Totty of the season

Jack Kerouac (12th March 1922 – 21st October 1969)

Murat Boz (born 7th March 1980) - more here

Jon Hamm and his incredible performing trousers (50 on 10th March)

Rob Lowe (born 17th March 1964)

John Barrowman (born 11th March 1967)

Jon Bon Jovi (born 2nd March 1962)

Daniel Craig (born 2nd March 1968)

Rudolf Nureyev (17th March 1964 - 6th January 1993) - much more here

Prima Ballerina Assoluta

"Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."

Dame Margot Fonteyn left this world (far too early) twenty years ago today.

Hers was a glittering career - famously she was due to retire in the early 1960s after more than two decades as the top ballerina of her generation under the tutelage of Sir Frederick Ashton and Dame Ninette de Valois, having been most acclaimed for her artistic partnership with Robert Helpmann.

Then, out of the blue, the Russian megastar Rudolf Nureyev defected (read more about him in my blog of three years ago), and that partnership (despite the eighteen-year gap between their ages) kept her at the peak of balletic excellence for almost twenty more years!



Her sad decline (she died of cancer in almost primitive surroundings in Panama, caring for her paraplegic husband) - and his (of AIDS) - has been well-documented, not least in that brilliant BBC biographical drama Margot in 2009.

So let us instead wallow in the brilliance of their partnership in the sublime Swan Lake...

Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev - Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky)

Margot Fonteyn biography on Britannica Online

Oh What a Wow - He's the Greatest Dancer

"A male dancer like this, with such sensuality, ability and charisma, had not been seen before.....not even Nijinsky had the impact Nureyev had on dance. To see him stand on stage was a revelation."

One of the most beautiful men to have ever lived, Rudolf Nureyev would have been seventy years old this week.

Rudolf was a sensation - as flamboyant, haughty and dramatic off stage as he was on it. His defection from Russia in the height of the Cold War was a bolt from the blue for the art world. But it was his flawless, emotional and graceful performances that projected him to super-stardom, and he was lauded as the best classical ballet dancer of the twentieth century.

And he was just soooo sexy...

Lord Snowdon recalls meeting Rudy for a photoshoot:

I said "Tell Mr Nureyev to take that handkerchief out of his pocket, it looks ridiculous." And Rudolf said, "That is no hanky, that is my cock!"

Nureyev - The Russian Years

Nureyev and Miss Piggy in the sauna (The Muppet Show)

Rudolf Nureyev - The Life