That cubic zircona WILL be mine.

Spotted this week by High Heels and Reprobates:

- Elizabeth Taylor gazing longingly in the window of H.Samuel, Stratford East

- A feather boa-ed Rock Hudson getting down to The Communards at Horse Meat Disco

- Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner having a noodle fight at Mr Wu’s All You Can Eat Buffet, Leicester Square

- Judy Garland leaving G.A.Y at 10 pm for an early night

- Katherine Hepburn getting a Vajazzle in Buckhurst Hill

- Marlon Brando buying Clarins at Selfridges and then heading off for sushi with Dale Winton

- James Dean stalling his Ford Focus on Northumberland Avenue

- Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier bickering over the pick and mix at Vue Cinema, Acton

- A pissed off Richard Burton scooping up dog poo outside Premier Inn, Romford West

- Marilyn Monroe getting a fish pedicure at Westfield

- 7 am spot – Audrey Hepburn dribbling down the front of her shift dress at Dunkin Doughnuts

- A flustered looking Cary Grant buying skinny jeans in Matalan, Cricklewood

- Greta Garbo with a group of girlfriends loving zumba at LA Fitness

- Marlene Dietrich sparking up a Lambert and Butler outside Chicken Cottage, Peckham

- Joan Crawford in the Early Learning Centre, Hammersmith

For the latest celebrity gossip, come down to Department Five and join the School for Scandal!

High Heels and Reprobates will be Secretariat for the Vintage Twitter Bureau at The Glamour Factory, National Portrait Gallery on Friday 7 October 6 pm – 10 pm.

Find out more and book department tickets at www.npg.org.uk/lateshift

For breaking news follow on twitter @NPGGlamour and @sirenheels

Robert Coburn 1946

Next month, I will be simultaneously channelling Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor.  Isn’t this just a normal day, readers?  Or has High Heels finally succumbed to a retro style multi personality disorder?  Get your wire coat hangers and large sparkly rocks at the ready, because on Friday 7 October, High Heels and Reprobates will be running the Vintage Twitter Bureau at The National Portrait Gallery, in conjunction with The Glamour of the Gods exhibition.

For one night only, the NPG will transform itself into The Glamour Factory, a series of star-making departments designed to make you feel like an idol of the silver screen.   Expect to be primped, preened, papped and generally entertained, with ample opportunities to get all atwitter with HH&R.  Your tweets will be projected across the High Heels Secretariat where you can also try your hand at being Hedda Hopper for the night, tweeting about your favourite stars on a vintage typewriter.

I’ve been devouring Hollywood biographies for as long as I’ve been wearing heels and I’ve often wondered if you could assemble the perfect look what it would be.  Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, Sophia Loren’s legs, Marlene’s cheekbones, Marilyn’s appeal, Vivien Leigh’s everything? (I’ll pass on her state of mind).  Whatever extra-terrestrial beauty you ended up with, it wouldn’t look like someone on the pull at Inside Soap Awards.  When Ava Gardner went on the pull it was Frank Sinatra or, if he was too busy singing/sulking, she collected matadors.  See?  Effortlessly stylish.  Only, it was never effortless.  It was painful (#Rita Hayworth’s hair line), it was extreme (#Joan Crawford’s ice cube facials) and more often than not, it was a bit dubious (#Marilyn Monroe’s dealer).

The end result though was something luminous and unforgettable.  The Studios didn’t want just looks, they wanted personality and headlines.  There aren’t enough tomes to fill with the excesses of Elizabeth Taylor.  Who else would fly her favourite kind of chilli across three time zones?  Or have a puppy who mistook Mary Tudor’s giant pearl for a squeaky toy?

In the name of research, I have finally braved Mommie Dearest and am still reeling from the matching outfits.  Forget banishment to a convent, this is lasting abuse committed to celluloid.  Mother and daughter gurning in red velvet pinafore dresses.  Mother and daughter posing against marble fireplaces in embroidered gingham, looking like the stuff of Tyrolean nightmares.  And underneath all that home spun wholesomeness, it’s just Joan Crawford.  The woman rumoured to have slept with everyone in Hollywood except Lassie.  When it came to manipulating her image, Crawford was the maestro.

