Arise...

...Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Jenny Harries (chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency), Dame June Raine (head of the vaccines regulator MHRA) - and, of course, Dame Patsy Stone Joanna Lumley - coronavirus "heroes" Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, broadcaster and former politician Sir Trevor Phillips, filmmaker Sir John Boorman, and [erm] Sir Tony Blair (Order of the Garter); as well as Gold-medal-winning Olympian couple Dame Laura and Sir Jason Kenny. Daniel Craig was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, and veteran poitician Frank Field becomes a Companion of Honour.

Joining them in getting gongs are Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) Bernie Taupin, cookery writer Claudia Roden, newsreader and presenter Moira Stuart, "money saving expert" Martin Lewis, and filmmakers Barbara Broccoli, Michael G Wilson, Anthony Horowitz and Paul Greengrass (as well as someone I was close to way back in the 1990s when I was secretary of the Gwent AIDS Support Group, Neil Wooding); Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) June Brown (aka "Dot Cotton"), Bill Roache ("Ken Barlow"), sex god Tom Daley and fellow trunks-wearer Adam Peaty, gardening guru Dan Pearson and Pauline Black of The Selecter; Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) Melanie Brown ("Scary Spice"), journalist and presenter Kate Garraway, Tom Daley's synchronised dive partner Matty Lee, dancer Ashley Banjo, Classic FM presenter Margherita Taylor, best-selling author Adele Parks and tennis champion Emma Raducanu.

Congratulations, all!

My Damehood is obviously still in the post. Again.

HM The Queen's New Year Honours List 2022

It's your outlook on life that counts

And so, with a heavy heart we bid a sad farewell to one of the greats, our Patron Saint Supreme, Miss Betty White...

Life will never be quite the same without her.

"Don't try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won't live long enough to find out about, but I'm still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, 'I'm going to be 30 - oh, what am I going to do?' Well, use that decade! Use them all!"

"Animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not. All my life, even as a kid, I have preferred men older than I am. Unfortunately, today I don't think there is anyone older than I am!"

"Let's say I meet someone I find attractive. I have to keep reminding myself of how old I am, because I don't feel like I'm that old. I fight the urge to flirt and try to shape up. No fool like an old fool."

"It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humour in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver."



“My answer to anything under the sun, like ‘What have you not done in the business that you’ve always wanted to do?’ is ‘Robert Redford’.”

"I have a two-story house and a bad memory, so I'm up and down those stairs all the time. That's my exercise."



"I really don't care with whom you sleep. I just care what kind of a decent human being you are."

"My muffin hasn't had a cherry since 1939!"

"I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It's that simple."

"Why would I think of retiring? What would I do with myself?"

“I have no regrets at all. None. I consider myself to be the luckiest old broad on two feet.”

RIP, Betty Marion White Ludden (17th January 1922 - 31st December 2021)

Missin' several angels

Go, girl! *

It's the final, final countdown - not merely the end of a week, but the end of a year!

Having depressed everyone yesterday by opening the "Book of the Dead 2021", it's time to (sort of) make amends - with a party. We shan't be hosting a real one again this year, more's the pity, thanks to fucking Omicron ["our gang" will be gathering via Zoom/Teams/wotever instead] - but let's get some dance choons lined up for a (solitary) boogie nonetheless!

Every track on this playlist is from someone who has departed for the ever-growing dancefloors of Fabulon this year - so let's raise a glass to the memory of each and every one of 'em, and Thank Disco It's New Year's Eve Friday!!

Tavares - Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel

The Supremes - You're My Drivin' Wheel

Patrick Juvet - I Love America

Kool & The Gang - Celebration

The Gap Band - Oops Upside Your Head

Eartha Kitt & Bronski Beat - Cha Cha Heels

Baccara - Yes Sir, I Can Boogie [Starparade 02.06.1977]

Raffaella Carrà - Do It, Do It Again [Top of the Pops 27-04-1978]

Have a faboo New Year, dear reader! Clink, clink. It can only be better. Can't it?

[* Scary fact: the boy in that classic "meme-y thing" is now 39 and living in Boston]

RIP, 2021

And so, the year we thought might have provided us with a respite after all the fear and dread that 2020 flung at us - yet was in many ways even worse - is almost over, and it is time once more, dear reader to open "The Book of the Dead".

As I said this time last year, "I am aware that there were thousands more who will never make such a list, who will be mourned as well" - but here it is; the roll-call of the great and the good, and the definitely not-so-good to whom we waved farewell this year.

Again, it's quite a haul...

