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!

Yesterday was...

... a "Say Something Hat" Day at Royal Ascot!

The colour has faded...

Such sad news today of the death of David Hockney, whose vivid paintings of Californian swimming pools and lush countryside always left the viewer feeling the warmth of the sun, who has departed - fag in hand - to tart-up the drearier areas of Fabulon...

There's little I can add to the acres of coverage today about his talent, his wit, his pioneering gay provocativeness, his legacy, that isn't already out there, but suffice to say the world will be a less interesting place without him.

"I prefer living in colour." - David Hockney

[click any pic to enlarge]

RIP David Hockney, OM, CH (9th July 1937 – 11th June 2026)

On the Jukebox this weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

Timeless

Good grief!

Our 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 I can 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]