So, if you fancy getting Ready for Your Close-up, come down to WC2 and sign your handprint on the NPG Walk of Fame.  Other highlights include Illamasqua makeover transformations for screen sirens and matinee idols, the Broken Hearts Cocktail Lounge with a set from Jazz FM’s Peppermint Candy DJs, compered by the irrepressible David Piper, Commander of Special Operations for Hendrick’s Gin, a silver screening of Top Hat, a Glamorous Debate and much, much more…..

High Heels and Reprobates will be Secretariat for the Vintage Twitter Bureau at The Glamour Factory, National Portrait Gallery on Friday 7 October 6 pm – 10 pm.  Entrance is free dahling, but dressing up in black and white is de rigueur.

Find out more and book department tickets at www.npg.org.uk/lateshift

For breaking news follow on twitter @NPGGlamour and @Sirenheels

http://www.jazzfm.com/shows/peppermint-candy

http://www.illamasqua.com/

Marylin by Bert Stern 1962

How tired we are at High Heels to listen to David Cameron banging on about the underclass and its sense of self-entitlement.  Everyone knows there’s no sector of society that feels more self-entitled  than the upper middle classes, of which callmedave is a flag waving member.  If you look at the evidence, common looting vs posh looting is surprisingly similar.  Less Footlocker and a lot more FTSE, but the plunder is still the same.

Comparing one of the looters with, say, a particularly toxic variety of student at an elitist university and you’ll find the demographic isn’t all that different. Neither feel they have to trawl through The Guardian for six months to get a job, both smash up public places and steal things Bullingdon style and interestingly enough, both are too lazy to pronounce their consonants.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to fix ‘frankly sick Britain’, even Joan Collins (although I’m not sure that UKIP and more mascara is really the answer).  No, what is required right here and right now is for Dave and Boris to go on a Gap Yah.  And preferably together because that would be so much funnier.  Just imagine the two goons of politics going on a wander, not around South East Asia and the Galapagos Islands, but around the sink estates of the United Kingdom – kipping on sofas, doing a bit of listening and generally getting a sense of the demi monde created by the fair hands of Margaret Thatcher.  Pack your pashminas boys and let’s rahly go native!  First Stop Oxford!

Oh the banter!  We could literally be in Blackbird Leys.  That’s the estate conveniently situated over the other side of the Ring Road, so we don’t have to look at it.  It’s muchos povo, but if you check out The Blackbird, the lash is really cheap.  Some of the chaps smashed up a restaurant on Banbury Road last night, but it’s OK because they’re going in with a cheque once they’ve stopped chundering.   Owners looked a bit scared, but it’s a free refurb, yah?  Where next?  Ooop north?

One of the kids on this estate just called me a fooking lying t**t, Boris.  I told him I’d get my lawyer on him, but he just laughed and pulled out a full syringe.  That’s the trouble with young people these days.   No manners or respect for the law.  Boris?  For Christ’s sake man, are you belching the alphabet again?  You better not behave like that at The Oval.  I scheduled in an afternoon of cricket just to infuriate the chavs….after that it’s Middlesbrough for two months, so brace yourself.

These, sadly, are our leaders.  And we wonder why we are in so much trouble.  Who would I leave in charge of London and the UK whilst The Chuckle Brothers went AWOL? Annie Lennox for the top job and Basil Brush to stand in for Boris.  Seems more than fair.

www.bluetramontana.com

This whole romance thing is an interesting subject.   In fact it’s probably a thesis.  We all know Barbara Cartland swore by it.  Mini series doyenne, Jane Seymour dedicated an entire book to it.   But what is it?  And who is it actually for?

Anyone who will admit to reading Jane Seymour’s Guide to Romantic Living (it was an IRONIC gift, readers, you know like leg warmers, or space dust) will know this book is about as off-note as a congealed bottle of Le Jardin.   In between filming Dr Quinn Medicine Woman and poncing around on a flower garlanded swing, La Seymour took the time to tell us all how to weave a bit of magic into our dull, non-celebrity lives.

