Celebs & Gossip

TV, Entertainment & Music - E: kensington@myvillage.co.uk
Honor Blackman - Actress

Born 22 August 2020 in London, England, Honor Blackman credits her father for her acting career-unusual, given that her family was not especially wealthy.

For her fifteenth birthday he offered her a choice: a bicycle or elocution classes. Feeling her accent was becoming a bit too Cockney, she chose the latter. Her teacher advised her father to enrol her in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which she attended part-time while working as an office clerk.

Upon graduation, her father once again influenced her career by suggesting that she audition as an understudy in a West End play. When the show's lead actress fell ill, Honor had her first "big break." Her first film appearance was a non-speaking part in Fame is the Spur, wherein a cavalryman killed her--and she was nearly killed for real by a horse that stepped on her hair while she was lying on the ground.

From '61 to '75 Honor was married to an actor named Maurice Kauffman; she's got a son and a daughter, and as of the new millennium she's still single.

British audiences knew Honor as Mrs. Catherine Gale, karate-chopping leather wearing partner to John Steed, on the pre-Diana Rigg "The Avengers" TV series from '62 to '64. Honor was one of the most famous Bond Beauties, Honor's character in Goldfinger beds 007 twice in one movie, and she lives to tell about it; many do him once, and then die.

Honor is involved with an organization called Fairtrade, which aims to ensure that third world producers get treated fairly and can actually make a living from their work. It is not clear whether she's actively supporting it or just allowing her name to be used, but she was on the front cover of their March newsletter and was quoted saying how much she supported the organization.

She won a BAFTA (2000) for her role in The Avengers. She has written a book called How to Look and Feel Half Your Age as well as a number of children's books.

 

Molly Dineen - Documentary maker

One of her films turned a racist ex-colonialist into a national hero, another witnessed her falling in love with a maintenance worker she happened to shoot. The relationship failed when he took her home and she found herself 'in one of my own documentaries'.

Her subjects, most notably Geri Halliwell and Tony Blair, have begged for her services. Her friends accuse her of interviewing them during casual conversation and she gets angry when people talk about her 'fly-on-the-wall' documentaries, insisting that they're 'fly on your bloody face'. Married to publisher William Sieghart, she has a daughter named Maud.

 

Anita Dobson - Actress

Anita Dobson is an actress, most famously on Eastenders; a writer, of a book entitled 'My East End' and singer, of the hit single 'Anyone Can Fall In Love'.

After years in the media spotlight playing the part of Angie, long suffering alcoholic wife of "Dirty Den", she now takes a lower profile, appearing on television in a variety of programmes including 'Red Dwarf VI'. She is the partner of Queen guitarist Brian May and they got married last year after 12 years. At the ceremony at Richmond Registry Office the bride wore a red outfit and Brian a grey linen suit with a red waistcoat. Roger Taylor, the drummer from Queen was best man.

 

Sylvie Guillem - Ballerina & Model

Sylvie, the daughter of a garage mechanic and a gym teacher, grew up with three older brothers in Paris's 11th arrondissement. She joined the Paris Opera Ballet at 11 and her rise was meteoric - at 19 she was made étoile (principal). She left following a legendary row with Nureyev (who once said she was the only woman he could have married) to join the Royal Ballet.

In London, dancers complained that she was too snooty to join them in the cafeteria. A princess with a shard of ice in her heart, she now enjoys more privileges than any other dancer: she picks the ballet, the orchestra and her partner. She is currently dating photographer Gilles Tapie and is the wrist of Rolex.

 

Vanessa Mae - Violinist

Vanessa Mae is a musician who has received critical acclaim as a violinst. She has been compared with Menuhin, Heifetz and Kreisler. The Director of the Royal College of Music pronounced her a "true child prodigy - like Mozart and Mendelssohn" when she was 11. She is the youngest violinist in the world to have recorded both the Tchaikovsky and Beethoven Violin Concertos and by 13 Vanessa-Mae had made three highly praised recordings. She performed with the Philharmonia aged 10, toured internationally with the London Mozart Players and made her UK debut tour with the Tchaikovsky by the age of 12.

Half-Thai, half-Chinese, Singapore-born Vanessa-Mae moved to London at four, adopting Britain, British nationality and her English father. At five, she took up the violin. At eight she reached the first crossroads of her life, choosing to concentrate on the violin, after collecting her prize in the British Young Pianist of the Year Competition. Vanessa-Mae shares the same birthday as the legendary Paganini and was born on 27 October 1978. Aside from performing classical concerts all over the world, Vanessa-Mae has appeared on many massive rating network TV and radio shows where she has performed classical repertoire as well as many of her own arrangements. She started writing her own cadenzas for Mozart concertos at 9, went on to play her own arrangements of 'Over the Rainbow' on the Children's Royal Variety Performance, and recorded arrangements of contemporary pop tunes by Paganini and Heifetz as well as her own versions of 'Yellow Submarine' and other 'pop' songs.

