The Ultimate Fantasy Girlfriend: Greta Garbo

My great comedy heroes, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, probably invented the concept of the 'Fantasy Girlfriend', or created it for me, at any rate, when I first heard this celebrated skit of theirs at about the age of 12. My French teacher at school had a huge library of recorded comedy, mostly radio shows from his own youth, and would treat us to extended sessions of this rather than continuing with lessons in the last week or two of term, after our exams were out of the way. This provided my first exposure to a lot of classic BBC radio comedy like ITMA and Round The Horne and Hancock's Half Hour, and also to the great monologists like Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, Peter Ustinov, Alan Bennett, and Bob Newhart. But it was Pete & Dud, already known to me from scattered recollections of some of their TV shows in my very early childhood in the late '60s and early '70s, that I loved the most - and this skit in particular.

This was my first introduction to Greta Garbo as an ultimate romantic fantasy figure. At that time she was known to me only as a name, the unforgettably alliterative name of someone famous yet at the same time obscure. I think I was perhaps dimly aware that she was now chiefly famous for her reclusiveness. There was no Internet back then, so we didn't have ready availability to the luminous portraits of her which later so beguiled me. She wasn't featured in advertising. Her films, which, I suppose, were felt to have dated rather badly, were not shown on TV. I think I had no idea, really, who she was or what she had looked like, until quite a bit later, sometime in the second half of my teens.

I have the film historians David Gill and Kevin Brownlow to thank for introducing me to Garbo properly. Hollywood, their exquisite 13-part documentary series for Thames TV on the silent movie era in America aired in the autumn of 1980, when I was 16; it was a life-changing moment for me. I was utterly enraptured, not just by Garbo, but by all the other almost-forgotten greats of that period. As a result of the success of this series, BBC2 and Channel 4, our minority 'artsy' TV stations, began to show some of these classic silent films. The superb physical comedian Harold Lloyd was a particular favourite of mine (a decade later, Gill and Brownlow produced a three-part series devoted to him, placing him alongside Chaplin and Keaton as The Third Genius of silent comedy); but we also got to see some D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, and Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, and, of course, the bewitching Garbo. 

And then, finally, one Christmas, I think, round about 1982, BBC2 got around to showing a short season of her talkies: Anna Christie, Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Marie Walewska, and Camille. It was, no doubt, the tragic aspect of these roles, her nobility in suffering, which attracted me quite as much as her limpid eyes and sculpted cheekbones. Bravery in facing pain, dignity in enduring injustice always inspires - even if it's merely being acted out on the stage or screen. In a woman, it invokes the male's protective instincts as well, I think, something which is often the beginning of love. That enigmatic and aloof quality of hers, the Scandinavian froideur (I wonder what the Swedish word for that is? I bet it sounds sexy!), the provoking unknowability was part of the magic too. Yes, these are dangerous and frustrating qualities for a boy to become attracted to, but there it is - what can you do?

Ever since I started this series (crikey - more than 5 years ago!), I knew I'd have to do a post on Greta Garbo one day. Ever since my blog friend JES did this post two-and-a-half years ago, I knew what the culmination of it would be. In that post he introduced me to this montage of scenes from her 1928 film The Mysterious Lady (playing opposite Conrad Nagel), and I was blown away by it. It is quite simply the sexiest video I have ever seen, and perfectly encapsulates how utterly compelling Greta Garbo was.

The hauntingly Satiesque piano music here is an arrangement of the Pixies' song Where Is My Mind? by French musician Maxence Cyrin, from an album called Novo Piano in which he gave several contemporary songs a classical makeover. He also created this ravishing video. You can check out more of his work on his Youtube channel.

There are a few other nice montages of images of Greta here and here and here, and a couple of great collections of photos here and here. You could also check out the New York Times obituary on her, and this radio programme of reminiscences about her by her nephew Scott Reisfield. And I have just learned that Kevin Brownlow made a documentary tribute to her in 2005; I want to see that.

Fantasy Girlfriend leftovers

Since the blogs are about to go poof! (Hadn't you heard? The End of the World is coming!), I find myself in an unseemly rush to polish off a lot of posts I've had planned for a while (well, everything from a few days to three years) but haven't got around to. And my regular series are going to be cut off in their prime, with many projected future instalments now never to see the light of day.

