Farewell, the Rajah of Rhinestones

Very sad news - the most glittering of all costume designers, beloved of "our kind of Diva" for generations, Mr Bob Mackie has departed for Fabulon - where, no doubt all the dearly departed doyennes of showbiz will be mobbing him for bugle beads and shimmy frocks for eternity...

He certainly led a charmed life - an outrageously camp man, he made his fortune designing outrageously camp frocks for a pantheon of divas, as well as for numerous Vegas burlesque extravaganzas, and even Carol Burnett's TV show (which was a huge hit in America but never made a dent here in the UK).

His client list reads like a roll-call of Patron Saints here at Dolores Delargo Towers: Judy Garland, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner, Shirley MacLaine, Mitzi Gaynor, Celia Cruz, Ann-Margret, Agnes Moorehead, Carol Channing, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Chita Rivera, Joan Collins, and many, many more.

Of course, his most enduring - and possibly most outré - of all professional relationships was with Cher. A marriage made in heaven!

"If a woman is going to do an hour and a half onstage, and she’s just in a little black dress, she’d better be Judy Garland. You’re there to see her, you’re not just listening. So there needs to be something visual. At the same time, if you don’t make them look good, you’ve defeated the purpose of putting something on them. It’s all about making them look thinner and taller and fabulous. "

“We live in a jeans and T-shirt world but we all want to live in a palace ... We're not trying to attract the masses here. We're looking for a special person who's looking for something special.”

"I've been called the Sultan of Sequins, the Rajah of Rhinestones and the King of Glitz. I probably have more titles than any other designer."

RIP, Robert Gordon "Bob" Mackie (24th March 1939 – 14th September 2026)

Don't get strung out by the way I look

More sad news.

RIP, Mr Tim Curry (19th April 1946 – 25th August 2026)

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)

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.

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)

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