 

Brian May - Musician with rock band Queen

Brian Harold May was born on July 19th 1947 in Hampton to parents Harold & Ruth. He started school in 1952 at Cardinal Road Infants School and then Hanworth Road Primary School, Feltham.

In 1954 his father began to teach him to play the ukulele and he had piano lessons. He won a scholarship and started at Hampton Grammar School, which is where he found fuel for his interest in astronomy.

He formed his first band in 1964 called "1984". They played several small gigs that year. He left school in 1966 with eleven 'O' levels and four "A" levels in Science. He began at Imperial College in 1967 studying physics and fully intended to become an astronomer. When he eventually left he had achieved a BSc Honours degree in Physics & Maths. He began work on a thesis to obtain a doctorate, but never completed it. During his final Post-Graduate year he taught Maths at Stockwell Manor School.

He has three children, Jimmy, Louisa & Emily. Best known as the guitarist in rock band Queen, May has also enjoyed notable solo success. May enjoyed his biggest UK solo hit in September 1992 with the number 5 single, 'Too Much Love Will Kill You'. Brian is married to actress Anita Dobson, well known for her role as Angie in Eastenders.

 

Freddie Mercury - Late singer of rock band Queen

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5th 1946 in Zanzibar, to parents Bomi & Jer Bulsara. Freddie moved to India in 1947. He attended boarding school in Panchgani, just outside Bombay. Whilst there he began his piano lessons, reaching Grade 4 in practical and theory. The family, with the addition now of younger sister Kashmira, moved to England in 1963. Freddie left Isleworth school in 1964 with three "O" levels and one "A" level in Art. He went to Ealing College of Art to study Graphic Illustration. He left college in 1969 with a Diploma in Graphic Art & Design (the equivalent of a Degree).

Freddie joined his first serious band in 1969, the were called IBEX. He was single and shared his large house and garden with several cats, creatures he adored. He loved opera and ballet, Marilyn Monroe was his favourite actress and Aretha Franklin just one of his many favourite singers. He liked to drink either Champagne or iced Vodka and Indian food was one of his favourites. He died on November 24th 1991.

 

Dame Diana Rigg - Actress, lives in Holland Park

Born 20 July 2020 in Doncaster, England, Diana Rigg was transplanted to India at the age of two when her father, a railroad construction engineer, moved the family there for seven years (where she learned to speak Hindi). Returning to Yorkshire, she graduated from Fulneck Girls School in Pudsey and was promptly accepted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, although she frequently butted heads with the faculty and was nearly kicked out.

While highly successful at the Royal Shakespeare Company, she was starving on the meagre pay, and started moonlighting on television shows. An appearance on Armchair Theatre ("The Hothouse") indirectly led to her world-famous role as Mrs. Emma Peel.

Voted #1 in TV Guide's "Top Ten Hottest Stars of All Time" (7 August 2020),
Ms. Rigg started her acting career early, appearing in a school play of "Goldilocks" at the age of thirteen, and thereafter expressed a preference for the stage.

Named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987 and made a Dame in 1994, she has received honorary doctorates from Stirling University and from the University of Leeds. She was also briefly a model.

 

Anne Robinson - TV Presenter

On her way to the USA, and bragging that she would take American television by storm, Anne Robinson, the cruel, po-faced, Kensington-based presenter of the ground-breaking TV game show, the Weakest Link, was still waving a red rag at the Welsh this week as she flew out of Heathrow.

Robinson, 57, voted the rudest woman on TV and rated, alongside Hannibal Lecter, as the person other people would least like to have dinner with, sent a storm through the valleys when she tried to consign Wales to oblivion on the BBC2 show Room 101. Robinson was being humorous, she insisted later. But many in Wales failed to get the joke. Viewers complained to the BBC.

Letters accusing her of "racism" poured into London-based newspapers. One recommended that the "witch" be forced to stand in the national stadium, in front of 73,000 Welsh rugby fans, while another, vaguely threatening, said "everyone would love five minutes alone with Anne Robinson".

 

Jeremy Irons - Actor

Jeremy (John) Irons was born on 19th September 1948 (that makes him 49 now) in Cowes, Isle of Wight, England.

His first debut on screen was Nijinsky after several roles on stage in theatre (also for the Royal Shakespeare Company) and musical (in Godspell). He became internationally known after his appearance as Charles in the TV series Brideshead Revisited and from that point his career has gone from strength to strength.

After several Golden Globe Award Nominations his career reached a peak when his performance as Claus von Bülow in Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1991.


Jeremy Irons is married to Sinéad Cusack, daughter of actor Cyril Cusack, and they have two sons, Max and Samuel. He has starred with Sinead in a number of films including Waterland and Stealing Beauty.

Features