Mark Eden (British actor, the villain "Alan Bradley" in Coronation Street)
Gerry Marsden (British musician, Gerry and the Pacemakers: Ferry Cross the Mersey, How Do You Do It, You'll Never Walk Alone)
Gordon "Butch" Stewart (Jamaican businessman, founder of Sandals resorts, newspaper proprietor, arch-homophobe)
Barbara Shelley (British actress, Hammer Horror's number-one female star in the 1960s)
Shelley Hack (US model and actress, sixth "Angel" in the final series of Charlie's Angels)
Albert Roux (French-British award-winning chef and restaurateur, Roux Brothers)
Michael Apted (British director, producer and writer, Gorillas in the Mist, The World Is Not Enough, Seven Up! and its successor documentaries)
Katharine Whitehorn (British pioneering journalist and columnist, The Observer)
Nancy Walker Bush Ellis (US socialite, charitable fundraiser and environmentalist, sister of George Bush Snr)
Sir David Barclay (British billionaire businessman, The Ritz Hotel, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph)
Eve Branson (British philanthropist and child welfare advocate, mother of Richard Branson)
Sylvain Sylvain (Egyptian-US guitarist, New York Dolls)
Grace Robertson (photographer and photojournalist, Picture Post, Life magazine)
Gerry Cottle (British circus owner and the owner of the Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset)
Siegfried Fischbacher (German-US showbiz magician, one half of Siegfried and Roy)
Charlotte Cornwell (British actress, "Anna" in Rock Follies)
Sammy Nestico (US composer and arranger, Count Basie Orchestra, The Color Purple, M*A*S*H)
Phil Spector (US "Wall of Sound" record producer, Righteous Brothers, the Ronettes, the Crystals, Ike and Tina Turner; convicted murderer)
Jimmie Rodgers (US singer, English Country Garden, Kisses Sweeter than Wine)
Nathalie Delon (French actress, ex-wife of Alain Delon)
James Purify (US singer, James and Bobby Purify: I'm Your Puppet)
Larry King (US veteran broadcaster, Larry King Live)
Joseph Sonnabend (South African scientist and pioneering HIV/AIDS researcher, early proponent of "safer sex" behaviour, arch-critic of AZT treatment)
Cloris Leachman (US actress, The Last Picture Show, Young Frankenstein, The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
Cicely Tyson (US actress, Roots, Fried Green Tomatoes, Diary of a Mad Black Woman)
Hilton Valentine (British guitarist, The Animals: The House of the Rising Sun)
Allan Burns (US television producer and screenwriter, created The Munsters, wrote for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda)
Maureen Colquhoun (British politician, first out-lesbian MP)
Captain Sir Tom Moore (British Army officer, centenarian and record-breaking charity fundraiser)
Jim Weatherly (US songwriter, Midnight Train to Georgia, Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me)
Lord Vestey (British peer and horse-breeder, chairman of Vestey Holdings (Dewhurst butchers, Fray Bentos, OXO), former chairman of Cheltenham Races and Master of the Horse)
Naim Attallah (Palestinian-British publisher, the Literary Review, The Oldie, The Women's Press, Quartet Books)
Christopher Plummer (Canadian actor, The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King)
Jean Bayliss (British actress, "Maria" in the original West End production of The Sound of Music, "Cynthia Cunningham" in Crossroads)
Leon Spinks (US boxing champion, famously beat Mohammed Ali)
George Shultz (US statesman, centenarian, served in senior posts under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan)
Mary Wilson (US singer, founder member of The Supremes; icon)
Larry Flynt (US porn publisher: Hustler; free speech campaigner and litigant)
Frank Mills (British actor, Rumpole of the Bailey, "Betty"'s husband in Coronation Street)
Chick Corea (US jazz musician and composer, won 23 Grammy awards)
Carlos Menem (Argentine statesman, former President, re-established relations with the United Kingdom after the Falklands War)
Doug Mountjoy (British (Welsh) champion snooker player)
Sir William Macpherson (British (Scottish) judge, chair of the Stephen Lawrence murder enquiry into institutional racism)
Ari Gold (US singer-songwriter and gay role-model, Sparkle (with Sarah Dash))

