Sweet Charity

Listen, mes potes, don't tell Jodie, but she was not my first love. Long before her, I loved Shirley MacLaine.
Did you ever see her movie, Sweet Charity, in which she plays a dance-hall hostess, plagued by bad luck in affairs of the heart?
A box office flop, and in a way deservedly so: it has scenes of such longueur that you could cook and eat a three-course meal and not miss anything important.
But - and it is a very important but - it spawned some great songs: Big Spender, If My Friends Could See Me Now, and (Sammy Davis Jr at his most daemonic) The Rhythm of Life.
And it has some great one-liners. My favourite is when she is taken to a posh nightclub by the handsome Italian film star who has picked her up. She looks around and says "This place sure is full of celebrities. I'm the only person here I never heard of."
And when she is in his apartment and he asks what he should do about his girlfriend with whom he had had a row earlier, she advises him "Be aloof. The aloofer, the better." Wish I'd said that.
So, there you have it. Another diva I lost my heart to. Don't tell Jodie or Shirley, but in fact there were a lot before them. In fact, I might make a list, starting with - God, I bet you've never even heard of them! - Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc and Esther Williams.
No, better not. It was tough enough coping with them during my pubertal years; trying to cope now will probably induce an inguinal hernia, or worse.