The Duchess

RIP, Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley, Duchess of Kent (22nd February 1933 – 4th September 2025)

You decide what's right, you decide what's good

Another sparkling diamond in the vocal world has "booped" her last "doop" and departed for Fabulon, to join the pantheon of jazz greats - Dame Cleo Laine!

Famed for her long, long professional as well as personal relationship with husband Johnny Dankworth as much as for her singing, together they carved out a niche for themselves in the oft-fractious world of post-war British jazz, she with her remarkable multi-octave voice and he with his musical talent and business savvy. She successfully straddled classical and pop cross-overs, as well as the scat-jazz vocalese for which she was famed, made numerous guest appearances on TV over the years [indeed, on hearing of her death today in the office I reminisced that she was probably the first prominent black person I remember seeing on telly apart from on children's programmes like Play School], became successful Stateside, and together in 1970 the couple founded the Stables Theatre at the back of their family home near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, which has helped develop the careers of many generations of performers.

By way of a fitting tribute - and a prime example of why we adored her so much - here is a selection of the divine Miss Laine's interpretations of the work of house fave Mr Stephen Sondheim:

Cleo Laine - No One Is Alone

Cleo Laine - Losing My Mind

Cleo Laine - Anyone Can Whistle

Cleo Laine - Everybody Says Don't

Cleo Laine - I Remember

Cleo Laine - Liaisons

Cleo Laine - Send In The Clowns

Cleo Laine - Not While I'm Around

RIP, Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth DBE (born Clementine Dinah Hitching, 28th October 1927 - 24th July 2025)

And finally... What on earth?

Eartha Kitt, Phyllis Diller and Cleo Laine playing cricket!

Always, always coiffed and dressed

[The late, much missed Miss Diahann Carroll would have been 90 years old this week. By way of a tribute, I'm reposting this from when she departed for Fabulon six years ago.]

"If you're not invited to the party, throw your own."

"For each and every performance, I was always on time, always prepared, and always, always coiffed and dressed."

“You cannot be a legitimate nightclub performer, as far as I’m concerned, in sensible shoes. To me, high heels have always been symbols of sensuality... I like the way I feel in them. And when you become a senior citizen, there’s great pleasure to be had in the fact that even when the tummy isn’t as taut as it used to be, the legs are still shapely and slender. They really are the last things to go, you know.”

"I like to think I opened doors for other women, although that wasn't my original intention."

"All I ever wanted to do was sing. What happened was more."

Diahann Carroll (born Carol Diahann Johnson, 17th July 1935 – 4th October 2019)

An inspiration.

The End of an Era

Sad news. Icon of the UK drag scene, one of the oldest performing drag queens in the world, Maisie Trollette has departed - feathers, sequins, high heels and acid tongue in hand - at the age of 91, to reign supreme in the Gay Pride Drag Tent on Fabulon!

Born David Raven in the oh-so-twee artistic haven of St Ives in Cornwall, raised in the rural flatlands of Suffolk, he finally left the closeted life behind in 1960 for the bright lights of London. There he met fellow entertainer James Court and founded the legendary Trollettes, who ascended to become a dominant force in blacked-out-window gay venues like The Black Cap in Camden and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for decades.

Like so many queens in that oppressive era, David/Maisie and his life partner, banker Don Coull, gravitated to the much more gay-friendy environs of the south coast resort of Brighton and opened a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse (that ran for many years), all the while travelling up and down the country with the Trollettes, with another faboo old drag queen Phil Starr, and as a solo act.

She was still performing well into her 80s - a career of more than 50 years - and, in recognition of her longevity, a biographical film was released in 2021.
[We still haven't yet seen it, as it only seems to be on subscription services and has never been released on DVD or on terrestrial TV.]

Maisie trailer

We saw Maisie perform on many occasions, and she was a stalwart of Gay Prides in Brighton and London (raising thousands for charities supporting people with AIDS and other causes through such performances). Here are some classic moments from the old girl:

Maisie Trollette at the Vauxhall Tavern Circa 1987

Phil Starr (with Maisie Trollette) - The Old Bazaar at Cairo:

David Raven (AKA Maisie Trollette) on trolling

Maisie Trollette - When I Fall In Love

Another glittering star has dimmed, and the loss is palpable.

There'll never be another! - RIP, Maisie Trollette (David Raven, 16th August 1933 – 12th March 2025)

Queens at play

RIP, the beauteous Geneviève Page, who has departed for Fabulon, aged 97.

I wonder who won that card game, her or Sophia?

I was a Lady before I was a Dame

"My mother said to me, ‘You’re no oil painting, my girl, but you have the spark. Thank God you’ve got my legs and not your father’s!’”

