INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Unlike her sixties female competitors, Dusty quickly became a recognizable icon : male TV comedians mimicked her act, dressing up in wigs, gowns and massive false eyelashes, and calling themselves 'Rusty Springboard'.

She was the first British artist to include a 'no apartheid' clause in a South African contract.

'I Only Want To Be With You' has proved to be her most successful song, having been covered in various guises. It became a hit for the Bay City Rollers in the mid seventies and went to no. 4 in 1979 for Annie Lennox and the Tourists. Then years on, it entered the charts again, lamely sung by page-three model and showbiz personality Samantha Fox.

When Dusty first had chemotherapy, she felt nauseous, but then, she said, 'I think my body liked the chemicals. I've poisoned it over so many years in the past that it went, 'Yes! Poison!''.

She worked in a laundry, a record shop, and at Bentall's department store, where she sold buttons, dustbins and electric-train sets. Her retail career came to an abrupt end when she fumbled a demonstration and blew the fuses of the store's lighting system.

She had a succession of wigs to which she had given the names of other female pop stars - Sandie Shaw, Lulu, Cilla Black and so on.

Throughout the seventies and into the early eighties Dusty made several suicide attempts and swallowed her anguish in vodka and pills. She always made sure somebody could find her though.

She was fanatical about her cats. She has owned two hundred over the years, and at one time kept nine in the same house.

In the nineties she went from critically acclaimed cult status to the iconic. In January 1999 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours List. Then in March, she was inducted into the US Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Too ill to go to Buckingham Palace for her investiture, she received her OBE at her bedside in the final stages of her illness.

'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' was her biggest hit of the sixties. It took forty-seven takes to record.

On the back cover of her album 'White Heat' she appears in a motorcycle helmet - it was rumoured that it covered bruises on her face, inflicted by her then partner.

Dusty did a concert in 1979 at the Albert Hall, in London. Princess Margaret was in the Royal Box. An army of hand waving lesbians and gay men greeted Dusty's arrival on stage. Then she wickedly announced, "I'm glad to see that the royalty here tonight is not only confined to the Royal Box." Princess Margaret did not understand the joke and questioned the remark, as she could not see any other royalty. When her escorts explained, the Princess walked out.