According to the much married Miss Seymour, romance is ‘an attitude’ that you don’t need to have a stately pile or even long hair to experience.   Neither do you need to look like you’ve just rolled around in Madame de Pompadour’s boudoir and come up for air surrounded, quite inexplicably, by a flock of swans (see back cover).  What you do need however are some smelly candles, a tin of lumpfish caviar and a predilection for impromptu picnics.  Well, in the words of my new favourite blog www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com, this is in fact:  horsecrap.

Romance isn’t about mysticism and femininity.  Anyone who thinks about it for more than thirty seconds will concede that Romance was a male invention.  In fact, it was probably invented in a shed by a man from Tonbridge Wells who was avoiding his wife.  There he was tinkering away on his work bench one day when kazaam!    He thought he’d just short circuited his power drill, but no, he’d only played a blinder and come up with Romance!   Now he’d never have to beg for sex again!  He might even get away with unloading the dishwasher.  Again!

There are so many misconceptions about what is Romantic.  Small cuddly animals clutching satin hearts that say ‘I Wuv You’ are not Romantic.   Grown women receiving soft toys from men they are having sex with is just wrong on every level.   Victoria Wood puts it more succinctly when she says ‘it’s very difficult to maintain an erection when surrounded by twenty seven gonks’.  

Other things that are not Romantic:  Valentine’s Day (the Thorpe Park of Romance – overpriced, overrated and you’ll still have nothing to say in the restaurant later), doing a shout out on Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs (‘She’s my rock’, now let’s play some Chris De Burgh), Thorntons chocolates, yellow chrysanths from the Esso Garage and oversized, puffy cards from Hallmark.

When someone takes you out for dinner on your birthday or buys you a bunch of flowers, take it from High Heels, they are not being Romantic.  They are being kind.  Either that or they are using diversion tactics to get out of grouting the bathroom.

www.bluetramontana.com

Caitlin Moran doesn’t like wearing high heels.  To Germaine Greer, it may be low level foot binding, but Moran sees it more as an optical illusion/female delusion that never quite works out.    If you want porcine pegs, she says (fat at the top, tapering into puffy, painful little trotters) squeeze yourself into a £495 pair of Manolo Blahnik sling-backs and hobble off to the nearest taxi rank. 

Walking elegantly in high heels, she says, is a rare and admirable skill ‘like tightrope walking or blowing smoke rings’, so if you’re not Agyness Deyn with pins like stripped willow, do yourself and the rest of womankind a favour.  Stick to DM’s.  They’re far easier to dance in and absolutely ideal for running away from murderers. 

Surprisingly enough, I concur.  There’s not much I don’t agree with in Ms Moran’s How to be a Woman, although I do have another 115 pages to go.  Two chapters in and I am punching the air.  At last!  Someone willing to address with humour the ridiculousness of turning your cha-cha into Phil Mitchell’s head without the features!   Someone prepared to commit to paper that spending £21K on ‘the best day of your life’ is total bollocks and that wedding mania is All Women’s Fault!  (grooms don’t give a toss – they’d rather be reading the sports section!!)   That actually, asking someone when they are going to produce offspring is INCREDIBLY BLOODY RUDE!

OK, I may be aping her overuse of the exclamation mark, but nonetheless, this is a funny and insightful book.  It takes you through the utter awfulness of becoming a woman, whatever the hell being a woman means.  I mean who gets to decide?  Theresa May?  The Editor of Nuts?   Personally, I can make my own mind up, but in the meantime I’m more than happy to listen to the views of anyone who has the wit to describe Katie Price as ‘Vichy France with tits’.   

The best thing about Moran’s writing is her honest re-telling of the teenage years.  Some of it makes for uncomfortable reading, but it certainly got me thinking about mine.  Turns out I wasn’t such a freak as I thought.  We were all at it.   Immac-ing our faces twice a week and having imaginary relationships with people on TV that took us through the gamut of courtship to tragic early widowhood.  Hey, I had one that lasted over two years with an Australian actor called Jon Blake who starred in a mini series called Anzacs.  It was the longest and happiest relationship I’ve had to date.  I got bought flowers and everything.  Sorry to say though readers, I have just googled Jon and discovered that he did actually die on 29 May of this year from complications resulting from pneumonia.  Once I’ve finished this, I will be dressing in black and keening at the top of the stairs.