"I have always resented the comments that it was I who was the homewrecker of Larry's marriage to Vivien Leigh. Danny Kaye was attached to Larry far earlier than I."

Sad news. Another of our eminent Dames has departed these shores to preside over Fabulon - Dame Joan Plowright.

Never the huge international star her late husband Sir Laurence Olivier became, her world was that of one of the pre-eminent doyennes of the theatre. In her own words:

"You do films if the roof needs mending."

As well as being a fine actress, and instrumental in the overhaul of British theatre - first in the "Angry Young Men" era at The Royal Court, then (as Mrs Olivier) she played a pivotal role in the establishment of The National Theatre - she was also a very witty and entertaining raconteuse, as our late friend Alistair and I discovered when we went to "An Evening With..." the Great Dame back in 2014.

And here she, is, having a great time with her old chums and fellow Dames in one of the most charming documentaries we watched in the last decade:

Nothing Like A Dame [known as Tea with the Dames in the USA] - Who was the First Dame?

RIP, Dame Joan Ann Plowright, the Baroness Olivier.

The Surrealist

RIP, David Lynch (20th January 1946 – 16th January 2025)

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Theme

Genius.

That face

"I love that face, that face, it just isn't fair
You must forgive the way that I stare
But never will these eyes behold a sight that could replace
That face, that face, that face."

In a final flourish of attention-grabbing - surely what her entire tragic, plastic-surgery-enhanced existence was all about - the final entry in 2024's "Book of the Dead" has departed for the "Beauty Salon Reject Area" of Fabulon. RIP, Miss Jocelyn Wildenstein (née Jocelyne Périsset, 5th August 1940 – 31st December 2024)!

I dared

"Style doesn't have seasons."

"You have to want to dare being a model. You have to dare or you don't go that step further. You have to be willing to stretch - and to not only be willing to stretch, but to want to stretch."

"A lot of women say to me, 'Polly, why aren't there more clothes out there that we can wear?' And I don't agree with them! There are clothes out there that they can wear - it's just that they don't dare to wear them."

"I personally do not think that I have ever done, in my working life, anything vulgar. I know I've done provocative things."

"I like to take things further. Too often, stylists do things to please because they are going to be accepted. You lose the magic that way. You can’t give something special to your readers unless you dare. I was a stronger woman behind the camera than I was in real life. I dared."

And so, farewell, the remarkable stylist and fashion editor Polly Mellen, who has departed to zhoosh-up the glittering catwalks of Fabulon at the venerable age of 100.

Unsurprisingly, during her long career in the fashion world she knew everyone who was everyone - growing up in Connecticut, she was acquainted with the young Katherine Hepburn; a friend-of-a-friend Sally Kirkland (future editor of Vogue) recommended her to Diana Vreeland, who gave Miss Mellon her big break at Harpers Bizarre, and then Vogue; she worked with photographers Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, and her collaborations with Richard Avedon became iconic; she worked with just about every couturier from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Halston to Alistair McQueen, Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, Vera Wang and Viktor & Rolf, and nurtured the careers of a host of supermodels that included Penelope Tree, Patti Hansen, Lauren Hutton, Nastassja Kinski, Janice Dickinson, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, and dozens more.

A most influential fashionista, indeed!

RIP, Polly Allen Mellen (18th June 1924 – 12th December 2024)

Razzle Dazzle no more

It is with tears in our eyes that we bid a fond farewell to our beloved Patron Saint of Bugle Beads Miss Mitzi Gaynor, who has razzle-dazzled her way off to Fabulon today.

The star to end all stars, she shimmied, shook and high-kicked her way through myriad musicals, TV specials and award ceremonies in her long, long career - her screen legacy includes such classics as My Blue Heaven, There's No Business Like Show Business, Anything Goes, Les Girls and, of course, South Pacific. We are going to miss her terribly!

Mitzi Gaynor - Honey Bun

Mitzi Gaynor - Limehouse Blues

Mitzi Gaynor - Let Go!

RIP, Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber, aka Mitzi Gaynor (4th September 1931 - 17th October 2024)

This weekend I am mostly dressing casual...

...like Signorina Lea Periconi, tennis maven, and style icon of the 1950s and 60s, who has departed for Fabulon. The higher the hair...

No words

It's the end of an era.

RIP, Dame Maggie Smith.

We adored you.

