My Fantasy Girlfriend - Lt. Gay Ellis

I think my first flesh-and-blood crush may well have been on yet another Gerry Anderson character, Gay Ellis from UFO (Anderson's first live action series, after all those infamous SuperMarionation shows in the '60s). What was it about those crazy Gerry Anderson shows??

She was played by the lovely Gabrielle Drake, who cropped up repeatedly on British television during the 1970s and was, I think, really quite a decent comic actress (as well as being achingly pretty), although always, alas, confined to tiny roles as wife or girlfriend. I think she may well have been partly responsible for my lifelong fascination with willowy redheads.

But in this show, you couldn't tell she was a redhead. She always wore that ridiculous purple wig (surely the wackiest of all of Sylvia Anderson's rather avant garde fashion ideas!). Well, I think there was one episode where she was on leave down on Earth (ordinarily, she commanded the control centre on the Moonbase of the Alien Defense Oganization - perhaps the metallic wig was some sort of radiation protection??). And I saw most of this show in black & white anyway, at least originally (we didn't get a colour TV until 1974, by which time I think it had finished; although I almost certainly caught some re-runs later on).

So, what was her appeal? Not the wig, I hope! Possibly the skin-tight silver catsuit. And the pretty face and great figure, of course. But I really rather think it was the fact that she was a lieutenant that grabbed me most: she was always so impressively cool and calm and unflappable. And I think I somehow liked the idea of being ordered around by a woman.

Well, perhaps on that basis I should have swooned even more for Col. Virginia Lake (as played by the generously proportioned actress, Wanda Ventham, who I know was a great favourite of The Mothman), but, well, somehow the Colonel always seemed a little bit too (forgive me, Mothman!) mumsy for me. And I think I find the junior rank more alluring: you know, it's status of a kind, but it's not impossibly remote and unattainable.