Any girl who gets through adolescence without having to resort to beta blockers and moonshine  should be given some kind of award.  Looks at what they’ve had to endure.  Agonising early periods, snogging tooth marks on their upper lips, teenage boys making farting noises with their armpits and chucking scrunched up packet of cheese and onion crisps down their throats, secure in the belief that they are utterly irresistible.   In spite of all this, the average teenage girl will still think she is not good enough, not pretty enough and not clever enough, plus she’s now expected to spend £25 per month sanitising and infantilising her foof.  

Simone de Beauvoir might have been a miserable cow, but maybe she was right.  You’re not born a woman, you become one, and it probably begins the moment you stop jumping through the hoops of other peoples’ expectations in tiny knickers.   So, about thirty eight then…..

www.bluetramontana.com

Ah, Femail online!  It’s a veritable tombola of inspiration for the tongue tied blogger.  Just put your hand in and see what sparkly gems come out.  Katie Price’s rotting hair extensions.   Anthea Turner ‘lifting bins’ outside the mock baronial mansion she shares with former property developer Grant Bovey.   But hang on a god dang minute, what’s this?  Chanteuse and all round diva Dame Shirley Bassey has become godmother to an ‘adults only’ P&O cruise ship called Adonia?  I can see there are people out there who may require an explanation. 

Sadly, I don’t actually have one, but do check out the promotional video.   It’s a riot.  ‘Welcome to my ship!’ announces Bassey, flinging back her cashmere batwings and bestowing her most radiant smile on the assembled liggers.   The opening ceremony, co-hosted by Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame (someone’s wife’s been nagging for a new loft conversion) was also attended by TV luminaries Fay Ripley and Andrea from Loose Women.   Yes, that’s right, she’s the one who speaks with the annoying burr.

According to its owners, Adonia promises ‘a wonderfully intimate cruising experience’.  Now, I’m not au fait with these matters, but can’t you get that on Wimbledon Common?  Must one go as far as Southampton?   There’s something slightly icky about the whole idea of adult only cruising.  I’m detecting a whiff of Mile High Club, which is all well and good, but just think about the quality of the people.  Still it could be worse.  Could be Red Funnel Ferries.

The desire to go on cruises is something for which I have no comprehension.   In fact, I am almost speechless on this subject.  Spending an entire fortnight trapped on a ocean going liner with a load of people you can’t stand being force fed round the clock watching West End Wendy’s giving it jazz hands and nothing to divert you except a game of shuffleboard and the thought that six grand is being sucked out of your bank account for the whole rancid experience.   And just when you think life can’t get any worse, someone gets Jane MacDonald in for an encore.  Please, people!  Man Over Board. 

So, Adonia might not be getting a visit from Miss High Heels, but she is awaiting the imminent arrival of a Greek Island holiday; perfectly timed with the eruption of the latest volcano.   I do hope I won’t be picking ash off my feta.

Just because it's on your head, dear - doesn't make it fascinating

The Fascinator.   Can someone please explain it to me because I simply don’t understand. 

I’ve seen it at parties.  I’ve seen it put in an occasional appearance at weddings, christenings and race courses, perching jauntily like a great, big fluffy talking point.  But what exactly is it?  Is it the bastard child of a hat and an Alice band?  Is it just a souped-up pill box, laden with fruits and feathers?  Or is it just an opportunity to show off and have something to discuss with strangers over a peeled quail’s egg?

Last week showed that Brand Britain can not only out-pomp any nation on earth, we can also wear the most ridiculous head gear known to man.  How we rejoiced to see Tara Palmer Tomkinson’s gravity-defying ‘lozenge’ actually complimenting the line of her reconstructed septum!   What do you do when you’ve just had your nose done?  Why, you pin an electric blue Ali Baba shoe adjacent to your face and watch the headlines!  Modern millinery is such fun!  Even dour-faced Victoria Beckham rose to the occasion, cunningly trying to detract from the bun in her oven by guiding the eye upwards to the full glory of her teetering cottage loaf.

No one could have been prepared though for the full horror of the Princesses of York as they reinvented Statement Dressing for the 21^st Century.  Not since Julia Roberts ‘neglected’ to shave her armpits at the Notting Hill Premiere, has there been such scene stealing.  Even Philip Schofield fell into a stunned silence as the two Turbo Sloanes forgot their Lucie Clayton and clamboured unwieldy out of the back of one of Granny’s Bentleys.  If they’d been room for subtitles, the statement they were making might have run something like this:

 ‘Look yah, we’re rahlly, rahlly pissed off because like our Mum couldn’t come, yah?  And we weren’t even allowed a plus one, right, which is total nightmare because instead of being with us, our boyfriends are going to be at Boujis tonight trying to get into Nicole Scherzinger’s knickers.  So, yah the thing is, if we can’t have guests, we’re going to have like rahlly big fascinators’. 

I know much has been said of this pair already, but sadly not by me.   Here at High Heels we have but two words.  Quality.  Street.   If indeed, life is just a box of chocolates, Eugenie would be Caramel Hell and Beatrice would be that blue nutty one that gets left at the bottom of the tin.  Sorry girls, but Philip Treacy can’t help you now.  It’s Open Season.

But oh, by complete contrast, Samantha Cameron tut tut.   No hat or jewels at the Abbey?   Is this another slick chapter in the Sam and Dave show where they pretend to be ‘just like normal people’?  First it’s Ryan Air, then it’s Boring Burberry and Claire’s Accessories.  Thank god then for Miriam Gonzáles Durantéz, who went for Eva Peron meets Carmen Miranda.  That’s what I call a look.

There are times when here at HH&R, one’s life does rather begin to feel like an episode of Dynasty.  In fact, just put me in triplicate and roll the credits.  High Heels smokes a bitch stick and looks assertive in the boardroom.  High Heels resplendent in Halston, leans seductively over a spinning roulette wheel.  And did I mention the central panel in soft focus?  The one where High Heels flicks her head round and pulls off a large clip on earring to take a phone call from her attorney?   

You get the drift.

Sometimes though, one does wonder just which revolting little reptile to deal with next.   Still, in between keeping the flies off, this week there’s been a more erudite television programme on my radar.   Thursday night saw me grappling with lights, cameras and plenty of action at Hogwarts.  Anyone ever tried to get a BBC Production Unit through a small T junction sporting a no access sign?  To be fair, it is the height of about three double decker buses, but even still, did we really need a little man in a thigh length hi-visibility jacket turning up at 11 am to check the health and safety implications?  I think not.  Still, eventually the right chitty was signed and the event sailed on like an elegant swan paddling furiously beneath the water line. 

Backstage, we had our own questions to answer.  How many chafing dishes does it take to wind up a chef?  Should we be serving meatballs at the reception?  Panellists picking herbs out of their teeth before they go on camera is a look best avoided.  Which part of Lord Winston doesn’t eat prawns do you not understand?  Or how about, why do people who pay £7 a year in membership fees think this entitles them to foot massages, sedan chairs and round the clock maintenance?  Perhaps if they want this level of adoration, they should cough up the 700 quid it costs to join Shoreditch House.  After all this is Oxford, my dear.  The crème du menthe frappé of our society.    

On the subject of ‘do you know who I am’, let me close with a few words for Eton educated Nick Clegg who seems to think a six week stint counting paperclips at Morgan Stanley creates social mobility.  In the current climate, banning nepotistic internships as a way of creating a fairer society is the kind of mealy mouthed tokenism that makes me want to vomit.  The only way to socially mobilise people is to educate them and who can afford that anymore?  The kind of person who can get their son a six week stint counting paperclips at Morgan Stanley.   

Cue the credits.

www.bluetramontana.com

Finding diverting hobbies in Oxford is a bit like trying to sex up a really dull marriage.  Eighteen months in and I am still experiencing provincial, skull numbing boredom of Chekhovian proportions.  What the hell do single women in their late thirties do out here?  And more to the point, who do they do it with?  With Beginners Tango coming to an end (Joyce Grenfell style simply not working.  Lack of tension and resistance like trying to put marshmallows in a money box), Thursday night saw me throwing my keys in the fruit bowl of life and checking out the international phenomenon that is Zumba. 

Zumba was created as a happy accident by Columbian aerobics instructor, Alberto Perez who rocked up to class one day without his Donna Summer CD.  Digging deep into his backpack he pulled out some salsa and meringue tracks that got his ladies punching out moves they never knew they had in them and so, a fledgling empire was formed.  And believe me this baby has got a business model that kicks the maximus glutimus.  There’s Zumba, Zumba Gold, Zumba Toning, Aqua Zumba, Zumbatomic, Zumba in the Circuit (regular Zumba with extra shouting) and then, of course, there’s the merchandising. 

Scrolling through the Zumba shop, you could be forgiven for believing you were taking a garish peak into Mr Motivator’s wardrobe.  We got Fusion Cargo Pants, I Love Zumba Canvas Fanny Packs, Get Down Cropped Hoodies, Wild For Zumba Racerbacks, Men’s Feel The Magic Muscle Tanks.  Something tells me this look is aimed at the South Beach homosexual trapped in a Latino timewarp.  For me, I’ll stick with the optimistic Nike I bought in the sales and haven’t worn since. 

Arriving at my first class in a hotel on the outskirts of Oxford, I discover we are in a squash court bang opposite the swimming pool.  Not only is the Duty Manager one of my upcoming brides (please don’t see me doing Zumba, please don’t see me doing Zumba), but we are sport for deeply unattractive men passing by in small speedos.   The temptation to hold up a mirror is great, but I’m too busy trying to get the moves, even if in Zumba, the moves don’t really matter.  It’s all about the fun.  And sweating a lot. 

We are a motley bunch of different ages, sizes and levels of co-ordination which comes as a huge relief to one who spent a year at drama school being called ‘Wrong Arm’ or ‘Other Leg’.  Tina, our sardonic instructor, isn’t like other instructors she tells us.  She likes to teach the moves rather than leaving you to flounder.  She has so many rubber bracelets on you could strum her, although I’m guessing this is down payment on doing the course.   

If the thought of exercise has you retching, this is for you.  Anything that gets me off my indolent backside has got to have some merit because I have to say, I haven’t had so much fun on a squash court since…..well, I’ve never had so much fun on a squash court in my entire life.  But then I have always hated racquet sports and I am still traumatised by being forced to absail down the walls of one on an outward bound holiday back in 1982.  

Should have known then I was never going to be a joiner.

Sophia. Something for Italy to be proud of.

Please, for the love of God, don’t lock up Silvio Berlusconi.  This man is the international antidote to inflation, cyclones and public sector cutbacks and all countries – with the exception of Italy – Need Him Now. 

I don’t care what la Repubblica says, Silvio is a top bloke and he’s always ready to lend a helping hand.  Awkward little situations with the juvenile justice service?  Ask Silv. Throwing an eighteenth birthday party?  Look no further.  In his own words, he is ‘a rare and unique host’ and if you’re really good, he might even give you a rub down with his monogrammed handkerchief after you’ve jumped out of your own cake!  That is how selfless he is.

The best thing about Silv though is he’s got such fabulous friends.  Dubya Bush is his bestest bud and then, of course, there’s Colonel Gadaffi who’s taught him so much.  (For research purposes I googled the bejesus out of Bunga Bunga parties.  Couldn’t get to the bottom of it.  Something to do with erotic rituals in long North African robes).  Anyway, the point is everyone on the international stage just adores him.  Whether it’s playing peek-a-boo with Angela Merkel at a Nato summit or complimenting Obama on his tan, when this sprightly Septuagenarian is around, you’re always guaranteed a hoot.  So what if Ruby the Heart Stealer has been putting some lead in his pencil?  Who cares what goes on in his Sardinian villa? He may be old; he may be the colour of a Ronsealed potting shed, but this man is proof positive of what a multi billion euro empire can bring.  And what senior statesman wouldn’t be crying out for a Moroccan belly dancer with kleptomania, I ask you.

As for the pending trial, is he really bovvered?  Won’t the Mafiosi keep him in prosciutto?  Scenes from Goodfellas are already flicking through my mind.  Ray Liotta chopping up his garlic with a razorblade; De Niro cracking open the Chianti, but no.  No, no, no, this won’t do at all. Demote him to the Recycling Department at Naples City Council by all means, confiscate all his toys, but please don’t let Berlusconi lose his liberty.  He’s just too funny.