Steuart Bedford (British conductor and pianist, former artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival)
Rush Limbaugh (US right-wing radio host, political commentator, homophobe and misogynist)
Peter Dorey (British gay rights activist, co-founder of Gay's the Word bookshop in London)
Peter Harris (British television director, The Muppet Show, Spitting Image, Family Fortunes)
Sir Eddie Kulukundis (British shipping magnate and philanthropist, founding investor and life president of Ambassador Theatre Group, husband of Susan Hampshire)
Ronald Pickup (British actor, Fortunes of War, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Holby City, Darkest Hour)
Johnny Briggs (British actor, "Mike Baldwin" in Coronation Street)
Ian St.John (British (Scottish) footballer, Liverpool; television pundit, Saint and Greavesie TV show)
Bob Swash (British theatrical producer, Evita, Blood Brothers, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat)
Bunny Wailer (born Neville Livingston; Jamaican singer and percussionist, Bob Marley and the Wailers)
Chris Barber (British trad jazz bandleader and trombonist)
Nicola Pagett (British actress, "Elizabeth Bellamy" in Upstairs, Downstairs; A Bit of a Do, There's a Girl in My Soup)
Tony Hendra (British satirist, producer and writer: National Lampoon, Spitting Image; actor: Spinal Tap)
Lou Ottens (Dutch engineer, inventor of the cassette tape)
Duggie Fields (British Pop Art/post-modernist painter, designer, graphic artist and cultural icon, invented the term "maximalism")
Norton Juster (US children's book author, The Phantom Tollbooth)
Trevor Peacock (British actor, Vicar of Dibley, and songwriter: Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter, Andy Capp the musical)
Bill Harkin (British architect, designed and built the first Glastonbury Pyramid Stage)
Goodwill Zwelithini, King of the Zulu nation
Murray Walker (British Formula One racing commentator, journalist and "national treasure")
Marvin Hagler (US champion boxer)
John Reynolds (British television producer, As Time Goes By, Panorama)
Yaphet Kotto (US actor, Live and Let Die, Alien, The Running Man)
Sabine Schmitz (German motor racing champion and TV host, Top Gear)
Elsa Peretti (Italian jewellery designer for Tiffany, model and philanthropist)
Peter Lorimer (British (Scottish) champion footballer, Leeds United, Scottish national team)
John Crichton-Stuart, 7th Marquess of Bute
George Segal (US actor, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Touch of Class, The Owl and the Pussycat, For the Boys)
Larry McMurtry (US novelist whose works became films: The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment; screenwriter: Brokeback Mountain)
Myra Frances (British actress, Survivors, Crown Court, first lesbian kiss on British TV (with Alison Steadman in the play Girl), wife of actor Peter Egan)
Doreen Lofthouse (British entrepreneur and philanthropist, built Fisherman's Friends from cottage industry to a multimillion pound global enterprise)
Patrick Juvet (Swiss model and Disco singer-songwriter, I Love America)
Gloria Henry (US actress, Rancho Notorious)
Paul Ritter (British character actor, The Hollow Crown, Friday Night Dinner, Vera)
Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh
Shay Healy (Irish songwriter, Johnny Logan's What's Another Year)
Galen Weston (British-Canadian billionaire businessman, owner of Selfridges)
Baroness Shirley Williams (British politician, former Labour cabinet minister who quit the party and co-founded the SDP)
André Maranne (French-British actor, The Pink Panther, Fawlty Towers)
Bernie Madoff (US financier and investment manager, convicted of the largest "Ponzi scheme" financial fraud in US history)
Helen McCrory (British theatre and film actress, "Cherie Blair" in The Queen; Harry Potter, Peaky Blinders; wife of Damien Lewis)
Felix Silla (Italian-US actor and stuntman, "Cousin Itt" in The Addams Family, "Twiki" in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)
Charles Geschke (US computer software developer, co-founder of Adobe and co-developer of the PDF and desktop publishing)
Barry Mason (British songwriter (with Les Reed), Delilah, Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), The Last Waltz)

