had a blinder of a night at John-John's birthday party last night. Suitably themed for Hallowe'en weekend, everyone interpreted "black'n'bling" in their own inimitable way, and we made a most spectacular crowd at the fabulously atmospheric front bar of the George Inn in Southwark, which John had hired for the occasion.
Lots of drinking, dancing and delirium later, we ended up taking over the upstairs function room at the Dog House on Kennington Cross, dancing on tables and singing our heart out (to Oasis, of all things, as I recall - oo-er). We even won the prize for best Hallowe'en costumes, with a bottle of champers from the landlady Camilla. A fab night indeed!
Being Hallowe'en, weird creatures seemed to be everywhere - from the aggressive drunk who tried to steal Alistair's hat to the bloodily made-up punter at the Dog House - but nothing quite prepared us for the surprise of getting home at 3am to find some strange woman curled up asleep on our doorstep. I soon shifted her off the premises, despite her hurling insults at me... An odd end to a crazy evening. Great fun nonetheless!
As it is actually Hallowe'en today, here's a little message from Elvira:
Whoooo.
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Feliz Compleaños, Señora John!
As it is John-John's birthday, we thought we'd put together a little tribute blog to his all-time favourite band - nay, obsession - Abba!
Teamwork between Madame Acarti and I came up with some most unusual stuff...
Let us first feature a long-time favourite of ours here at Dolores Delargo Towers. It is a cover version of Dancing Queen, and there have been many - but when it is sung in Hindi by the fantabulosa Salma and Sabina Agha, how could we resist (ya)?
Sticking rigidly with the queeny favourite, let's have Kylie's triumphant version from the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony in 2000!
Enough of the "dancing queens" - let's try something a little more subtle. How about French icon Mireille Mathieu's tribute to Abba?
And to close, we have found something absolutely brilliant... There is always time for a bit of Nina Hagen at Dolores Delargo Towers! Yet who knew she covered Abba as well..?
Happy birthday, dearest!
Friday, 29 October 2010
This is it
Friday at last! We have John-John's "black'n'bling" party to look forward to tomorrow night, and the sun will shine...
Time, methinks for a little bit of the marvellous Melba Moore...
Here she is with her 80s floor-filler:
And let us not forget that Miss Moore brought us this stomper, well before Dannii Minogue had even started with the Mickey Mouse Club. Thank Disco It's Friday!
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Pick of the Pops
"Not 'arf, pop pickers!"
So we have survived the middle of the week (Wednesday is always the worst of all days), and we've had so much trouble with the cable connection at Dolores Delargo Towers lately (no TV nor internet again for three hours this evening!) I decided to embark on a new(ish) music fest to cheer myself up once I was back online!
It would be rude of me not to share my chosen delicacies...
The ever-reliable Freemasons have come up with yet another corker of a new single, Believer:
Despite this being the big summer hit of 2009, not 2010, I am still madly in love with the charms of Romanian megastar (and it's not often you get those two words together in the same sentence) Mr Edward Maya...
I am always cheered up by the news that our beloved Princess Kylie is releasing a new single. The next track chosen from Aphrodite is the fabulously chirpy "Scissor-Sisters-esque" Better Than Today - enjoy the Happy HotDog Remix Edit:
Better Than Today (Happy HotDog Remix Edit) by kyleongwl
Just in case anyone missed it in my blog about the fantabulosa 82-year-old Spanish diva Sara Montiel last week, I remain absolutely fascinated, nay obsessed, with this collaboration with the marvellous Alaska and her band Fangoria!
Finally, here's a real work of art - a recent video by Brooklyn indie band The Drums, that pays a remarkably bizarre homage to another uber-cool band, the Shangri-Las. This is genius!
And here is the original - Out In The Streets by the Shangri-Las:
Thoughts?
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Hey, Mambo!
Twenty years ago, at the grand old age of 90 the world lost one of the last of the great bandleaders, Puerto Rico's finest - Xavier Cugat. Credited with bringing Latin music to the airwaves in America (and thence the rest of the previously unconquered World), he married five times - and his widow is none other than house favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Charo!
On this anniversary, I think we should celebrate with some of his uplifting music...
And some of hers...
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Born Brilliant
We trolled along on a sunny Sunday afternoon last weekend to the wonderful "Gay's The Word" bookshop in arty Bloomsbury for a special reading - the launch of Christopher Stevens' definitive masterwork on the life of Kenneth Williams, Born Brilliant.
A wonderful, knowledgeable and witty reader, Mr Stevens gave us practically chapter-and-verse the story of Kenny's childhood, his acting and dressing-up games and his burgeoning desire to better himself - and that was just for starters! For the next couple of hours, he presented anecdote after anecdote, observation after theory, about this wonderful man (including his conclusion that Kenny's death was not suicide, but an unfortunate reaction between barbiturates and Zantac).
As one of his surviving family friends (who Mr Stevens managed to get to speak publicly for the first time) put it, Kenneth Williams was essentially "afraid of maturity". The well-documented private person behind the hysterically camp public image was in effect a forever stunted pseudo-adolescent, wilfully avoiding grown-up matters such as sex, relationships and responsibility, preferring obsessive cleanliness, solitude and the ultimate expression of "selfishness" - his diary.
Kenny was apparently embarrassed by the fact that he embarked upon his acting career with no formal drama school training behind him. He felt somehow unworthy of the parts he got, yet deserving of better - this was just one of the many contradictions in his life. Despite being wildly popular with the critics and the public alike, a few of the West End productions in which he starred were not a commercial success. This bothered him immensely. He disliked being the pivot upon which any production hinged. He much preferred being a player, part of a company where some other "deserving" star - be it Ingrid Bergman or Maggie Smith, or even Hancock - was the one upon whose head the responsibility for its success or failure rested.
Loathing - whether of self, or (much to many people's surprise and upset once the fuller version of his diaries was published after his death) of fellow actors, colleagues and friends - seems to be the watchword for Kenny's life. He resented his father's bombastic manner, and the mental and physical decline that led the Williams family out of slum poverty into middle-class Bloomsbury and back again into bankruptcy. He loathed the direction that his career had taken him (in particular the eternally popular Carry On films). He loathed the arrogance of Hancock, the sordid commonness of Sid James, the sleaze of Joe Orton, and the downright rudeness of Orson Welles (who, remarkably, offered him the opportunity to launch a career in America, which Kenny turned down). He could be cruel and waspish at the drop of a hat, and cared little who he upset in the process.
However, as Mr Stevens has also found, the mercurial nature of Kenneth Williams meant his life was not all doom-and-gloom. When he did cultivate friendships, they lasted more or less for the rest of his life. He proposed to several female friends, including Sheila Hancock and Joan Sims. He was loved for, and thoroughly enjoyed, being a "national treasure" - queen of the chat shows. He certainly revelled in the sexlessness of his Music Hall style of camp - innuendo without the "messy bits".
And we adored him for it! That is I assume why Mr Stevens embarked on this project. To conduct such careful research into the life of a man about whom millions of words have already been written (many by his own hand, indeed), reading every single one of the great man's diaries (incidentally written longhand in at least twelve different styles of handwriting, depending on Kenneth's mood!), to interview childhood friends previously unknown, to produce a comprehensive biography of this magnitude - it is a labour of love. I have just opened this impressive tome, and look forward to reading it from cover to cover...
Here's the ebullient Mr Williams, the ultimate chat show guest:
...and here, his classic "Franglais" piss-take:
Buy your copy of Born Brilliant from Foyles
or visit
Gay's the Word bookshop
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