Download: Won’t Somebody Dance With Me – Lynsey De Paul (mp3)

A long time ago on this here blog I called Jenny Agutter the Manchester United of British totty, the champion of champions who made everyone else look a bit second-division (well, except Barcelona of course but you get my point). To extend the sporting metaphor I think Raquel Welch is the New York Yankees of the American kind (dolls? broads?): the imperious, all-time champ with the most glittering, um, trophy cabinet of them all. And to extend the metaphor even further I would gladly pay money to see the two of them have a fight to decide the world title.

Raquel was my very first celebrity crush, going all the way back to that innocent time in my life when I had no idea what you were supposed to do with girls but was just starting to notice the effect they had on me. My first encounter with her was in One Million Years B.C. which my dad took me to see at the ABC Cinema in Hammersmith (I can’t believe I still remember what cinema it was) but at the time I was too young to appreciate the girl running around in a fur bikini and just thought of it as a dinosaur movie — I’m sure my dad didn’t though. But a couple of years later I watched her 1970 TV extravaganza Raquel! (love that exclamation mark) and for the first time I remember, looked at a woman and thought Cor!!! which is an important moment in the life of a boy. I didn’t quite understand why, but I was so discombobulated by the sight of this fabulous creature I thought I was going to spontaneously combust into a little smoking pile of hormonal ash. Subsequent viewings of Fantastic Voyage and Bedazzled only cemented her legend in my impressionable mind and even now I can’t look at her without turning into that awkward, red-faced kid who hoped his mother hadn’t noticed how silently transfixed he was by the television.

While she might as well have been a goddess from another galaxy as far I was concerned, with her big hair, teeth, outrageous curves, and rocket-powered va-va-voom Raquel was definitively, quintessentially American. That might not seem very exotic now but very few of us had been to the States back in the 60s and 70s so she seemed as unreal and impossibly glamourous as the country itself, a far-away fantasy land that we only knew from television and the movies where everything was bigger, better and shinier. Gorgeous though they obviously were, British sex symbols like Jenny Agutter and Caroline Munro were girls you could almost imagine knowing or at least seeing in real life but they didn’t make them like Raquel ’round our way who looked as if she’d been designed by Boeing and custom-built by General Motors. She could only be a product of the country that gave us the Cadillac, the Big Mac, and the atom bomb.

So on this 4th of July I’d like so say thank you America, and happy birthday.

Download: State Of Independence – Donna Summer (mp3)

Speak of the devil.

I love this photo of Hammer films scream queen Barbara Shelley looking like a sexy school teacher on her way to drive the boys in the Upper Sixth wild as she tries to get them to concentrate on iambic pentameter while all they can think about is that slit in her nice tartan skirt.

I know she wasn’t Scottish but this song seems to fit.

Download: Hoots Mon – Lord Rockingham’s XI (mp3)

I actually did have a sexy Scottish school teacher, her name was Miss McWhirter and she taught German. This being the 70s she often wore tight, high-waisted flares and her bum would wiggle when she wrote things on the blackboard which would reduce the class to rapt, sweaty-palmed silence. I don’t remember a word of German but I do remember that.

I’m working on another blog-related project at the moment and until that’s done in a few weeks (touch wood) I won’t have a lot of time to compose much in the way of lengthy blog posts. In the meantime I’m sure you won’t mind more videos and pics like this one of the luverly Valerie Leon.

Download: Valerie – Steve Winwood (mp3)

From back when Altered Images sounded like a Junior Choice version of Siouxsie and The Banshees and Clare Grogan won the heart of every young man in the country with a copy of the NME under the arm of his big overcoat.

Do you notice what Popeye is punching there? Ouch.

Download: Once I Had a Love — Blondie

This is the original 1975 version of a song you might know by another name.

I have an old picture of myself in my bedroom from about this time and there are three Pretenders posters on the wall so you could say I was a big fan, of Chrissie especially who looks (and sounds) so sexy in this video I wonder now if three posters was enough, I should have plastered my whole room with her picture. Sigh.