If I hadn't been a woman, I'd be a drag queen for sure

• "If I hadn't been a woman, I'd be a drag queen for sure. I like all that flair and I'd be dressing up in them high heels and putting on the big hair. I'd be like Ru Paul."
• "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."
• "I look just like the girls next door... if you happen to live next door to an amusement park!"
• "I'm no natural beauty. If I'm gonna have any looks at all, I'm gonna have to create them. Thanks to Botox and fillers, as well as the work that I've already had, my face pretty much maintains itself."
• "God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone's sexual preferences are or if they're black, brown or purple. And if someone doesn't believe what I believe, tough shit."
• "If something is bagging, sagging or dragging, I'll tuck it, suck it or pluck it."
• "It costs a lot to look this cheap."

RIP, Miss Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean (19th January 1946 - 25th August 2026)

On the Jukebox this Weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

"I have to be seen to be believed"

[click any photo to enlarge]

The sumptuous exhibition Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, that we went to see with our mother on Saturday was everything one could have asked for, and more.

Frocks and outfits that traced the life of the late, dearly departed Queen - from her childhood and teenage years to debutante, to her marriage [gown #3, above], accession [Coronation dress, #4 above], through all stages of her long reign, formal and informal, from the most sparkling ballgowns and outfits from her myriad Royal tours and Silver, Gold, Diamond and Platinum Jubilees, to the headscarf-and-tweeds she wore on her estates, right through to her latter "Rainbow Queen" years with her famous bright coordinated single-colour outfits ["I have to be seen to be believed", was her quote] - everything was on display [in the relatively small series of rooms that comprise The King's Gallery at the rear of Buckingham Palace]!

..and then there were the tiaras!

It was a fantastic exhibition! What an indelible legacy HM The Queen left us...

Surprising, indeed

Scanning the "hatched, matched and despatched" columns (as is my wont), I came across the name Michael Aspinall above], which I was sure I knew from somewhere. His meagre three-paragraph Wikipedia bio was hardly illuminating, either [musicologist, teacher, scholar, all very dry] - until I spotted a citation...

...from (the sadly now no longer updated) oracle Queer Music Heritage, and the penny dropped.

He was indeed everything that Wikipedia said he was - and such an expert in operatic musical styles that even Montserrat Caballe sought his guidance on finessing the bel canto mezzo roles for which she became known - but it was as a performer, imitating and sending-up the divas of opera, dressed in drag, that Mr Aspinall became famous!

As "The Surprising Soprano", he carved an international career as an opera parodist, using his falsetto range to delight audiences with his impressions. As the LA Times said of him: "It is a brave voice, however, a voice that dares awaken the ghosts of Adelina Patti, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Maria Malibran, Jenny Lind, Amelita Galli-Curci, Fritzi Scheff, Conchita Supervia, Maria Callas and Luisa Tetrazzini.", even if, as its critic continues, "Unfortunately, Aspinall often conjures up unintended images: ...Florence Foster Jenkins, Beatrice Lillie... Mae West..." Regardless, even Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge were fans.

And thus, the reason for knowing his name became clear - we (of course) have his album [as pictured above] in our collection here at Dolores Delargo Towers!

So, for your delectation...

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - Der Erlkönig [Schubert]

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - Sempre libera [Verdi: La Traviata]

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden

RIP, Michael Aspinall (31st October 1939 – 10th July 2026)

Well, thank you very much, Jerry!

"She delivered every line as if it were a jewelled crown on a velvet cushion. An utter genius." author Lissa Evans

A "national treasure" is a term often bandied-about - and often the epithet fits. None more so than in the case of the utterly delightful Dame Penelope Keith, who has sadly departed for Fabulon, aged 86, to sort out the hoi-polloi, teach them proper manners, and how to speak the Queen's English correctly, no doubt.

Her peerless encapsulation of the aspirational middle-classes, eccentrics and of genuine aristocrats, and in doing so make them funny and sympathetic at the same time, was the sign of a truly great actress (and belied her relatively low-status upbringing in Clapham, South London). Her "Audrey fforbes-Hamilton" in To The Manor Born and her "will-they-won't they" tentative romance with the upstart businessman to whom she has sold her family's country house, engaged the nation so much that the show garnered the highest audience for any non-live event on British TV in the 70s. She proved herself a game girl by her appearances on The Morecambe & Wise Show. She was a "trusted voice" for documentaries, and as a reader on Jackanory, but it was for one role alone with which she became forever associated...

...the indomitable Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life!

The Good Life: The Wind-break War

The Good Life: Margo's Muddy Moment

The Good Life - The "Ooh-Ah" Bird:

RIP, Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith (née Hatfield, 2nd April 1940 – 29th June 2026)

"Get out of this house before I kill you!"

And so, farewell then Miss Ann Blyth, who has pouted her way off to Fabulon, at the ripe old age of 98. [To be honest, I didn't even realise she was still alive...]

Despite making dozens of films, starring alongside the likes of Robert Montgomery, Burt Lancaster, Claudette Colbert, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, and Mario Lanza (in The Great Caruso...

...there really was only one role for which she gained screen immortality, as the scheming-bitch-daughter-from-hell "Veda" in one of the campest films of the 1940s - Mildred Pierce!

Mildred Pierce - Mildred vs Veda

Delicious!

RIP, Ann Blyth (born Anne Marie Blythe, 16th August 1927 – 24th June 2026)

FOOTNOTE: Anyone else reckon she's the spitting image of our very own not-yet-a-Dame Sophie Ellis-Bextor in that second photo? Spooky.

Cut the heat

From The Garden by H.D. [aka bisexual avant-garde modernist poet Hilda Doolittle]:

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air -
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat -
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

Heatwave or no heatwave, it's the Mid-summer Solstice, the longest day, Festa Junina, Sommersonnenwende, Uttarayana, Saint John's Eve, Majstång, Litha...

...whatever you call it, the nights start drawing in from here on, folks!