I do have one final 'Fantasy Girlfriend' post planned for next weekend (an ultimate glamour icon, the fantasy girlfriend par excellence - can you guess who it might be?), but this week, here's a rundown of some of the gorgeous ladies who failed to make the cut.

Alas, no, there'll now never be a 'Fantasy Girlfriend' tribute to many of my favourite female singers... like the exquisite Linda Thompson, or any of these recently memorialised over on The Barstool, or the outrageously sexy Mylène Farmer ("the French Madonna", a recommendation of my cosmopolitan buddy Little Anthony; there's a very stylish mini-movie to accompany her song Libertine - I don't care for the music, but the raunch is great fun!), or - if I were to delve a little further back - like Grace Slick and Joan Baez. Ah, Joan Baez.

There'll never be another post on a favourite actress (some, but not all, of whom I've previously listed here). The omission of Jenny Agutter will particularly rile my friend The British Cowboy. At least we can enjoy a picture of her here.

Heck, I could have had a whole series on French actresses, but the fabulous Isabelle Huppert is the only one to have found a place in this strand. How did I omit Isabelle Adjani, Miou-Mou, Emmanuelle Béart, Anne Parillaud, Eva Green, Audrey Tautou, and so many others? How did I omit Sophie Marceau? Especially Sophie Marceau in La Fille de d'Artagnan?! (Dressed as a man. Leather tunic. Swashbucking swordplay. Thigh-boots. Oh, my!)

Looking back to an earlier era, how did I omit such haunting crushes of my childhood as Romy Schneider (notably in What's New, Pussycat?) and Jean Seberg (notably in The Mouse That Roared)? Or Catherine Deneuve (still gorgeous today; in the Sixties, perhaps the most beautiful woman on the planet)??

I never got around to doing a post on a female comedian, although there have been several I've had a soft spot for over the years (humour is one of the highest expressions of intelligence; and intelligence is the ultimate sexy for me): Ellen DeGeneres (yes, yes, I know), or the stunning redhead Joely Fisher, who played her best friend in her '90s sitcom, or Carol Cleveland (glamorous foil to the Pythons), or the lovely Australian stand-up Sarah Kendall (who I met at the Edinburgh Fringe some years ago), or the delightfully ditsy and deadpan surreal Hattie Hayridge.

I'll never now do a post on Audrey Hepburn (or will I??). Perhaps just as well: I fear my words would be inadequate to do her justice.

Nor on Barbara Eden, as Jeannie in I Dream Of Jeannie - my favourite TV programme when I was 9 or 10. (Although, actually, I somehow rather preferred her evil sister, Jeannie II. I wonder if this is because I have an unfortunate attraction to a mean streak in women, or if it's just that I prefer brunettes to blondes. They were both played by Barbara Eden, anyway; it was her charm that made the characters so appealing. And she's a blonde. Not that I'm immune to blondes, of course. Far from it!)

Nor on Jane Fonda - particularly Jane Fonda as Barbarella! (Although Jane Fonda as Cat Ballou also makes a strong claim.) The infamous opening sequence where she strips off her spacesuit in zero-gravity is one of my earliest and most enduring erotic memories (I caught a glimpse of it on late-night TV when I was about six, before being hastily despatched to bed by my embarrassed parents).

Nor on 'Lady Helen Manners' (mentioned on here once before, back in the early days) - an English society beauty from the turn of the last century, of whom I found two pictures in a book I used to own of Victorian photography. The pictures were far apart in the book, and not obviously related: one was of a bewitchingly pretty little girl of no more than about ten years old, the other of a mesmerisingly beautiful young woman in her late teens or early twenties. They were both remarkable pictures, and it was rather stunning to discover that they were of the same person, to realise that whatever it was that she had that made her so compelling, she'd had it since she was a child. I've lost that book long ago, and I've never been able to find those photographs, or anything about her online. But perhaps that's because I had misremembered her name. I suspect that it must have been the woman below, Lady Marjorie Manners. I still can't locate those photographs, though.

Nor on one of my earliest and most potent crushes (not quite as early as these two '60s sirens, but probably before I'd turned eight), Helga Anders, the young star of White Horses, a black-and-white German/Yugoslavian TV drama about a Lipizzaner stud farm which seemed to be on endless rotation on BBC children's television during the late '60s and early '70s. The insidiously pretty theme tune was probably the main key to its popularity. And I suppose this show really shouldn't have appealed to boys; but we're largely immune to peer pressure and macho stereotyping until we get to nine or ten, I think. As has often been noted, guys dig chicks with skills: the rapport 'Julia' enjoyed with her horses was most impressive (I would have liked to have been that horse coming to wake her up every morning!), and I still find this little scene from the opening credits of her riding across the fields on a white stallion rather exciting.