Walter Mondale (US politician, Vice President to Jimmy Carter)
Anthony Powell (British costume designer, Travels With My Aunt, Death On The Nile, 101 Dalmatians)
Jim Steinman (US  composer, lyricist and record producer, Bat Out of Hell, Dead Ringer for Love, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Holding Out for a Hero)
Idriss Déby (President of Chad for 30 years)
Tempest Storm (US burlesque stripper, "The Queen Of Exotic Dancers")
Les McKeown (British (Scottish) singer and teen heartthrob, Bay City Rollers: Bye Bye Baby, Shang-a-Lang)
Joe Long (US bass guitarist, The Four Seasons)
Milva (Italian chanson singer and actress)
Billie Hayes (US television, film and stage actress, "Witchiepoo" in H.R. Pufnstuf)
Christa Ludwig (German dramatic mezzo-soprano opera and Lieder singer)
Alber Elbaz (Moroccan-Israeli fashion designer, Guy Laroche, Yves Saint Laurent, Lanvin)
Michael Collins (US astronaut, Apollo 11 lunar mission)
Olympia Dukakis (US actress, Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias, Tales of the City)
Marcel Stellman (Belgian record producer (Pinky and Perky) and lyricist (Tulips from Amsterdam); brought the French show Des chiffres et des lettres to the UK as Countdown)
Jacques d’Amboise (US ballet dancer, New York City Ballet, and founding director of the National Dance Institute)
Lloyd Price (US "doo-wop"/R&B singer-songwriter, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Personality)
Nick Kamen (British male model, singer and songwriter, famously stripped to his boxers in an advert for Levi's jeans)
Paul Van Doren (US businessman, co-founder of Vans shoes)
Graeme Ferguson (Canadian film-maker, co-founder of Imax)
Pauline Tinsley (British soprano, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera)
Norman Lloyd (US actor, director and supercentenarian (106), St. Elsewhere, Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur, Dead Poets Society)
Charles Grodin (US character actor, The Great Muppet Caper, Beethoven, Heaven Can Wait)
Max Mosley (British former racing driver and head of motor racing's governing body, successfully sued the News of the World over an orgy "scandal")
John Warner (US politician, senator, famously married Elizabeth Taylor)
Rusty Warren (US comedian and singer, released several albums of risqué cabaret songs such as Knockers Up! and Sin-sational)
John Davis (US singer, one of the real singers behind the notorious mimers Milli Vannilli)
Samuel E. Wright (US actor and singer, Under The Sea in Disney's The Little Mermaid)
Eric Carle (US children's author and illustrator, The Very Hungry Caterpillar)
Freddy Marks (British singer, of "Rod, Jane and Freddy" on Rainbow)
Shane Briant (British actor, Hammer horror films)
Gavin MacLeod (US actor, "Your Captain, Merrill Stubing" in The Love Boat)
B.J. Thomas (US singer, Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head)
Damaris Hayman (British character actress, Doctor Who, Confessions of a Driving Instructor and much more)
Douglas S. Cramer (US television producer, Wonder Woman, Dynasty, The Love Boat)
Ben Roberts (British actor, "Chief Inspector Derek Conway" in The Bill for 15 years)
Edward de Bono (Maltese-British academic and doctor, originator of "lateral thinking")
Ned Beatty (US actor, Network, Hear My Song, Deliverance)
Kenneth Kaunda (Zambian statesman, first President)
John McAfee (British-US tech entrepreneur, McAfee anti-virus software)
Jackie Lane (British actress, "Dodo Chaplet" in Doctor Who in the 1960s)
Stuart Damon (US actor, "Craig Stirling" in The Champions)
Donald Rumsfeld (US politician, Defence Secretary who instigated the Iraq War in 2003)
Bill Ramsey (US jazz, swing and pop singer, who sang mostly in German and became a citizen of Germany)
Richard Donner (US film director, The Omen, Superman, Lethal Weapon)

Anne Stallybrass (British actress, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Peppermint Pig, Onedin Line)
Raffaella Carrà (Italian singer, dancer, actress, television host and gay icon)
Dilip Kumar (Indian Bollywood actor, star of 65 films)
William Smith (US character actor, "Falconetti" in Rich Man, Poor Man)
Paul Mariner (British championship footballer and manager)
Max Griggs (British shoe manufacturing entrepreneur, Doc Martins)
Tom O'Connor (British comedian and game show host, Name That Tune)
Mary Ward (Australian actress and supercentenarian (106), "Mum" in Prisoner Cell Block H)
Jackie Mason (US stand-up comedian, actor and voiceover artist, The Simpsons)
Dieter Brummer (Australian soap actor and heartthrob, Home and Away)
Dusty Hill (US bass guitarist and vocalist, ZZ Top)
Mo Hayder (British crime and thriller writer)
Paul Johnson (US house music DJ and producer, Get Get Down)
Les Vandyke (born John Worsley; British songwriter, What Do You Want? (for Adam Faith), Jack in the Box (for Clodagh Rodgers), Does Anybody Miss Me (for Shirley Bassey))
Dennis Thomas (US saxophonist, co-founder of Kool and the Gang, member for six decades)
Jane Withers (US child star; film, TV and advertising character actress, TV show host and voiceover artist)
Pat Hitchcock (British actress and producer, only child of Alfred Hitchcock)
Una Stubbs (British actress, television personality, dancer and national treasure: Summer Holiday, Till Death Us Do Part, Worzel Gummidge, Give Us a Clue)
Nanci Griffith (US country/folk singer-songwriter, first recorded From A Distance)
James Hormel (US philanthropist, gay rights activist and first openly gay man appointed as an US Ambassador (to Luxembourg))
Sean Lock (British comedian, 8 Out of 10 Cats)
Austin Mitchell (British former Labour MP, journalist and TV presenter)
Jill Murphy (British children's author, The Worst Witch)
Don Everly (US singer, last surviving member of The Everly Brothers: All I Have to Do Is Dream, Cathy's Clown)
Brian Travers (British saxophonist, founder member of UB40)
Grange Calveley (British cartoon artist, creator and writer of Roobarb and Custard (animated by Bob Godfrey))
Charlie Watts (British drummer, Rolling Stones)
Michael Nader (US actor, "Dex Dexter" in Dynasty)
Lee "Scratch" Perry (Jamaican reggae musician, pioneer of "dub", and songwriter, Police & Thieves)
Ed Asner (US actor, Lou Grant, and voiceover artist, Up)
Mikis Theodorakis (Greek composer, Zorba the Greek film score)
Joan Washington (British vocal and dialect coach, wife of Richard E Grant)
Sarah Harding (British singer, Girls Aloud)
Tony Selby (British character actor, Get Some In!, Doctor Who, Love Hurts)
Jean-Paul Belmondo (French actor and heartthrob, Breathless, That Man from Rio)
Carl Bean (US singer, gay anthem I Was Born This Way, and founder of a church for Black LGBTQ+ worshippers)
Michael K. Williams (US actor, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire)
Lynn Ruth Miller (US-British stand-up comic, “the world's oldest performing comedienne”)
Edward Barnes (British BBC children's television producer, co-creator of Blue Peter, creator and producer of Newsround and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop)
Maria Mendiola (Spanish singer, founding member of Baccara, Yes Sir I Can Boogie, Sorry I'm a Lady)
Charlotte Johnson Wahl (British artist, mother of PM Boris Johnson)
Reuben Klamer (US inventor, board game The Game of Life)
Norman Bailey (British opera singer, Wagnerian bass-baritone)
Sir Clive Sinclair (British inventor: pocket calculator, ZX Spectrum personal computer, the Sinclair C5)

