Timeless

Good grief!

Or Patron Saint of Kitsch, Bob Mackie's #1 fan, the ageless, timeless Cher has blown out eighty candles on her cake!

There are few words Ican say about the great lady, her 60-year career, her Oscar-winning stint as an actress, her numerous "comebacks", or her tumultuous life that have not been said before.

Suffice to say, we adore her!

"Gay guys like a certain kind of woman. They like a flamboyant woman that's broken. They like a balls-to-the-wall woman, motherly but not; sexual but not. Gay guys are like this: they either love you or they don't even know you're on the planet. Once you have them, you have them."

Amen.

Many happy returns, Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian, 20th May 1946)

Flott has flown

Sad news today. The utterly delightful, the sublimely talented soprano Dame Felicity Lott [known to all her friends by the affectionate nickname "Flott"] has traversed the proscenium arch for the last time, and joined the celestial choir of Fabulon.

Esteemed music critic Barry Millington in his obituary in The Guardian said she:

...enchanted audiences with a succession of Strauss and Mozart roles that she might have been born to sing. The mellifluous tone with just a hint of metal to give it that lustrous gleam, the effortlessly floated high notes, pin-sharp diction and captivating stage presence all combined to make her one of the most endearingly popular sopranos of her day.

I agree with every word. Here are just a few examples:

Felicity Lott and Thomas Allen - Waltz Duet [Lehar: The Merry Widow, Royal Opera House, 1997]

Felicity Lott - Ah que j'aime les militaires [Offenbach: La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein]

Felicity Lott and Ann Murray - Rule Britannia [Last Night of the Proms, 1994]

And finally - an old favourite:

Felicity Lott - A Bar on the Piccola Marina [Noel Coward]

RIP, Dame Felicity Ann Emwhyla Lott (8th May 1947 - 15th May 2026)

Whom no man will ever possess

And so, farewell to that most waspish American of film critics and television host Mr Rex Reed, who has swished off up the glittering stairway to Fabulon. Who? I hear you say...

Largely an unknown quantity over here in Blighty, Mr Reed's controversial and much-vilified take on movies, the arts and the cult of celebrity did not exactly endear him to generations of film-makers in the States [he was once described as "the hazel-eyed hatchet-man"]; and he certainly rubbed the braying "Twitterati" up the wrong way on many an occasion [no bad thing!]. His nearest British [albeit somewhat more high-brow] counterpart might have been Brian Sewell. I am certain we at Dolores Delargo Towers would adore him.

It is also the perfect excuse (if any were needed!) to wallow in the man's most - ahem - famous [and rare] on-screen appearance: as "Myron", Raquel Welch's male alter-ego, alongside an idiosyncratic cast that included John Carradine, Kathleen Freeman, Tom Selleck, Jim Backus, Farrah Fawcett, John Huston... and Mae West - in the camp cult classic Gore Vidal adaptation, Myra Breckinridge!

A tribute to Myra Breckinridge

Rex Taylor Reed (2nd October 1938 - 12th May 2026)

Myra Breckinridge, dissected

Sweetie, darling!

...it's Dame Joanna Lumley's 80th birthday today!!

All hail!

Many happy returns Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley (born 1 May 1946)

[More here]

I say unbelievable shit and no one ever gets mad

Photo by Christopher Myers

It is - remarkably - the 80th birthday today of "The Pope of Trash" Mr John Walters, creator of the outrageous classic films Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom and, of course, Hairspray, and icon for transgressives, outsiders and weirdos everywhere - me included.

All hail!

From an excellent tribute article by Max Weiss in his home-town's leading journal Baltimore Magazine:

Eighty-year-olds are not supposed to be cool. Wrinkles aren’t cool. Bad knees aren’t cool. AARP memberships are not cool.

And yet, on the eve of his 80th birthday, John Waters remains eternally, ineffably, indisputably cool.

He’s not the only old guy who’s cool, but he’s the rare old guy who has the ability to constantly reinvent himself...

...So what is it that inspires such devotion in Waters’ fans? And why do young people still think he’s cool?

“I don’t get up every day and try to be cool,” Waters says. “But I think as long as you continue to be in touch with young people, they’ll think you’re even cooler.” Another key, says Waters, is not to trot out the old “we had so much more fun in my day” canard.

“No, we didn’t,” he says. “They are having just as much fun.”

And he should know. Yes, Waters goes out to nice restaurants and goes to galleries and does fancy things with his fancy friends, but he also still loves to hang out at the Club Charles, with its famous motto, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” and go to heavy metal bars...

...And somehow, despite the edginess of his humour, he has never been cancelled. “I say unbelievable shit and no one ever gets mad,” Waters says.

This is partly because the audiences who attend his performances are self-selecting. “If you’re coming to see me you want me to [go there].”

Also, he says, “My whole show is about going to that edge. But I always make fun of myself first.”

It goes back to that inclusivity thing. Waters’ work is always about bringing people together - the squares and the outlaws, queer and straight, Black and white.

Even his tour merch displays that ethos: “Join the Cult.” He wants you to be a part of his joyful, iconoclastic club.

And honestly, who wouldn’t want to be a member?

I certainly would!

Many happy returns, John Samuel Waters Jr. (born 22nd April 1946)

A meeting of true minds?

Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep wearing Prada on the cover of Vogue. [Photograph: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue - click to enlarge]

Read more in The Guardian

This blaze of growing

The Enkindled Spring
by D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Yes, today marks that long-awaited moment: the Vernal Equinox, known in some parts as "The First Day of Spring".

It all gets better, and lighter, from now on!