Well, I'll never do a post about any of these ladies - apart from this post, obviously.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Nina Simone

I've commented a number of times before on my propensity to fall in love with a woman's voice, especially a fine singing voice. And since this might be the last entry in my 'Fantasy Girlfriends' series (or the last but one), I thought it was about time I honoured the singer whom I have admired more than any other.

Nina Simone was hardly classically beautiful, not the obvious head-turner that so many of my more superficial choices in this series have been. But damn, she had character - a ferocious intelligence, a devilish sense of humour, an utter intolerance of bullshit, courage, determination, and an impassioned commitment to the American civil rights cause and more generally to the ideals of equality and social justice for all. It's the personality that enraptures me rather than her looks. And the talent, of course. As well as that astonishingly rich and passionate voice, she was a classically trained pianist, and tried to fuse classical elements like the formal intricacy of her beloved Bach with her jazz playing.

I don't think I've ever heard a Nina Simone performance - any performance of any song - that didn't leave me slack-jawed and weak-kneed with admiration and delight. Now that there's such a profusion of her work becoming available online, I can lose myself on Youtube for days at a time.

Here are a just a few favourites....

First of all, a glimpse of her political side in the brief interview accompanying these performances of Revolution and Strange Fruit.

Second, a rare early performance of one of the most famous of her own compositions, Mississippi Goddamn - another scathing comment on the civil rights struggle.

And finally, something rather more upbeat - the Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse song Feeling Good.

Of course, I've posted about Nina on here once before, with a clip of her coruscating performance of I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival.
And I'm going to post one of her love songs, He Needs Me, over on The Barstool today as well.

Fantasy Girlfriend face-off: Who was THE FIRST?

I suggested long ago that the very first woman on whom I formed a romantic fixation must have been Emma Peel of The Avengers, one of the earliest entries in this series. However, on deeper reflection I have realised that there are two other very strong candidates for this dubious accolade, also actresses/characters in cult late-60s TV shows, almost exactly contemporaneous with The Avengers (although I suspect my memories are mostly based on slightly later re-runs, since I would only have been about three or four when these shows first aired), and - just possibly - slightly predating Mrs Peel in my affections.

One was Sharron Macready. Like Mrs Peel she was a glamorous superspy; and, like Mrs Peel, she was rendered sexually inactive by the plot device of recent widowhood (was this a widespread trope of the era, or were these two shows just copying each other, I wonder?). As well as being glacially beautiful (she was played by a gorgeous actress/model called Alexandra Bastedo, who had the kind of cheekbones that could give you paper-cuts) and impressively capable in tight situations, she had one further distinction, something that gave her rather an edge even over the formidable Mrs P: she had superhuman abilities! 

Yes, the unique gimmick of the show she was in, The Champions, was that she and her two male colleagues began the series being almost killed in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Rescued by a reclusive Shangri-La-like community of mystic monks, they were miraculously nursed back to health; and, on returning to their jobs with the spy bureau, were surprised to find that not merely were their injuries completely cured by the monks' mysterious remedies but that they had also acquired enhanced strength, sensory acuity, and co-ordination - and even a limited form of telepathy shared just between the three of them. It was indeed a rather silly premise, but irresistibly beguiling to a young boy. And, in retrospect, though innately implausible, it was in fact a bold and surprisingly effective way of justifying the invincibility of its protagonists - always somewhat of a problem in these superspy capers (Roger Moore's James Bond was for me one of the most egregious examples: he didn't look as though he could punch his way out of a paper bag, and yet he routinely prevailed against much stronger opponents). I particularly liked the super-coordinated ability, and the slick teamwork this often enabled between the trio: there was a great gag I remember (probably repeated a number of times) where one of them disarmed a bad guy with a well-aimed kick, not merely knocking the gun out of his hand but sending it spinning across the room - to be neatly caught by one of his colleagues. [This blog post has a fine appreciation of the show's appeal, and includes a few excerpts.]

The lovely Alexandra was not much of an actress, and tended to have to play second fiddle to the two chaps most of the time. She also had to suffer some truly horrendous '60s hairdoes and '60s fashions.

