Diamonds are forever...

...unless you decide to sell them, of course.

Dame Shirley Bassey’s vintage 1960s Van Cleef and Arpels diamond ring with brilliant-cut diamonds, which was given to her by Sir Elton John.

Necklace featuring 52 graduated diamonds.

Ruby and diamond parure with heart detail.

Her 1905 diamond brooch, poss. Cartier.

A multi-piece set featuring aquamarines, sapphires and diamonds.

Van Cleef and Arpels emerald and diamond necklace, bought by her to commemorate her first Royal Variety Performance for Queen Elizabeth II.

Dame Shirley Bassey's jewellery collection has smashed a world record in a Paris auction with all of the lots belonging to the singer selling for a collective price of 2.2 million euros (£1.8m).

I would have placed a bid, but it's not pay day 'till next week.

[click any pic to embiggen]

The Dame, The Designer and "The Gasp"

Our icon, Patron Saint and eternal role-model Dame Shirley Bassey celebrates her 85th birthday today, and we remain completely and utterly in awe of her as always...

However, by way of a tribute, let's concentrate on her frocks - one in particular - and the magnificently flamboyant old queen behind them all!

Apparently a favourite outfit, Dame Shirl has worn "The Cat Suit" on numerous occasions since the late 1960s - including her record-breaking run of performances at The Talk of the Town nightclub in April 1970, on several record sleeves including Something Else (1971), Diamonds Are Forever and The Shirley Bassey Collection (1972), and several times since, including at her 60th birthday concert in Althorp Park in July 1997. The intricately-beaded and sequinned suit and its accessories were modified a number of times over the years, notably the fact the legs were designed with wide flares trimmed with marabou and these were latterly straightened and the trims removed as fashions changed.

Back in August 2021, we were enthralled when - having been purchased by the V&A in London - its meticulous restoration for display was featured in the BBC "fly-on-the-wall" documentary Secrets of the Museum:

Secrets of the Museum- Dame Shirley Bassey - The restoring of the cat suit

This magnificent ensemble was the creation of the man who became the Dame's "go-to" frock designer for more than five decades, Douglas Darnell.

A precocious child, always fascinated by on-screen Hollywood outfits, when Douglas was seven his mother taught him to use a sewing machine, and by the age of 12 he was making fancy dress costumes for the floats in the local carnival. From humble beginnings as a window-dresser for C&A and various other department stores, he landed an apprenticeship with Royal couturier Norman Hartnell. However, when he was given a magnet to pick up pins from the floor, he told the grand old man that they could pick up the pins for themselves and promptly left the building. “That boy,” Hartnell reportedly commented, “will go far.” And he certainly did.

Fom his own premises - first in Soho, later in Mayfair - "Darnell of London" attracted myriad showbiz names of the 1950s and 60s including The Beverley Sisters, strongwoman Joan Rhodes, Diana Dors, Joan Collins, Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Dorothy Squires and drag queens including Ricky Renee and Danny LaRue.

From his obituary in 2012, his sister Linda paid tribute to the "great perfectionist":

"He never left the house unless everything was colour coordinated and matching - not a hair out of place and in his favourite jewellery.

"Doug enjoyed making women look gorgeous and glamorous."

When Dame Shirley decided to auction a selection of frocks Doug had designed for her for charity back in 2003, she personally thanked him from the stage, describing him as "not someone who makes gowns, but an architect and an engineer, he is just magic" - and she credited him for "the gasp" she always got from her audience when she first walked out on stage wearing his numbers, with their extravagant nicknames such as "The Diamond Gown", "The Mermaid Gown" and the "Tassel Gown", as well as the (notoriously skimpy) one that made worldwide headlines and became known as "the gownless evening-strap", and many more besides...

The highlight of the sale was a spectacular Darnell creation, a full-length gown encrusted with Swarovski crystals which fetched £35,000. Dame Shirley remarked that, in an age of convenient off-the-roll, pre-sequinned and beaded fabrics, she knew of no one else who would spend so much time sewing on thousands of individual stones. His workmanship and expertise, she added, were second to none.

A documentary featuring Shirley talking about her life and her frock collection, in which Douglas Darnell appears, is on "The Shirley Bassey Blog" here.

According to Doug's sister Linda again:

"...legend has it that one night in 1965, after sharing top billing with Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield sneaked into the dressing room to find out who had made her stunning outfits. The name on the label read 'Darnell of London', the fashion house was later contacted by Dusty - and the rest is history."