Jane Powell (US actress, singer and dancer, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Royal Wedding, Hit the Deck)
John Challis (British comedy actor, Benidorm, "Boycie" in Only Fools and Horses)
Jimmy Greaves (British champion footballer and television pundit, Saint and Greavesie TV show)
Sarah Dash (US singer, founder-member of Labelle)
Richard H. Kirk (British electronic musician, Cabaret Voltaire)
Willie Garson (US actor, played a prominent gay character in Sex and the City)
Robert Fyfe (British (Scottish) character actor, "Howard" in Last of the Summer Wine)
Roger Michell (British theatre, film and television director, The Buddha of Suburbia, Notting Hill)
Len Ashurst (British football player and manager, Newport County)
Alan Lancaster (British rock bass guitarist, founder-member of Status Quo)
Andrea Martin (US R&B singer-songwriter and record producer: En Vogue, Toni Braxton; singer of the song that became Tomcraft's Loneliness)
Roger Hunt (British champion footballer, member of the victorious England World Cup team in 1966)
Barry Ryan (British singer, Eloise)
Sir John Chilcot (British civil servant, chair of the damning Iraq war inquiry)
Luisa Mattioli (Italian actress, third wife of Roger Moore)
Gerald Home (British actor and puppeteer, operated "Audrey II" in Little Shop of Horrors)
James Brokenshire (British MP and former minister)
Rick Jones (Canadian-British children's TV presenter, Play School, Fingerbobs)
Everett Morton (St Kitts-British drummer, The Beat)
Paddy Moloney (Irish musician, The Chieftains)
Sir Gerry Robinson (Irish-British business executive and television "celebrity businessman")
Sir David Amess (British sitting MP, murdered by a constituent)
Alan Hawkshaw (British TV theme composer, Grange Hill, Dave Allen at Large, Countdown)
Geoffrey Chater (British character actor and centenarian, Mapp and Lucia, If..., The Bill)
Denise Bryer (British voice actress, Terrahawks, Labyrinth, Hector's House)
Colin Powell (US military officer and statesman, first black Secretary of State)
Leslie Bricusse (British Oscar-winning composer and lyricist, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Pure Imagination, Le Jazz Hot!)
Bernard Haitink (Dutch conductor, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Ivy Nicholson (US fashion model, actress and Warhol acolyte)
James Michael Tyler (US actor, "Gunther" in Friends)
Wakefield Poole (US film director, pioneer of the gay pornography industry)
Christopher Wenner (British TV presenter, Blue Peter; aka Max Stahl, investigative reporter, Channel 4 News)
Ado Campeol (Italian restaurateur, called "the father of tiramisu")
Nelson Freire (Brazilian classical pianist, frequent collaborator/duettist with fellow pianist Martha Argerich)
Ronnie Wilson (US funk musician, co-founder of The Gap Band, Oops Upside Your Head)
Bob Baker (British scriptwriter, Doctor Who [co-created "K-9", "Omega" and "the Axons"], Wallace and Gromit)
Georgie Dann (French singer based in Spain, "King of cheesy summer hits")
Lionel Blair (British entertainer, actor, dancer, choreographer, television personality and national treasure)
Clifford Rose (British actor, "Gestapo officer Kessler" in Secret Army, honorary associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company)
Astro (British musician (born Terence Wilson), founder-member of UB40, lead vocalist on Rat In Mi Kitchen)
Andy Barker (British DJ and dance musician, 808 State)
Dean Stockwell (US actor, Quantum Leap, Married to the Mob, Blue Velvet, Compulsion)
Austin Currie (Northern Irish civil rights activist and politician both sides of the border, founder member of the SDLP and Fine Gael minister)