Yet, despite these handicaps, I still found her absolutely captivating; and the memory of that captivation lingers strongly to this day. I'm not sure if it was her exquisite features or the superpowers that did it.

Much about the same time, I was also rather smitten with Valerie Scott (played by Deanna Lund). If this were a contest simply on looks, or on the appeal of the character, Sharron would win hands down. But if I'm delving back through the mists of time to rediscover my very first erotic fantasy figure, I have a feeling Valerie might just have edged it.

I am rather ashamed of myself for having allowed myself to be so easily swayed by such obvious male weaknesses. Valerie's fashions were pretty much as naff as Sharron's, but her dresses were usually much shorter. And she wasn't a very impressive character either for the most part - a spoilt rich kid, vain, impulsive, always getting into trouble. But she had a nice figure. And she was a redhead (again that foible of mine! Did it start with Deanna Lund or was it an innate predilection?).

Valerie Scott was the principal eye-candy - and perpetual damsel-in-distress - in an Irwin Allen show called Land of the Giants. The premise was a little shaky: a commercial space passenger shuttle somehow got lost (wormhole?) and crash-landed on a planet that seemed strangely identical to Earth (in fact, nearly identical to '50s/'60s-era America)... except that the human population were about 100ft tall. Again, utterly silly; but again, utterly ravishing to the imagination of a young child. There's a deep-seated fascination in us for thus changing scale, finding the familiar rendered suddenly unfamiliar as everyday household items are transformed into huge objects (The Incredible Shrinking Man is my favourite of the classic '50s sci-fi B-movies).

While Sharron Macready maintained a strong presence in my memory over the years, I confess Valerie Scott had pretty much vanished from my mind.... until (in searching online a year or so back for the term 'spindrift' - as you do), I stumbled upon this picture. You see, the spaceship that brought her and her companions to the Planet of the Giants was called the Spindrift (I'm not sure that I'd ever known that; the spaceship didn't feature very prominently in most of the episodes). 

That unleashed a fair old tsunami of long lost - suppressed? - memories. I'm such a slut for mini-skirts and knee-boots! And perhaps for the woman-in-peril motif....

Life mirrors Art

While home in England over the summer, I became moderately addicted to the TV series Borgen, a sort of Danish version of The West Wing. It's a rather less intense experience than the Aaron Sorkin show (less frenetically paced, of course; and there isn't that stressful sense of the fate of the Free World hanging in the balance - the doings of the Copenhagen parliament don't have much global impact), but quite compelling nonetheless. And a key part of its charm, no doubt, at least for a male viewer such as myself, is that Danish ladies are all so darned attractive. The protagonist in Borgen (=The Castle, the seat of the Danish government), Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (superbly played by the very beautiful actress Sidse Babett Knudsen), is a wife, mother to two teenage children, and an unremarkable middle-of-the-road parliament member until a political scandal suddenly unseats the government and she finds herself with the opportunity to stitch together a moderate coalition that will make her the new Prime Minister.

She's really much too nice for all the backroom wheeling-and-dealing that this demands, but her intelligence and innate decency carry her through. No-one this gorgeous ever gets to run a country in real life, surely? (Well, Yulia Tymoshenko, I suppose.)

And yet, in October last year, a little over a year after the first season of Borgen had begun to air (we are promised a third and final series early next year; I still have quite a lot of catching up to do), Helle Thorning-Schmidt became Prime Minister of Denmark - of similar age to Birgitte Nyborg, similarly married with two children, similarly cobbling together a rickety centrist coalition... and similarly a bit of a fox. Spooky, no?

Now, I can sympathise with Xi Jinping skiving off a meeting with Hillary Clinton earlier this month. She's a rather intimidating personality. But he stood up Birgitte Nyborg... I'm sorry, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, as well?? This, to me, seems the strongest indication that Xi's leadership career may be washed up. I would have made it to that meeting even with a very bad back.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Suzanne Vega

I am particularly susceptible to the charm of a woman's voice, especially a woman's singing voice, and so singers are often among the leading contenders for inclusion in this series; I've previously done posts here in praise of Margo Timmins and Liz Phair. I don't know how I've gone so long without adding the exquisite Suzanne Vega to the list. Well, I have celebrated her over on my other blog, Barstool Blues, adding her songs Gypsy and Caramel to my 'Great Love Songs' series; but now it's time to honour her here as well.

