You have six days left to watch BBC Wales' Great Lives on Molly Parkin, directed sublimely by Robert Chilcott - click here, iPlayer. (Because of 'adult' themes you have to assure the web site you're over 16)
Molly recollects the orgies she choreographed at New York's Chelsea Hotel (I think) - most self-empowering. Great archive TV footage moments to savour - don't miss daughter Sophie ordering the groceries as a young thing or Moll sparring with some old TV goat who suggests her novels are porn. Steve Strange looks fiercely quaint in what looks like a gorgeously chintzy-tinkly hotel tea room in Wales; and I had no idea Manolo Blahnik owes his career to Moll. Where would the shoe be now without him and her?
I can be spotted as the astrologer at some point likening her to Nefertiti, but don't blink.
Watchers of exotics can wallow in her variously outlandish get-ups over the years, all the more striking set against the timeless male interviewer suits: visual code for TV's essential conservatism. Did you see Ant and Dec in their dark suits on Britain's Got Talent last night? They could be hosting Pebble Mill At One with Moll pissed back in the 70s - that's in the doc, too (minus Ant and Dec).
Great Lives is a wonderful snapshot reprise of an extraordinary life; and I look forward to a longer edit so I can see more of me and Moll (sorry, Moll and me).
4 comments:
Lovely programme. But it stops before it should. Is that the Welsh for you?
How did I miss this? I'm off to watch it now. Hope all's good with you xx
Strange looks very, er, strange.
Far too short. Miss Parkin is timeless.
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