Roy Holder (British actor, Ace of Wands, Sorry!, Loot)
Gwyneth Guthrie (British (Scottish) actress, "Mrs Mack" in Take The High Road)
Graeme Edge (British drummer, poet, and founder-member of The Moody Blues)
F. W. de Klerk (South African statesman and Nobel Peace Prize winner, began the process of the abolition of apartheid and served in Nelson Mandela's government)
Wilbur Smith (Zambian-born South African prolific and best-selling novelist)
Joe Siracusa (US drummer, last surviving member of Spike Jones and his City Slickers; and cartoon editor, The Pink Panther, Spider-Man)
Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (British socialite, supercentenarian, widow of former Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden (later Lord Avon))
Mick Rock (British photographer: David Bowie, Lou Reed [Transformer LP], Queen, Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Bernard Holley (British actor, "PC Newcombe" in Z-Cars, "DI Mike Turnbull" in The Gentle Touch)
Marilyn McLeod (US songwriter, Love Hangover by Diana Ross)
Prince Andrew Romanoff (Russian aristocrat, claimant to the crown of the House of Romanoff)
Stephen Sondheim (US maestro of musicals; songwriter, composer and legend: Gypsy, Company, Follies and myriad others)
Sir Frank Williams (British Formula 1 racing entrepreneur, Williams Racing)
Arlene Dahl (US actress: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Slightly Scarlet; businesswoman, and mother of Lorenzo Lamas)
Sir Antony Sher (South African-British actor, Royal Shakespeare Company, "Disraeli" in Mrs Brown)
Fortune FitzRoy, Duchess of Grafton (British aristocrat, Mistress of the Robes to HM The Queen, and supercentenarian)
Bob Dole (US politician, Republican Senate leader and former Presidential candidate)
John Miles (British rock music vocalist, guitarist and songwriter, Music)
Ralph Tavares (US soul singer, founder-member of Tavares)
Robbie Shakespeare (Jamaican bass-player and music producer, Sly and Robbie, Grace Jones)
Steve Bronski (British (Scottish) keyboardist and songwriter, Bronski Beat)
Lina Wertmüller (Italian award-winning film director, Seven Beauties)
Mensi (Thomas Mensforth) (British punk singer, Angelic Upstarts)
Garth Dennis (Jamaican reggae musician, Black Uhuru)
Michael "Mike" Nesmith (US singer, guitarist and songwriter, founder-member of The Monkees)
Anne Rice (US author, Interview With a Vampire)
Jack Hedley (British actor, Colditz, For Your Eyes Only, The Scarlet Blade, The Anniversary)
Jethro (British (Cornish) comedian)
Wanda Young (US singer, The Marvelettes, Please Mister Postman, When You're Young and In Love)
Richard Rogers (British architect, Pompidou Centre, Lloyd's of London, Millennium Dome)
Carlos Marín (German-Spanish baritone singer, Il Divo)
Paul Mitchell (US soul singer, The Floaters, Float On)
Sally Ann Howes (British actress, "Truly Scrumptious" in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
Robin Le Mesurier (British guitarist, Rod Stewart, Johnny Hallyday, The Wombles, son of John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques)
Joan Didian (US award-winning author, essayist and columnist)
Grace Mirabella (US fashion journalist, editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine throughout the 1970s and 80s)
Ray Illingworth (British cricketer, former captain of the England team)
Janice Long (British DJ and broadcaster, BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio Wales and Top of the Pops)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (South African cleric, anti-apartheid, civil rights and gay rights campaigner)
Jean-Marc Vallée (Canadian film and TV director, The Young Victoria, Dallas Buyers Club, Big Little Lies)
E. O. Wilson (US award-winning biologist and professor, conservationist and writer)
April Ashley (British model, author and socialite, one of the earliest male-to female transsexuals)
Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French photographer)
Diana Maxwell, Baroness Farnham (British aristocrat, Lady of the Bedchamber to HM The Queen)

Once more, I repeat: "Fuck off, 2021".

---

STOP PRESS:

As if 2021 couldn't get any worse...

RIP Betty White (US actress, comedienne and icon, Golden Girls)

[Thank you for the info, Mistress Maddie.]

So get your mind made up, call me on the telephone

In previous years I might have taken this opportunity - in this "bit in the middle" - to put in a load of effort, go back month-by-month, and choose a variety of tracks that have caught my attention during the year to produce a summary of fave choons.