Of course, I always maintain that it is qualities of mind and character that attract me to a woman rather than her appearance, although Suzanne's high cheekbones and flame-red hair certainly enhance her appeal for me. However, it is the quality of her songwriting, and the intelligence and sensitivity she exudes in her interviews and her writing (check out her contributions to the Measure for Measure series, a blog on the craft of songwriting which the New York Times ran a few years ago), that really beguile me. That, and her vigorous involvement in numerous worthy causes, such as Amnesty International. And the poise, dignity, and gentle humour she displays in her live performances. And the flame-red hair.

It's hard to choose one song of hers to complete this post; she has so many good songs. Her Blood Makes Noise, a rather creepy piece about hypochondria with a ridiculously hooky bassline, has long been a favourite of mine.

But so has this, the quietly beautiful Tired Of Sleeping.

And I suppose I'll never be your Maggie May would be the most appropriate way to round this off, her polite-but-firm rebuff to a younger man's adulation.

Another 'Fantasy Girlfriend' from way back: Gillian Duxbury

I did a long post in this series a couple of years back on a girl called Joanne Latham, a young glamour model of the late '70s with whom I and most of the rest of the male population of the UK (or the pubescent segment of it, anyway) had inevitably been deeply smitten. However, there was another of her profession who had attained a deeper, or at any rate an earlier place in my heart - a striking Lancastrian lass called Gillian Duxbury. She must have started appearing in the papers a good 4 or 5 years earlier than Joanne (i.e., when I was not yet 10!), and her career had, I think, run its course by the time my hormones started mandating an obsessive, round-the-clock interest in women. That is why the younger girl took a dominant place in my recollections of my evolving sexual awareness. But, in retrospect, I think my infatuation with Gilly was a rather fonder, purer (unsullied by thoughts of sex!) kind of admiration: I simply idolised her prettiness.

Of course, it was an acute embarrassment to me that most of the pictures of her I encountered were topless. She was for some years in the mid-1970s one of the best-known of The Sun's notorious Page 3 Girls, and the most prolific, appearing in the paper far more regularly than just about any of the others. But for some reason, she always seemed to finish as runner-up in the paper's 'Girl of the Year' poll - an early example of those unfathomable small injustices of life that rankle with me so disproportionately. 

I've never been much of a breast man (I wonder now if this over-exposure in my early years somehow drummed it out of me?), and I really did try not to look at her breasts - even though they were, as the saying goes, jumping out of the page at you. Well, I suppose I may have been trying to concoct a defence for myself, in case my parents caught me sneaking a peek. There were no strict rules, as far as I recall, as to whether I was allowed to look at that paper, or as to what I was allowed to look at in it; but my own innate sense of propriety counselled that I probably oughtn't to be looking at that page. And so I cultivated the pretense that I wasn't really looking at the pin-up picture... or was looking at it only with a Platonic disinterest. I think perhaps this continual subterfuge may have led me to fixate on other nearby features of the anatomy - arms, neck, collarbone. I became convinced that Ms Duxbury had uniquely lovely shoulders.

She had exquisite legs as well (I discovered, when I occasionally chanced upon a full-length picture of her in a magazine advertisement or a clothing catalogue) - a rather tall young lady, I believe (another long-standing, perhaps genetically programmed frailty of mine). But, most of all, there was a quality about her eyes, a liveliness or friendliness that seemed to suggest she was always smiling, even if she wasn't (I suspect she probably always was in these pictures; but I paid much less attention to her mouth than to her eyes). I hope my childish assessment is borne out by this recent photograph of her I just discovered. That kind of beauty - the zest, the radiance, the entrancing eye-glimmer - tends to concentrate rather than dissipate with age. And does she not look utterly stunning now?

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Esperanza Spalding

Ah, America - land of inspiration! Last time I was staying here, I serendipitously discovered the imperiously elegant beauty of jazz singer Angela Hagenbach, via an exhibition of photographic portraits that was showing at the nearby Museum of Black History in Alexandria, VA. This time, I happened to be vegging out with a cookery programme on PBS when a solicitation for donations to the network came on, presented by the exquisitely lovely and ridiculously talented Ms Spalding. How had I not been aware of her for the past several years? Oh yes, I'd been living in China for a decade - silly me! Even with the Internet, it's not easy to keep your finger on the pulse of global culture there.

