On the Jukebox this Weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

And oh... the... twiddley bits he used to play when all alone with me

Very sad news. One of my all-time favourite all-round entertainers, the actress and comedienne Sheila Steafel has departed to join the merry throng in the the eternal Variety show of Fabulon.

Miss Steafel was, quite simply, "always there" - I remember her mischievous, almost-but-not-quite-giggling personality from way back when I was quite young. She emerged into the spotlight [from a long career as a jobbing actor, an émigré from South Africa] as one of the stalwarts of The Frost Report (Mr F's successor show to the legendary That Was The Week That Was) alongside John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett - and she was a regular on The Two Ronnies Show over many years. She popped up as a comic "foil" for just about every comedian on British TV - including Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bernard Cribbins, Eric Sykes, Jimmy Tarbuck, Arthur English, Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett and Spike Milligan - starred in an adaptation of Diary of a Nobody, and had a lengthy stint in the children's show The Ghosts of Motley Hall, as well as a long and varied stage career. Along the way, she was married to Harry H Corbett ("Harold Steptoe") for six years.



It was, however, for her stupendous regular appearances on The Good Old Days we loved her the most! I need no excuse to play these two gems, both of which are embedded in the very fabric of our being here at Dolores Delargo Towers:

Sheila Steafel - Twiddley Bits [Good Old Days]

Sheila Steafel as "Popsy Wopsy" [Good Old Days]

We went to see the great lady in her one-woman show Victoria Plums back in 2005, in which she featured many of her favourite (and mostly obscure) Victorian Music Hall songs - as collected in a CD of the same name, which forms a treasured part of our collection to this day. It was on this occasion that we were fortunate to meet her after the show, and she signed a photo for us, which has pride of place among our gallery of the great and the good...



I am wearing a black armband as we speak.

RIP, Sheila Frances Steafel (26th May 1935 - 23rd August 2019)

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, star of Psycho and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - Miss Vera Miles, 90 years old today!

The secret of her long life might be revealed by her most famous quote:

"I love young men, lots of them, your ancient masculine double standard."

Amen, sister.

Fame is a by-product

“I’ve been popular and unpopular, successful and unsuccessful, loved and loathed, and I know how meaningless it all is. Therefore I feel free to take whatever risks I want.”

“Fame is a by-product. Fame is something that should happen because you do work that speaks to people and people want to know about your work. Unfortunately the personality of people has taken over from the work and the artistry and it’s this thing now that stands on its own. I don’t think one should ever aspire to being famous.”

“People think they will wake up one day and I’ll be gone. But I’m never going away.”

Many happy returns, Madonna Louise Ciccone (born 16th August 1958)

Freak Unique

"I'm not a camp, throwaway queen; I'm not in Neverland. I'm not Jennifer Lopez with three people to pluck my eyebrows. I've made myself what I want to be - not everybody's cup of tea. And people wanna have a look at me. I fully accept that. People have always wanted to have a look at me."

"If people don't think I can fall into what the norm is, that's their problem and not mine. I'm not the norm; I'm not deluded."

The late, great, dearly-missed Mr Pete Burns would have been 60 years old today.

The lights on Broadway are dimmed...

One of the last of the icons of the "Great White Way", Hal Prince has departed for Fabulon, at the ripe old age of 91.

In the pantheon of musical theatre history, there are many classics - The Pajama Game, Fiddler on the Roof, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, She Loves Me, Flora the Red Menace, Cabaret, Chicago, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Company, Pacific Overtures, Follies, Candide, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman - and Hal Prince was the man behind them all! He produced and/or directed more than sixty ground-breaking productions, winning 21 Tony Awards, more than any other individual.

Of his circle - Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, George Abbott, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and the rest - only Mr Sondheim is still with us. However, it is Mr Prince to whom so many people owe a huge debt for their own success; Sondheim, Lloyd-Webber, Sheldon Harnick and Kander & Ebb among them. Let's raise a toast to a man truly deserving of the title "legend"...

RIP, Harold Smith Prince (30th January 1928 - 31st July 2019)

J'Adore Dior

Hils, Al and I sashayed our way to the fabulous Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) today for the latest blockbuster fashion exhibition - Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams.

Oh, my dears... the opulence! The style! The panache!

Will Gompertz, writing for the BBC agreed:

As you walk up to the imposing front door, your way is blocked by a black mannequin wearing the two-tone two-piece that defined both [his] inaugural 1947 show and Christian Dior.

The Bar Suit caused a sensation.

It was an extravagant, rebellious response to the grim austerity of post-war Europe. Instead of a dull boxy jacket and no-nonsense skirt that required minimal fabric or imagination to make, Dior presented a soft-shouldered, wasp-waisted silk jacket fanning out over the hips to reveal a long, dark blue pleated skirt, which took many metres of fabric to produce.

It was outrageously decadent in an era of rationing, but also fabulously exciting: a vision for the future that was colourful, opulent and beautiful... The fashionistas saw things differently. They absolutely loved what was immediately known as the New Look.

Christian Dior had arrived.

Why his work had such an immediate impact is obvious when you step over the threshold and into the first gallery. The designs he produced and the fabrics he used were the epitome of old-school glamour, with elegant lines - or silhouettes - cut from luxurious materials. They are a wonder to behold, at least on the outside.

I imagine the whalebone corsets and under-wired structures needed to retain the shape felt neither elegant nor luxurious. Still, Il faut souffrir pour être belle, as they say...

...There are galleries dedicated to historicism, the garden, the ateliers and, finally, a glitzy ballroom featuring animated glitter erupting across the ceiling and down the walls. The effect is only marginally compromised by non-slip rubber matting underfoot rather than a sprung wooden floor polished for dancing.

Christian Dior wasn't known for skimping on costs, and nor has the V&A.

With frocks designed by the great man himself, and by his successors Christian Dior, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, hats by Stephen Jones, pieces worn by great style-setters of their day such as Margot Fonteyn, Princess Diana and Princess Margaret, and red-carpet numbers paraded by the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, Lupita Nyong’o and Rihanna; everything from the most outlandish to the most timelessly classic and wearable designs in post-War couture history, all bound together with the history of the House of Dior and its founder, this was definitely one of the most impressive shows of its kind we have been to - and quite rightly it has sold out for most of its (recently extended) run.

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams [if you can get a ticket] is on at the V&A until until Sunday 1st September 2019.