This year - when everything we might have hoped for (after the initial arrival of COVID in 2020, and the expectation that that was it) was cancelled or fucked-over, including our usual break in Spain in February, our Eurovision party, visits to Kew Gardens, Gay Pride, the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam for my birthday, our regular picnic, Proms in the Park, and now our New Years' Eve bash - I say stuff that!

There is only ONE song from this year I really think deserves the prize...

Steps and Michelle Visage - Heartbreak in This City

They remain the campest thing under the sun, and I love them!

Fuck you, 2021.

[A cornucopia of previous musical choices from this, and previous years, is available if you clink the "Pick of the Pops" label at the foot of this blog post]

Forever April

Another legend departs for the hallowed halls of Fabulon...

With the sad news of the death of the legendary Miss April Ashley, one of Britain's earliest and most famous male-to female transsexuals, I feel the need to revisit the post I did over at the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp for her 80th back in in 2015...

... overjoyed at the discovery of its entirety on the interwebs, I found myself immersed in reading April Ashley's Odyssey, her fascinating biography/autobiography (written with Duncan Fallowell). It is one helluva story.

After a fairly shaky start in Liverpool - a sickly and bullied child, and having experienced a somewhat traumatic adolescence - the young George Jamieson started cross-dressing. As "Toni April" she moved to Paris in the late 1950s and joined the famous French entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Carousel Theatre.

Determined to realise her ultimate ambition, however, she said: "The day I wear women's clothes is the day I know I can become one." And so it came to pass...

While sweating it out in that bed in Casablanca, I was convinced that after the operation life could only be a shower of diamonds and almond blossom. But isn't it maddening? You move one mountain only to find yourself at the foot of another. Maybe some don't live like this, maybe for some life is just a frolic among molehills, but I always seem to pass from crisis to crisis. What made me able to survive these abrupt switches of fortune...was an underlying wonderment at my own transformation. No worldly distemper could obliterate my sense of the mysterious alchemical nature of the world, its ravishing possibilities, the chances for turning an idea into a fact.

Whenever I looked at myself in the mirror it was not in self-admiration or self-congratulation but in disbelief. Yes, I looked beautiful. I was told this so many times that it ceased to affect me. This is not quite the same as saying it was unimportant. One may cease to be sensitive to such flattery only to find oneself sensitive to the absence of it. ...The great gift is to feel beautiful. I never felt beautiful before the operation. And after it? Hardly a day passes without my being astonished and exalted by what was possible for me. I resist the temptation to thank God, just as I resisted the temptation to deify Dr Burou (too many sex-changes develop God-fixations on their surgeon). None the less, the fact of my transformation is a continuing source of strength.

April has some beauty tips to offer:

...without make-up my whole face is blank. It is a plain canvas on which I can paint almost anything. I'm sure that's why I gave up painting, because my face became my canvas. Making-up is also my meditation in the concentration of which I compose my inner self.

• Eyes: masses of blusher under the eyes to take away any bags or dark circles. My top eyelashes grow straight downwards and without make-up the eyes look quite small. So I apply plenty of mascara, rolling the lashes again and again to make them curl upwards. And this opens up the eyes enormously. Everyone thinks I have huge eyes but I haven't, it's an optical illusion. My eyes are deep set, so I favour a dark eye-shadow to bring them out. This also makes the irises appear much darker than they really are, almost black in fact. To separate the eyes, I thicken all the lines slightly towards the temples. Eye-shadow carried above the eyelids raises the eyebrows. My eyebrows are very high up anyway and excellently shaped with the minimum of plucking.
• Nose: I have a slightly retroussé nose and since I detest such noses I put a little white on the tip of it to make it look straight.
• Mouth: the best thing in the world for making a mouth look young is to have a very precise one. My mouth was never very precise at the best of times, so I outline it in dark pencil, then fill it in with lipstick. Then I cover it with gloss to make it last all night. The best ever was California Gloss by Max Factor. Can't we get it back? I can't imagine why they discontinued it.
• Skin: only two commandments. Clean it and feed it. That's all. Once a day before bed, with cold cream and moisturiser. Diet is not crucial. A bad diet won't necessarily kill a good skin, but it pays to be reasonable. If you drink, a lot of moisturising is essential. Alcohol, champagne most of all, is very dehydrating. Hard-drinking men would look far less haggard if they fed their skin.
• Hair: I had a lot of white in my hair which I wasn't inclined to hide. But with the place fogged with cigarette smoke, it would turn a vile yellow. So regularly I'd blue rinse it which brought up the white a pale blue and made the black very black.
• Clothes: always long because the patrons expected glamour. I was the main attraction and so of course went overboard. Once I wore jeans to work and some Americans who'd brought friends in to see me in all my finery were frightfully disappointed. They said they felt cheated, as if the understudy were on for the night, so I didn't do it.
• Shoes: the staff reckoned I walked five miles a night up and down the tables. With all that walking, you must provide the foot with a norm. Chopping and changing of height and weight and shape would soon ruin the feet. So virtually all my shoes were the same high-heeled evening sandals from the Chelsea Cobbler, in a variety of colours to match various outfits. They were very light and made from kid.