Ms Spalding, I gather, was a classically trained multi-instrumentalist during her childhood, but has come to specialise in playing jazz bass. Like this....

Fantasy Girlfriends of Yesteryear - The 'Football Team'

It was Richard Briers, as Tom Good in the '70s BBC sitcom The Good Life, who first introduced me to the idea of making lists of the desirable women one might fantasise over. In one episode he revealed that as a boy he had used to compile teams of 11-a-side to compete in 'cricket matches' using the Owzat dice game. I dallied with the idea for a while, sometimes substituting football for cricket (I had a number of card or dice-based games for football, whereas the venerable Owzat set - the game had perhaps ceased being manufactured in the 1970s - strictly speaking belonged to my brother). I can't now remember exactly who was in my lineups (Tom had favoured the Hollywood glamourpusses of his own childhood in the 1940s: I think Hedy Lamarr was mentioned as one of his most formidable bowlers), but it is highly likely that the ladies below would have been among them - all young actresses who appeared frequently on British TV during my childhood in the later '70s and early '80s, and whose exceptional prettiness left an indelible impression on me.

Since that time, thoughts of sport have been inextricably linked in my mind with thoughts of beautiful women; hence the idea for this post emerges out of my recent obsession with the unfolding European Football Championship. I suspect it works the other way for me as well, that I have a Pavlovian reflex to think of sport whenever I see a pretty girl - something that has probably not been helpful to me in attempting to forge romantic relationships.

I've produced a list of twelve lovely ladies here, since cricket traditionally allowed only one substitute, and back in the 1970s football did too (this allowing multiple substitutions, and having most of your squad on the bench to choose from, is a newfangled rule change I still turn my nose up at). I haven't bothered to try to come up with a tactical formation for them (although as a ten-year-old I would have done!).

It was hard to trim my selection down this far. A few strong contenders had to be omitted: Jenny Agutter (who I'd better give a 'Fantasy Girlfriend' post all of her own one day; or my pal The British Cowboy, for one, will never forgive me), Sheila Ruskin (a rather good actress who, unfortunately, became forever tainted in pop-culture-land by having a terribly hammy part in a 1981 Dr Who episode), Francesca Annis (who was Estella in a 1960s BBC serialisation of Great Expectations, and got her kit off [as we Brits like to put it] to play Lady Macbeth for Roman Polanski round about 1970... although I didn't see that until much later!), and Natalie Ogle, a china-doll pretty waif of a girl who got a run of parts in BBC1 Sunday afternoon 'classic serials' in the late '70s, Little Nell and Lydia Bennett (I saw her on stage at the Oxford Playhouse many years later, and she was still rather breathtaking; still is today, it seems!). And, of course, I've already celebrated a number of my other favourite actresses from that era in their own posts in this series: Diana Rigg, Jane Seymour, Jan Francis, Patricia Hodge, Gabrielle Drake, and Felicity Kendal (whose most famous role was as Tom Good's wonderful wife Barbara in that TV show I mentioned at the outset).

But THIS is my....

1970s 'Fantasy Football' Glamour Team

Fiona Fullerton

I first became smitten when she appeared in Angels, an early 1970s BBC drama series about student nurses. I confess to a bit of a weakness for a nurse's uniform! Shortly before that (I was later to discover), she had been the most inappropriately grown-up and embarrasingly fanciable Alice In Wonderland; shortly after, she would go on to a string of forgettable glamour roles, including an appearance as a Bond girl.

Jenny Hanley

This rather lovely actress had a few conventional glamour parts in horror films and such early in her career, but then settled into a regular gig as a presenter on Magpie, an ITV children's magazine programme - which gave me a lot of exposure to her as I was growing up. I adored her voice, as well as everything else about her.

Barbara Kellerman

Possibly the most beautiful woman in this very beautiful team (Jewish girls are another recurring weakness of mine), and probably the tallest too. I first saw her as a nurse (are we seeing a pattern here already?) in a medical soap called General Hospital, but she went on to play dozens of other TV parts during the 1970s.

Lesley-Anne Down

Or I should perhaps say Lady Georgina Worsley, the part that she played in the popular period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. She soon got drawn away to a career in Hollywood, but it was that early role as the Bellamys' flighty niece that enraptured me. I remember there was one episode where she took a rather raunchy part in a silent film, playing a slinky seductress in a Parisian café: beret, long cigarette-holder, and black silk stockings. One of the most memorable erotic images of my young life! Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I couldn't find a picture of that. So, I plumped for one from when she became a nurse during WWI instead.

