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)

The most expensive drag queen in the UK

The world is a far less glittery place, with the sad news that the legendary Stanley Baxter - one of the most popular entertainers in Britain over several decades - has shaken out that "Duchess of Brendah" wig for the very last time and ascended the glittering London Weekend Television stairway to Fabulon, at the magnificent age of 99.

Another piece of my childhood gone...

As the faboo Television Heaven site put it:

For 25 years Stanley Baxter produced the type of television spectacular that Morecambe and Wise could only afford to put on as part of their Christmas specials. Those legendary song and dance routines that Eric and Ernie performed in their shows may well be the stuff of television legend, but for Stanley Baxter, spectacular musical-comedy specials, reminiscent of Hollywood's best extravaganzas, were part of every series. And they were so flamboyant, and proved to be so costly, that Baxter was sacked not from just one, but two TV channels, who simply couldn't afford to keep him...

He was one of the true creative geniuses in British television light entertainment, and as far as comedy goes... Stanley Baxter was the true King of Scotland.

With his background in variety theatre, the Combined Entertainment Unit of the army in the post-War National Service years (alongside Kenneth Williams, John Schlesinger, Gordon Jackson and Peter Nichols) and - of course - panto, he was almost destined for a career in the fledging world of television (starting out in the 1950s), where his comedic talents and in particular his talent for mimicry (and drag) became a staple of Britain's "light entertainment" genre.

Very much a product of his time - his ITV "spectaculars" won the BAFTA Best Light Entertainment Programme Award two years running in 1973 and 1974 - much of Mr Baxter's fondly remembered output would nowadays be considered extremely non-PC, so repeats (were there ever to be any anyway) would needless to say be heavily edited [deep sigh]; hence the reason why he is largely forgotten. However, by way of a tribute to the great man [who, incidentally, only decided to finally "come out" as gay at the age of 94(!)], here are just three of Stanley's memorable sketches...

Stanley Baxter - Towering Quake '75

Stanley Baxter - The Fast Food Follies

Stanley Baxter - The Duchess of Brendagh

Irreplaceable!

RIP, Stanley Livingstone Baxter (24th May 1926 – 11th December 2025)

Facrumpsing around

Morticia would have been 95 years old today...

"I like men. I like the sound of their voices, the way they think. They're more sensitive than women. With a woman, everything is either this or that, black or white. But a man can see shades of grey. That's what I call being sensitive."

"Morticia was the perfect role for me because my sense of humour is just slightly off-centre."

"I didn’t have kids and I need this. I need to work. When I work, I feel better. When I work, I can do anything. When I’m not working, I’m facrumpsing around like an old biddy, snarling at everything. This, I like. I understand it. It’s my life."

"I'm in love with everything about show business. The only thing that ever came easy to me in life has been acting."

Facts:

• Miss Jones was naturally blonde.
• Her first husband was Aaron Spelling, later famous as the producer of glossy telly series such as Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart and Dynasty.
• She surprisingly didn't want to kiss Elvis Presley when she co-starred with him in King Creole because she had a fever.
• Despite appearing on screen for only eight minutes, she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in The Bachelor Party.
• The blatant sexual chemistry between Morticia and Gomez in The Addams Family caused a moral outrage in conservative America.
• Surprisingly, The Addams Family only ran for two years before being cancelled by the TV network.
• When the show ended, the producers gifted Carolyn Jones with Morticia's oval-backed wicker chair as a memento; she kept it in her bedroom for the rest of her life - the chair itself was originally a prop from From Here to Eternity, in which she was due to play prostitute Alma Burke, but became ill before filming and lost the role to Donna Reed.

Carolyn Sue Jones (28th April 1930 – 3rd August 1983)

All hail!

Haway!

Our latest "exhibit" here at the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp - and our latest obsession...

...Smoggie Queens!

Smoggie Queens - Have a guess, Stewart

Smoggie Queens - Smoggie Ice Cream Van

Smoggie Queens - I've seen Lucinda's new man before, I swearrrrrr

Smoggie Queens - Smoggie lingo!

You may need the subtitles.

All this and Michelle Visage as you've never seen her before!

No better than I should be

It's a centenary today, dear reader - that of our eternally-revered matriarch/battleaxe/mainstay of the UK's favourite soap Coronation Street Elsie Tanner, aka Pat Phoenix!

Elsie Tanner quotes:

• (about Ena Sharples): "That woman's tongue. If it was a bit longer she could shave with it."
• "I've left home so many times me suitcases pack themselves every time I whistle."
• "You know, they used to call us good time girls... well, we did have a good time, and a damn good time at that"
• "Burglars in Coronation Street? It's like robbin' the blind."

"I was one of the first anti-heroines - not particularly good looking and no better than I should be."