The Bourne Identity

As I recounted in my post back in 2013:

On 9th September 1971 Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Longford, Cliff-fucking-Richard and various assorted clergy, god-botherers and other nutters convened a mass meeting of their Festival of Light, a movement dedicated to opposing "the permissive society" in all its forms, at Methodist Central Hall opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Unbeknownst to the assembled worthies, Bette Bourne, Lavinia Co-op, Michael James, Gretal Feather, Martin Corbett, Peter Tatchell and many other founding members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had infiltrated the prayers. Many of Bette's coterie were disguised as nuns, and as the speakers tried to address the crowd they began slinging porn from the balcony. Others shouted, clapped and screamed at inappropriate moments. Mr Corbett, who had calmly pretended to be a Hall official and ordered technical staff out of the basement, brought the lights down.

As Peter Tatchell recalls: "On the night, mayhem erupted. When Malcolm Muggeridge, speaking out about homosexuals, declared, 'I don't like them.' The feeling was mutual. Mice were released into the audience; lesbian couples stood up and passionately embraced. A dozen GLF nuns in immaculate blue and white habits charged the platform shouting gay liberation slogans, and a GLF bishop began preaching an impromptu sermon which urged people to 'keep on sinning.'"

It all apparently ended, before the police and security were able to forcibly remove them, with the drag nuns doing the can-can on the stage in front of the astounded speakers!

The last word, of course, went to Bette, who, at her subsequent trial for her part in the protest, was asked by the judge to remove her hat, and said "No! It goes with the shoes."

The great avant-garde drag entertainer, actor, wit, creative genius and, above all, champion of the battle for gay rights in the UK, Ms Bette Bourne has departed for the highest echelons of Fabulon, where she will no doubt preside, bestowing her pithy quips on all who surround her.

We adored Bette Bourne. It was sixteen years ago that our gang first encountered him/her in person - at the Oval Theatre, portraying the lascivious Hollywood talent manager Henry Willson who made Rock Hudson a star, and afterwards being inducted into the "Homosexual Hall of Fame" - and fell under his spell. Two years later, we were overjoyed to be at Soho Theatre for the first run of his and Mark Ravenhill's partly dramatised A Life in Three Acts.

Then in 2013, a double-bill - not just a showing at the V&A of the film about Bette Bourne It Goes With the Shoes [see the link in the intro above for more on that], but he and his longtime partner and fellow Bloolips veteran Paul Shaw [who survives him] made a special in-person appearance at the venerable Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to perform an extract of the troupe's classic interpretion of the lives of Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, Get Hur!...

He/she could turn her hand to anything - from Blanche DuBois to Lady Bracknell, Quentin Crisp to Queen Victoria, in drag or out of it. A remarkable individual.

We'll miss Bette!

A lot.

Bette Bourne - It Goes With The Shoes

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

RIP, Bette Bourne (born Peter Bourne, 22nd September 1939 – 23rd August 2024)

He pushed the boundaries of excess

From the fantastic tribute in the Evening Standard by David Johnson (editor of one of my fave websites Shapers of the 80s):

The press called them the “New Romantics” and the “Blitz Kids”, declaring the Eighties the “Age of the Pose”. Art-school tutor Rosetta Brooks compared their self-consciously styled poses to “street theatre ultimately extended into continuous performance as a post-punk embodiment of Gilbert and George in one person (the individualist).” Each poser, she believed, is a ready-made. Step forward fashion student Stephen Linard, who ticked all the above boxes – a flamboyant Canvey Island boy, ...who yearned to make a statement in every street or room he graced.

Arriving at St Martin’s School of Art in London (1978-81), Linard pushed the boundaries of excess…His outrageous fashion details flagged direction for the two dozen sharpest Blitz Kids who shaped the New Romantics silhouette from the Blitz onwards...

“The competition pushed you on... you might change what you were going to wear eight times on a Tuesday to try to outdo everyone else at the Blitz.”

...“The Blitz was an art students’ club. The place was choc-a-bloc with artists: Brian Clarke, Zandra Rhodes, Molly Parkin, Antony Price, Duggie Fields, Kevin Whitney and us because it was halfway between Central School and St Martin’s. People who said ‘Oh you Blitz Kids don’t DO anything’ were talking rubbish, because WE all did. We were the ones with our work in the glossy magazines long before the rest.”

Always centre stage...

With friends/fellow squatters that included Boy George, milliner Stephen Jones, "scene queen" Princess Julia, the faboo Eve Ferrett, assorted fashionistas such as The Clothes Show's Caryn Franklin and art-model Sue Tilley, and the Pet Shop Boys, and clients that included Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Spandau Ballet, Fun Boy 3 and even David Bowie, he became legendary in couture circles. He was unique!

RIP, Stephen Linard.

[click any pic to enlarge]