Nooooooooooooooo!

I hate it whenever one of the ‘temples of eternal truths’ of one’s youth is proved to have been built upon sand.

It may only have been about ten years ago that I first learned that actress Diana Copeland – perhaps best remembered as Sid James’ long-suffering wife in the sit-com Bless This House – had an excellent singing voice and regularly ‘stood in for’ actresses less talented than she in this respect. Most famously of all, of course, this happened in the first James Bond film Dr No – in which Ursula Andress (as the character Honey Ryder) first steps out of the sea dressed in that seminal white bikini plus a knife (and knifeholder) strapped to her thigh, apparently singing Underneath The Mango Tree.

Since that moment I have not infrequently dined out on the revelation and indeed upon at least one occasion set it as a question in a trivia quiz in which I was taking part.

Now I discover that all this was not so – courtesy of this article by Andrew Roberts published today upon the website of  – THE INDEPENDENT

I’m sure many readers of the Rust will join me this morning in spending an hour or two coming to terms with this shattering news.