Emma Samms

Another rising star who, like Lesley-Anne Down and Jane Seymour, was promptly stolen from us by the greedy magnates of American television. I believe she had a long-running part in Dynasty or something, but I never watched any of that junk. I remember her chiefly from the 1979 film Arabian Adventure. (Arabian princess costumes even beat a nurse's uniform in the fetish stakes!)

Lea Brodie

Billed as Lea Dregorn in a few of her earliest appearances (not sure if she got married young, or just decided that her real name was proving a bit of a handicap in showbusiness), she unfortunately didn't have a very long career. She cropped up a few times on TV in shows like Space: 1999, but she's only really remembered for playing an almost-Arab-princess type glamour role in the low-budget action romp Warlords of Atlantis. Best legs I've ever seen!

Caroline Munro

I feel a bit bad about including her as an 'actress' since, despite scores of film roles over the years (mostly in horror films), I've never seen any evidence that she can act at all. She was, however, quite outrageously sexy, possibly the most universally lusted after woman in the UK from the late '60s through to the early '80s. She was best known as the 'face' of Lamb's Navy Rum in a long-running series of calendars and glamour posters. However, she showed admirable resolve in refusing ever to do any nudie stuff - despite being supposedly offered a king's ransom by Hef to appear in Playboy. I think the only true 'starring' role she landed was as space-age swashbuckler Stella Star in the dreadfully cheap-and-cheesy Barbarella/Star Wars ripoff Star Crash (rated at 3.8 out of 10 by IMDB, the lowest score I think I've ever seen on there). This film occasionally strays into so-bad-it's-good territory: Christopher Plummer, slumming it for a paycheck as the Galactic Emperor, has one of the most brilliant lines ever uttered on film - "Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of Time!"

And here she is in motion, in a raunchy little TV ad from the early '70s for a popular brand of mini cigar.

Cherie Lunghi

In contention for an award as the most prolific TV actress of all time, and not only beautiful but always emanating such élan, such coolness, such class. She was notorious for a short while for having (almost subliminally briefly) got her kit off as Guinevere in John Boorman's Excalibur, but I think I remember seeing her first as one of Edward VIII's former girlfriends in an ITV series about the 1936 abdication crisis (making his choice of Wallis Simpson completely unfathomable).

Anne-Louise Lambert

An Australian actress best-known for her bewitching performance in Peter Weir's hauntingly beautiful Picnic At Hanging Rock (which I tend to cite as the most erotic film I've seen - to general derision from people who expect their eroticism to involve actual sex): her character, a 17-year-old schoolgirl called Miranda, is memorably described as "a Botticelli angel". In her mid-twenties she moved to England to develop her career, but the first part she got was as Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias, a series widely derided as one of the most inept costume dramas the Beeb ever produced. Fortunately, she did continue to get regular work after this, but never achieved the major stardom that had seemed on the cards after Picnic.

Olivia Newton-John

Another pick I feel a little embarrassed about including in a lineup of actresses, since her acting was really pretty horrible. But damn - she looked mighty fine. I knew her mostly through appearances as a singer. I never saw Grease (was irretrievably prejudiced against it by the irritatingness of all the hit singles it spawned, and how long they clogged the upper reaches of the charts that year). However, I did somehow (I can't remember how: this is not a film I would ever have made the slightest effort to see) catch her follow-up, Xanadu, which is quite possibly the silliest film ever made - but she looks smoking hot throughout.

Lynne Frederick

She later became a prime target of tabloid gossip-mongers as the last wife of Peter Sellers, and died before the age of 40 after troubles with alcohol and depression. However, her early career showed a lot of promise, and she happens to have appeared in three films I particularly like: the fabulous children's story The Amazing Mr Blunden, and two unusual sci-fi thrillers, Phase IV and No Blade of Grass.

Lysette Anthony

I had thought she was another of those young beauties who'd deserted our shores in search of big bucks in America, but her IMDB resumé indicates that she's worked consistently in British TV. I'm not sure quite how she impinged on my consciousness, since she's only a little older than me and didn't really get her career going until I'd gone to college (at which point I didn't watch TV much any more). I think I saw her in a TV movie of Ivanhoe in the early '80s.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Liz Phair

I have a weakness for 'rock chicks'. Who doesn't?