Indeed, Dusty became a regular customer, and developed a whole new "stage persona" as a result. On one famous occasion she said from the stage:"Do you like the frock? I've borrowed it from Dorothy Squires; only she has to have it back by midnight because she's hired the Vatican for a one-night stand!"

I very much doubt anything Dusty wore was ever quite as OTT as Dotty's...

click any pic to enlarge

But, of course, as it is her birthday after all, the last word must go to Dame Shirley Bassey herself - wearing "The Cat Suit", naturally...

Shirley Bassey - On A Wonderful Day Like Today’, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, This Is My Life [Monte Carlo Sporting Club, 1970]

Many happy returns, Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8th January 1937)

RIP, Douglas Darnell (15th August 1933 - 25th April 2012)

Even a Fool Learns to Love?

It is that annual "Diva Day", when we celebrate the birthdays of two eternal icons and Patron Saints here at Dolores Delargo Towers [one, gladly, still with us us, one forever missed] - Dame Shirley Bassey and Mr David Bowie.

To that end, a mini-quiz, dear reader. What connects this song from the then Miss Bassey's repertoire...

Shirley Bassey - My Way (1978)

...with this, from Mr Bowie's?

David Bowie - Life On Mars

From The Guardian:

In the late 60s, a young songwriter called David Bowie was asked by his manager to write an English lyric for a French pop song, Comme d’habitude (As Usual), by Claude François. “I turned in the pitifully awful title 'Even a Fool Learns to Love', which he rejected out of hand, quite rightly, I feel,” Bowie remembered in 1999. “And it passed on to Paul Anka, who did his own English lyric. And he called it, simply and effectively, 'My Way'”...

...Later, Sinatra would claim My Way “really had nothing to do with my life whatsoever”. Anka, however, felt Sinatra’s experiences helped give the song its power. “Shit happens to everybody every day, whether you’re Frank Sinatra or Joe Blow,” says Anka. “Of course he had regrets – that’s why we sat around and drank every night. You could hear it come out in him, from Ava Gardner, to whoever … but that was the magic of Sinatra: when he sang about it, you believed it. His lucky streak is that he is able to sing about it, convey it and help people along who need it emotionally.”

... When the young Bowie heard Don Costa’s grand arrangement [for Sinatra] on the radio, he was crestfallen. “So in retaliation,” he said, “I wrote 'Life on Mars'.”

A note on the inner sleeve of Hunky Dory reads: “Inspired by Frankie.”

Inspired, indeed.

I can only watch you with my nose pressed up against the window pane

From the biography Miss Shirley Bassey by John L Williams:

[Shirley Bassey's then-husband] Kenneth Hume... began to develop something called The Secret Keepers. This was to have been a TV comedy series featuring Alma Cogan as a private eye. Hume would appear to have shot a pilot episode though one that never seems to have been broadcast. However, the Daily Mail ran a story about the show, illustrated with location photos. One of these still features Shirley holding up a sign saying "Husband and four agents to support."

According to the supporting text, the show featured Alma Cogan's P.I. hunting down a runaway husband played by Frankie Howerd. In the course of her search she bumps into Shirley, playing a street busker (thus the sign). Alma offers her a penny for a song and Shirley responds by throwing a brick through her window.

How verrry camp! I'd love to have seen that episode. Just two months later, however...

...the papers were full of the story of their marriage breaking down: "I won't go back to him. My marriage is over. I have given my wedding and engagement rings back to my husband. My belongings are packed and ready to be taken away at our house."

So what happened? According to Miss Bassey's then-manager Mike Sullivan:

"Early one evening I took a telephone call from her home in West London. She was hysterical and distraught. She had caught Hume in bed, making love to her chauffeur."

The biography goes on:

Shirley's life... had been one of non-stop drama, and now her music was starting to reflect that. From this point on, she joined the company of Judy Garland, Edit Piaf et al., women whose music was inseparable from their turbulent lives. In I (Who Have Nothing), Shirley the woman and Shirley the singer are indistinguishable. We know it from that first dramatic syllable - "I" - and from here on in, neither she nor her audience would be in danger of forgetting it. I (Who Have Nothing) is, if you like, her masterpiece; a gaudy, sentimental and magnificent statement of pure ego.

What else to play, dear reader, on the occasion of Dame Shirley Bassey's 82nd birthday, than that very song?