She began a rather successful career in modelling, and mixed in "all the right circles". But then the benighted tabloids caught up with her story, and the resulting furore and scandal forced April to leave for pastures new, in Spain. Her various adventures provide a fantastically gossipy and super-camp read, not least about some of the many exotic characters she encountered on her travels...

I flew to Madrid and checked into the Palace Hotel for six weeks. I spent my free time in the Museo del Prado, or at the cinema improving my Spanish, or chatting with the ex-Queen of Albania at Carita's Hair Salon - 'How's King Zog, dear?'

She hung out with Omar Sharif, Peter O'Toole and the rest while they were in Spain filming Lawrence of Arabia, and this brought with it some fascinating insights:

With a few wood and cardboard minarets Seville had been turned into a convincing pastiche of Cairo. The Military H.Q. scenes were being shot either at the Military Academy or at the Duchess of Medinaceli's palace. During the shooting at the palace a cable snapped, swung down, and demolished an important-looking statue. How could they tell the Duchess? Since she had a pash for Jack Hawkins, he was delegated to break the appalling news. 'Don't worry,' she said, 'it's only Roman.'

I was introduced to Peter's stand-in, John Fulton Short. All the stand-in does is get lit because he is of a physical type similar to the star's. But John was a personality in his own right, being the first American to achieve full matador status. Peter took me to John's flat hung with his paintings done in bull's blood. John explained why in the ring bullfighters do not wear underpants. Since the male genitalia are substantially composed of gristle, there is in the event of being gored a greater chance of those vitals sliding aside undamaged if they are unconfined.

We would never have known that without Miss Ashley!

It seems she met and socialised with just about anybody who was anybody over the years - from Princess Margaret to The Beatles, from Amanda Lear when she was a man(!) to Charlotte Rampling; Peter Sellers, Ozzie Clark, David Bailey, Kim Novak, Hermione Gingold, Mick Jagger, Viscount Maugham, Lord-and-Lady this, Baron-and-Baroness that, various Churchills, Philippe Jullian, Liza Minnelli...

...for kitschiness Danny La Rue's house couldn't compete with Lionel Bart's. Lionel had a musical staircase which played selections from Oliver when you walked up it. He also had a musical lavatory. It played Food, Glorious Food when you flushed it by depressing a large gold crown.

There were distressing times, too, of course - not least the shocking legal wrangle she had with her (somewhat crazy) first husband when trying to divorce him; the judgement of the court being that as her sex change was null-and-void in their eyes, so was the marriage. Business deals came and went, badly, for April. A later heart attack led her to seek a quieter life in the eccentric town of Hay-on-Wye (whose leading book trader declared it a new kingdom, himself ruler and April his consort).

...She was legally recognised as a female after the passage of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act in 2004, and issued a new birth certificate with help from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, an old friend. In 2006 she published a new memoir The First Lady - which she promoted as even more candid and revelatory than April's Odyssey. It was withdrawn from print, apparently, for some reason - but that has only piqued my interest even more. She was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 2012. An exhibition dedicated to her was hosted at the Museum of Liverpool in 2013-14 - and there's even a film of her life (still in pre-production, it seems) to come. [2021 NOTE - nothing became of this film, as far as I can ascertain.]

April Ashley - Portrait of a Lady

What a loss! What a woman...

RIP, April Ashley MBE (29th April 1935 – 27th December 2021)

The Dowager

It's our Patron Saint Dame Maggie Smith's birthday today! All hail...

A perfect excuse (if any were needed) to revisit some classic moments of the great Dame's most famous and formidable character:

Downton Abbey - The Dowager Countess of Grantham's Best Moments: Part 1

Downton Abbey - The Dowager Countess of Grantham's Best Moments: Part 2

Downton Abbey - The Dowager Countess of Grantham's Best Moments: Part 3

Many happy returns, Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith CH DBE (born 28th December 1934)

[NB she shares her day with a whole raft of the "great and the good", such as Nichelle Nicholls, Stan Lee, Hildegard Knef, Richard Clayderman, Earl Hines, Nigel Kennedy, Billy Williams, Brian Redhead, Sienna Miller, Woodrow Wilson, Roy Hattersley, Sir Max Hastings, Olympic medal-winning swimmer Adam Peaty, Denzel Washington and Martha Wash...]