But Liz is more than just an eye-catching figure up on the stage or a ballsy interviewee, she's a truly incandescent talent. Her debut album Exile in Guyville emerged while I was on my great back-packing expedition in the early '90s. A friend I was visiting in China introduced me to it in the spring of 1994 and made a cassette copy of it for me to take with me on my further travels - and so it became hardwired into my brain as the 'soundtrack' to that year of adventures, and associated particularly strongly with my first experience of China. Hence, I dare say, she surfaces in my thoughts at this particular juncture because I am reflecting back a lot on my time here as I stand on the brink of departure (uncertain quite when or whether I shall return, and definitely moving towards a final withdrawal within the the next 12 months).

I was initially bowled over by the music, fascinated by the personality forcing itself into my brain through the earphones of my battered old Walkman. I had never seen a picture of her. And while one of course likes to fantasise that people one admires will also be quite physically attractive, and those fantasies are not usually too far disappointed with music stars who tend somehow to scrub up well, I was unprepared for the discovery later in the year that she was breathtakingly pretty as well - not the elaborately airbrushed beauty of the supermodel or the alienating perfection of the super-actress, but a believable, accessible, girl-next-door sort of prettiness, and all the more devastating for that.

The knee-trembling revelation came for me with her appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone. I can't remember now quite when that came out. I think it must have been towards the end of 1994, when I'd reached New York and was just about to head back home to the UK again. Of course, I bought a copy. Two, actually. I wanted to have one to show to friends and one to keep under wraps as a souvenir of this bewitching indie diva who had kept me company through so many strange experiences during the last 9 months on the road.

I confess there was a more straightforwardly erotic dimension to her appeal as well. Many of her lyrics are exaggeratedly forthright about sex, and suggest a persona that is uninhibited almost to the point of nymphomania. As I have observed on here more than once before, the art is not necessarily the life; but the image she presents of herself in several of the songs on that fabulous first album - and in many more subsequently - does set the imagination racing rather.

She doesn't have a label any more, but put out her last album, Funstyle, independently. She's always been  too edgy and free-spirited to get on very well with record companies, but she's been producing music - consistently inconsistent, but regularly interesting - for 20 years now, defiantly ploughing her own furrow. As she said to fans on her website: "This is my journey. I'll keep sending you postcards."  Apparently, there may be another album - and a book! - in the works. I'm particularly looking forward to the book: she has an astonishing facility with words, is one of the most impressive lyricists of our era; I have a hunch her extended prose will be just as good.

Smart, sassy, talented (a more than decent guitar player, to boot), heart-meltingly pretty, and a bit of a handful in the bedroom - Liz P would seem to be the complete package.

Here's Never Said, one of the best songs from that great first album (the original video; I'd never seen it before). Rolling Stone ranked Exile in Guyville at No. 328 in their '500 Best Albums of All Time'; I would have placed it at least 250 spots higher. You could also check out this much mellower live acoustic version.

And here's another, Divorce Song (from which I quoted a passage in my Lyrics Quiz a while back), set to a montage of more photos of the lovely lady.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Kjersti Skomsvold

As I've noted a number of times before, there's something about Norwegians - they do seem to produce the prettiest girls in Europe, in the world. But, of course, I am not easily swayed by such superficialities as wide blue eyes and a cute smile. No, no, it's vivacity, intelligence, wit that get me smitten. Although sometimes a wry smile or a dazzling eye can suggest these things...

A couple of months ago, I found myself bowled over by this publicity photo of the Norwegian writer Kjersti Skomsvold. From what I gather, there is a formidable creative brain behind those bewitching eyes: her debut novel, The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am, has been extremely well reviewed, and I'm now very curious to read it - to swoon over the mind behind it, not just over the author photo on the back jacket!

Ms Skomsvold was in Beijing last month to talk about her book at the Bookworm International Literary Festival. Alas, I felt inhibited from going to see her; it seems rather stalker-ish to try to introduce myself to one of my hypothetical infatuations. The 'Fantasy Girlfriends' should remain in the realm of fantasy - things are much safer for the fragile heart that way. [Of the ladies so far celebrated in this series, I've only 'met' - or had a real-world encounter with, I suppose I should say - two of them, and only spoken to one. Now, there's a quiz question for you: who were they?]