The Unforgettable Pat Phoenix

Pat Phoenix (born Patricia Frederica Pilkington, 26th November 1923 – 17th September 1986)

Bad Hair Day

Bolly, Stolly, sweetie, darling?

Good grief. I missed a significant cultural anniversary last weekend!

The first episode of Absolutely Fabulous, otherwise known as The Campest Programme Ever, appeared on our screens on 12th November 1992.

Happy 30th birthday, sweetie, darling!

Absolutely Fabulous -Patsy Stone best bits

Ab Fab - Wine Tasting

An inpiration.

Nurse Gladys Emmanuel clocks off...

And so, another "national treasure" departs for Fabulon...

[*]

Miss Lynda Baron, for it is she - perhaps surprisingly to many people who only knew her as the redoubtable "Nurse Gladys Emmanuel", object of "Arkwright"'s lust in Open All Hours - had a career that spanned from her debut as a stage dancer and actress in the late '50s, to co-starring with Sheila Hancock and Kenneth Williams in the Peter Cook-scripted West End revue One Over The Eight, to television satire sketch shows such as Ned Sherrin's Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, to "token-busty-dolly-bird" roles in numerous forgettable B-movies and in Frankie Howerd's up Pompeii, to Doctor Who [three times, with three different "Doctors", in the '60s, '80s and in 2011], children's show Come Outside, Eastenders and Father Brown.

It is, of course, Open All Hours (and its sequel) that really embedded her in the nation's conciousness...

...but she received her only BAFTA nomination for her portrayal of Violet Carson/"Ena Sharples" in 2010's The Road To Coronation Street:

The Road To Coronation Street trailer

She even held her own as one of the "old troupers", alongside Dame Diana Rigg and Julia McKenzie, in Sondheim's Follies, as this clip [that I featured during my week of tributes following the Maestro's death last year] proves!

Lynda Baron, Julia McKenzie, Margaret Courtenay, Maria Charles and London cast - Who's That Woman? [Olivier Awards, 1987]

RIP, Lynda Baron (born Lilian Baron, 24th March 1939 – 7th March 2022)

[* Yes! That is the least menacing "space pirate" in television history - Mr Leee John of Imagination!]

The glamorous Miss Fogel

Many happy returns to the beautiful model-turned actress Barbara Bain, star of Mission Impossible and Space: 1999, who blows out 90 candles on her cake today...

Barbara Bain (born Mildred Fogel, 13th September 1931)

Vroom Broom vroomed

click to enlarge

As I said in my post way back in 2009:

H.R. Pufnstuf was an absolute obsession of mine when I was a child. From the same production house that brought us The Banana Splits, this was a strange [typically 60s, slightly druggy] fantasy about a boy (played by the late Jack Wilde, of Oliver fame), shipwrecked on a weird island with a talking flute named Freddy, a magic boat, the giant puppet dragon of the title, his friends Cling & Clang and Dr. Blinky, and a wicked witch named Witchiepoo (played by Billie Hayes) who rode on a Vroom Broom... Bizarre stuff, indeed.

H.R. Pufnstuf opening and closing theme [1969]

No drugs involved there, then...

Today, we discover that "Witchiepoo" has taken her "Vroom Broom", and "Orson Vulture" too, no doubt, and flown off to "Living Island" for the very last time...

RIP, Bille Hayes (5th August 1924 – 29th April 2021)

An Icon

"I've looked forward to being older because you will have that many more miles covered. We mustn't be led into thinking getting old is bad. Growing old is good."

Sharing a birthday as she does with a bizarre mix of names such as Una Stubbs, the Duke of Wellington, Wes Anderson, Calamity Jane, Judy Collins, Romaine Brooks, Glenn Ford, Rita Coolidge, Danielle Darrieux, Bernard Butler, Shirley Horn and Ray Parker Jr. - the one-and-only Joanna Lumley is 75 years old today!

Model, dancer, Ken Barlow's girlfriend "Elaine Perkins " in Coronation Street, "Bond Girl" (in On Her Majesty's Secret Service), "Hammer Horror Girl" (in The Satanic Rites of Dracula), "Sapphire" in Sapphire & Steel, "Purdey" in The New Avengers, the former school friend turned high-class prostitute in Shirley Valentine, "Donna Sinclair" in Dr Willoughby...and, of course, "Patsy Stone" in Absolutely Fabulous - she's done it all!

Nowadays, she has cemented her "national treasure" stakes by not only standing up for the Gurkhas who were being denied British citizenship, but also by stepping into the well-trodden footsteps of Michael Palin, Simon Reeve, Michael Portillo and the rest with several TV series of travelogues (she's done Russia, the Caribbean, the Silk Route, Greece, Japan and India and we're currently watching her tour of Britain).

Naturally, we adore her.

All hail, Joanna Lamond Lumley OBE FRGS (born 1st May 1946)!

Read my tribute to her on her 70th - amd much more over at my other blog Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle.