PAULINE MOLE

Adrian Mole's embarrassing (for him) mum, Sue Townsend's inspired creation is a few years older than moi, but we have the same seminal influences.  Germaine Greer's "The Female Eunuch" really did change my life, as it did hers.  To the point where, in the Upper VIth, I wrote a short feminist play called "Germaine, or Yes We Have No Bananas".  The clever, funny Sue Townsend, who has just left us, claimed that there was a lot of Adrian in her, but I suspect there was a lot more of Pauline. Pauline thought that Adrian was totally self-absorbed, but Adrian maybe understood his mum more than she knew.

"I only got one Valentine's Day card.  It was in my mother's handwriting so it doesn't count."

("The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾")

"My mother's ideal son would be intense and saturnine.  He would go to a school for the Intellectually Precocious.  He would fascinate girls and women at an early age, he would enthral visitors with his witty conversation.  He would wear his clothes with panache, he would be completely non-sexist, non-agist, non-racist (His best friend would be an old African woman).  He would win a scholarship to Oxford, he would take the place by storm and be written about in future biographies.  He would turn down offers of safe parliamentary seats in Britain.  Instead, he would go to South Africa and lead the blacks into a successful revolution.  He would return to England where he would be the first man deemed fit to edit Spare Rib.  He would move in sparkling social circles.  He would take his mother everywhere he went."

("The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole")

"My mother said 'Adrian, you'll be thirty-one in a couple of months.  I know you've had sex at least twice, but you don't seem to know the first thing about lust.' "

("Adrian Mole:  The Cappuccino Years")

"As my mother was getting back into the car, a youth in a top with the hood pulled over his face approached her and said, 'Yo, woman, do you wanna score some draw?'

My mother said 'Not today, thank you,' as if she was refusing a Betterware catalogue."

("Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction")

"I told her that she couldn't possibly stay at the Piggeries on her own.

She said 'I'm not on my own; I've got Animal with me.'

I said that she couldn't stay with Animal because he was, without wishing to be rude, an animal.

She said 'Au contraire, he's one of nature's gentlemen.' "

("Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction")

 Alison Steadman did Pauline justice with her interpretation in the television versions of the various stages of Adrian's progress through life.If there is ever a biopic of Sue Townsend, Alison Steadman is the only choice to play her.  I think I shall write to the BBC's Head of Drama and suggest it.

JOAN SIMS 1930 - 2001

A couple of bloggers, having seen the iconic portrait of me by society blogographer Kim Ayres, have remarked on a resemblance to the late comedienne Joan Sims. It is a little known fact that Joan and I used to tread the boards (and in my case, splinter them) at the Folies Bergere in Paris back in the day. Here is Joan in one of her rather saucier outfits. She was an early exponent of Funny Women on Stage, of which perhaps only she, Joyce Grenfell and Lucille Ball were successful at that time. She had the dubious honour of turning down a proposal of marriage from Kenneth Williams.

LUCILLE BALL

"I love Lucy" was one of my favourite TV programmes as a child. The brash, red-headed (you could tell even in black and white), mouthy, funny woman was one of my early role models, although you would never guess it when you meet the shy, retiring, shrinking violet that I am now. In 1960 funny women also had to be glamorous, and Lucille Ball was gorgeous. The photograph shows that, like me, she also did a spell as an exotic dancer.

JESSICA FLETCHER

Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher in "Murder, she wrote" (oddly entitled "Arabesque" in France) and I have many things in common. Widowhood in our early 50's, a lot of friends, and an obsession with getting to the bottom of things. But it's Jessica's impeccable dress sense that I admire the most. So like my own. A tweed two-piece and a single strand of pearls can see you through most situations.

MARGARITA PRACATAN

The bubbly Latino bombshell that Clive James unleashed on our screens in the 1980s is a woman after my own heart, in the tradition of Carmen Miranda but without the fruit - or the talent. But she makes up in exhuberance what she lacks in teeth, and her unique take on classic hits almost managed to eclipse their originators - as we see here with Liza Minnelli. This blows Rita Moreno's "I like to be in America" straight out of the water.

BETTE MIDLER

Everybody's favourite Yiddishe mama, she is a natural successor to Barbra Streisand (for the voice), Lucille Ball (for the gags) and Emu for the feathers. She was touching but a little more Scott than Janis Joplin in "The Rose". But if they ever do a remake of "Funny Girl", she's a cert for Fanny Brice.

ALICE SAPRITCH 1916-1990

Pretty much unknown outside of the French speaking world, this great comic actress was a lady who knew how to wear a turban and wield a cigarette-holder. Battleaxe of the first order, she was a throwback to the 1920s and enormously popular in French comedy both on screen and in the theatre, where strangely enough, to my knowledge, she never played Lady Bracknell in any French production of "The Importance of Being Ernest", a role which could have been written for her. Her gravelly voice and strong bone structure elicited mischievous suggestions that she was a transvestite, but she was in fact a great beauty in her youth. Although she was inseparable from her partner Guillaume Hanoteau for 25 years, she never married and in her old age surrounded herself with young gay men, because, as she explained: "They are single. And they have cars. I always go out with two of them, one to drive the car, and the other to open the door for me." Of Turkish ancestry and educated in Brussels, she shares these two things with another great eccentric, Boris Johnson. She is probably best remembered for is her series of TV ads for cleaning products in the 1980s.