Shirley Bassey - I (Who Have Nothing)

Happy birthday, Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey DBE (born 8th January 1937). All hail.

But that's the way that I was born to be

Our most glittering and beloved of Patron Saints Dame Shirley Bassey is 81 years old today. I have done many a panegyric to the Great Dame over the years, but today I leave the tribute to one David Bowie, with whom she shares a birthday:

“Well, backstage one night I was desperate to use the bathroom. I was dressed in my full, battle finery of Tokyo-spaceboy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds.

“I went up to the promoter – actually I tottered over to the promoter – and I asked ‘Could you please tell me where the lavatory is?’

“And he said: ‘Yeah, look down that corridor. On the far end of that wall. You see that sink? There you go.’

“I said: ‘My good man, I’m not taking a piss in the sink.’

“He said: ‘Listen, son, if it’s good enough for Shirley Bassey it’s good enough for you.’”

Such is the glamorous life of the megastar.

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey (born 8th January 1937)

You don't get older, you get better

“You must never corner a rat because she’ll go for your throat. I’d punch someone out if they had a go at me. I had a reputation in the nightclubs. People learnt not to cross me”.



"I'm too busy putting my energies into my performance to be a diva."



From a article by Carolyn Hitt in the national news outlet of the Great Dame's native country Wales Online:

She is complex, paradoxical and perhaps ultimately unknowable.

For every off-the-record anecdote about her worst diva moments, there are hilarious instances of her sending this image up – from putting a stiletto through Morecambe and Wise’s polystyrene steps to camping it up on a golden mobility scooter with David Walliams this Christmas Eve.

Like diamonds, her imperious Bond anthems with their power-packed crescendos will last forever yet we sometimes forget her vocal gifts are equally attuned to poignant and tender ballads. Not to mention chart-topping dance music.

She is an artist who embodies the glamour of a bygone showbiz age yet she has remained relevant to each new generation – from thrilling the mud-splattered masses of Glastonbury by strutting her stuff in bejewelled wellies to reinventing herself through collaborations with contemporary artists like the Manics and Rufus Wainwright who have been honoured to pay her musical homage.

She has an instrument that seems effortless and spontaneous ... and she prefers us to concentrate on the remarkable voice rather than the equally compelling life story behind it.

"When I started singing, I couldn't be shut up."



"I learned by standing in the wings and watching established acts on stage."



"I decided to retire from show business at the age of 17, because I didn't like it a bit... but my singing was like this burning thing inside me and I had to go on with it.”



"For a little girl from Cardiff's Tiger Bay, I've come a long way."



"You don't get older, you get better."



Many happy returns to one of our favourites, the Number 1 Patron Saint here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the one-and-only Dame Shirley Bassey - who is 80 years old today!!

Right on cue I fell in love with you
You caused many a tear
But I had applause, I had a career
Until the final day
I'll play this part the only way I can
For to live I have to give
The performance of my life

Shirley Bassey - The Performance Of My Life

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8th January 1937)

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, our Patron Saint of Marabou, Dame Shirley Bassey!





"I'm too busy putting my energies into my performance to be a diva."

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey DBE (born 8th January 1937)

This Dame loves a party

with Liberace and Hermione Gingold


with Tom Jones


with Wayne Sleep and Liza Minnelli


with Cilla Black and Christopher Biggins


with Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole

"I aim not to drink too much, party too much or buy too much bling. I have a black belt in spending so I’m going to swap it for a brown one."

"The problem is I'm always shouting. That's the way I keep my voice."

"I'd like to think I represent glamour on stage. To me, that's what this business is all about."

"I do think there's a frustrated stripper in me trying to get out."

Many happy returns, Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8th January 1937)

Come fly with me...

Our Shirl's off on holiday for her birthday! We'll go where she goes.

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8th January 1937)

You don't get older, you get better

"I wanted to be a model; I wanted to be a nurse; I wanted to be so many things, almost anything but being part of show business."

"I think men are afraid to be with a successful woman, because we are terribly strong, we know what we want and we are not fragile enough."

"I am a nice person until somebody comes and sits at my table who is not invited."

"I'm a virgin and I brought up all my children to be the same."

"Every day I want to retire but I won't. I hope I know when the time has come to stop."

"You don't get older, you get better."

Dame Shirley Bassey (born 8th January 1937)

There is no-one like her.