The words are from one of Dame Shirley Bassey’s numerous hits ‘Big Spender’ and may (or may not) be true about the diva’s very colorful life that helped established her as Britain’s favorite gay icon. Dame Shirley, best known for singing three of the James Bond theme songs, started performing 63 years ago at the tender age of 17 and by 2000 her career had been so outstanding that the Guinness Book of Records had named her the Most Successful British Female Singer of all time. Today she celebrates her 80th Birthday.
However it wasn’t just her almost indecent gowns or the racy lyrics of her songs that gave her such an enormous gay following, but the fact her life off the stage was as melodramatic as one of her over-the-top performances. Back in the 1960’s her first marriage was to Kenneth Hume a gay TV director whom she left for actor Peter Finch who allegedly fathered one of her children (Dame Shirley has always been coy about who fathered either of her children), and then she went back to Hume, who sadly committed suicide two years later. Years later Dame Shirley attracted a great deal of media attention when being sued by an employee who claimed that the singer had slapped her, a case that surprisingly Dame Shirley won. Then in 2015 the Dame was back in the headlines yet again for saying that women shouldn’t do ‘men’s jobs’ because they have ‘periods and hormones.’
Politically correct or not this women born in a one of the almost unheard of mixed-race families in the 1930’s in the rough poor neighborhood of Tiger Bay in Cardiff, Wales literally fought her way to the top of her chosen profession winning the admiration of a loyal gay fan base who could relate to her struggle in a class-orientated very white and somewhat intolerant culture. Her larger-than-life style which unintentionally became the epitome of ‘camp’ has made the Dame a national treasure, particularly in the LGBT community who will be very joyously celebrating her birthday today.
There is a wealth of videos of Dame Shirley singing on YouTube but for queerguru there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s from BBC Electric Proms Concert recorded live with Dame Shirley singing a new song that the Pet Shop Boys had written especially for her ‘The Performance Of My Life.