LADY PENELOPE

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward of "Thunderbirds" fame was a blue-blooded It Girl long before the likes of Tara Rara-Bonkington. The multilingual supermodel and heiress was International Rescue's London agent and, it was often thought, Jeff Tracy's bit of posh. She recruited safecracker Aloysius "Nosey" Parker to drive her pink Rolls Royce FAB1 and assist her with her secret agent duties - oh what I would give for a man in uniform to call me "Bilady". Lady P is always immaculately turned out, and the epitome of style, although she was criticised for smoking. Everything worth knowing about Lady P is in her Wikipedia entry, and as we all know, if it's on Wikipedia, it must be true. It is rumoured that Lady Diana modelled herself to a great degree on Lady Penelope, and on that fateful last weekend was in Paris trying to source a bottle of Milady's favourite perfume, "Un soupçon de péril".

IT IS I, MICHELLE OF ZE RESISTANCE

"Leesten vairy carefully, I shall say zees only once ..." - Michelle Dubois, leader of the French resistance in Nouvion, was a role model during my years in France. I would often imagine myself crossing enemy lines dressed in a beret and white ankle socks, with a radio transmitter hidden under my raincoat. I suspect my resolve might have weakened in the face of a tall blond blue-eyed German soldier insisting on taking down my particulars, but I like to think I could have saved France.

ETHEL MERMAN

What a belter. She was loud, she was brash, and she had great hats. And, the mark of a true diva, she is frequently imitated by drag acts. Here she is giving her all in the famous 1954 film of the same name, I can't help miming along to this when I'm doing the ironing.

DOROTHY PARKER

The imcomparable Dorothy Rothschild Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, screenwriter and civil rights campaigner. Star of the Algonquin Round Table 1919-1929. I am not worthy. But the woman who said "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think" deserves a prominent place in my pantheon. She took bitchiness to an art form, as the following quotes will attest:

"She speaks eighteen languages, and she can't say 'no' in any of them."

"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses."

"She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B."

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised."

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PENELOPE KEITH

Penelope Keith as either Margo Ledbetter in "The Good Life" or Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton in "To the Manor Born", or indeed just as herself, conveys the essence of Daphne. Or rather, what Daphne would like to be. She empathized enormously with the impoverished Audrey, a photo of whose eventual marriage to millionnaire businessman Richard De Vere she keeps in her wallet as a reminder that her ship may come in one day. She secretly practices announcing herself with "Daphne, Graefin von Fuchs-Langezeit zu Neanderthal, Guten Tag".

BARBARA CARTLAND

The late Miss Cartland was a great inspiration, particularly when it came to coordinating her outfits, she always had matching fur stole and dog. She was a great stickler for tradition in all areas of life, and I follow her example both in my table decorations and long winceyette nighties. She knew how to wear pink and as you can see, was a dab hand at putting on her makeup in the back of the Rolls on her way to a photoshoot. Delightfully mad and a prolific writer, one wonders if she were still with us, would she have been a blogger?

SIBYL FAWLTY

Although Sybil is slightly vulgar, with her adenoidal voice and her beehive hairdo, one has to admire her hotel management skills. Like Daphne, she had to deal with an idiot husband, as well as a mad Spanish waiter and a chambermaid with artistic proclivities. In Sibyl's place I'd have buried Basil under the patio and married the Major.

JUNE WHITFIELD, CBE

Try to ignore Lionel Blair prancing about in the background, have you ever seen the Queen look so happy as when she was chatting to June Whitfield? From Terry and June to Mrs Monsoon (oh that rhymes - did you see what I did there?) and more recently in Last of the Summer Wine, June has been a role model for Daphne with her elegant outfits, her graceful demeanor, her clear enunciation and her calm acceptance of the weirdos all around her. Rather like our own dear Queen, in fact.

"AUNTY" JOY PICKLES

Joy Pickles was a very early influence, as you can tell by the quality of this photograph. Star of such West End hits as Swingalongadante, Hamalongayorick, and the one which went straight to radio, Whizzalongawavelength, Joy and her stage husband "Uncle" Clarence were uncanny precursors of Daphne and Harold. They were once in a review group with famous comedian Arthur Smith. Joy (aka Babs Sutton) disappeared in Paris and was never seen again. Clarence is now a millionnaire and Arthur is a Grumpy Old Man.

BOADICEA

The Queen of the Iceni was a feisty dame, and much admired by Daphne's mother who named her daughter Daphne Boadicea Harridan in hommage to the rampaging monarch. It has been said (I will not say by whom) that Daphne lives up to the name when she is behind the wheel of a car.

BETTY BOOTHROYD

Despite her northern accent and her left-wing proclivities, Betty is a woman after Daphne's own heart. Like Daphne, she trod the boards in her younger days before turning to more serious things. As Speaker of the House of Commons Betty was always immaculately turned out, replete in full make-up, dress jewellery and manicured nails. Her sternly delivered "Sit down!" had Tory and Labour MPs alike quivering with masochistic delight. A lot of men would have paid good money for that kind of discipline.

JOYCE GRENFELL

The truly immortal Joyce Grenfell epitomizes the class, the elegance, the grace, and the humour that is Daphne. She also knew how to wear a flowery dress, which is even more impressive since she did most of her work on the radio.

MRS SLOCOMBE

Mrs Slocombe of "Are you being served" is rather evocative of Daphne's short stint working on the dress jewellery counter in a department store. Daphne however does not have a pussy.