Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg

Lovable, adorable, delectable, noble (by Royal Edict), huggable, and even, or especially, at her age (she is 14 years older than I am) most definitely spankable, this Dame Commander of the British Empire could order me once more into the breech at any time, at any place, and I’d go to certain death or extreme inconvenience with a smile on my face and a song in my heart – possibly “All Revved Up and No Place To Go” from ‘Bat Out of Hell’ by Meatloaf, but I’m Scots so anything on bagpipes will work – that shrill puts knives in my blood so I’ll hack or shoot the hell out of anything or anyone under its influence.

“Here’s mine – now show me yours.”

I fell in love with Emma Peel more than 40 years ago and that love has not abated. To me she will forever be John Steed’s ‘talented amateur’ assistant in the fight against International Bad Guys and Other Cold War Weirdos, even though her other film and stage credits are extensive and impressive. When she was with the Royal Shakespeare Company they did a video of ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’ that was impressive only in the fact that Diana played Hermia – or Helena, I never could get those two straight – and for their use of trick photography. Hey. They were STAGE actors and it was the early 70s. Cut them some slack.

A quarter-century or so ago I planned a trip from Minneapolis to London, just to see the places I’d read about in my English Lit classes. In one of the travel brochures I discovered that a play by Tom Stoppard (‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,’ in which I had the role of Player King in a college production) called “Night” something or something “Night” was being done at a SoHo theatre STARRING DIANA RIGG.

I was on the verge of an orgasmic coronary until I read the footnote and found out that Diana would be replaced in the play during the time of my visit by Maggie Smith, who is a fine actress, don’t get me wrong, and did a great job – although I still would like to have seen her spank a few of those Scottish schoolgirls in her “Prime.”

Nevertheless, I went to the Stoppard play even though I was disappointed not to see Diana do the role, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Stoppard has a way with dialog that pulls the spectators in and makes them a part of the scene. Some people say I have the same ability. If I do it’s probably Stoppard’s fault, or maybe Mark Twain’s. Don’t make me digress.

“You wouldn’t really spank my bum, would you?”

The second act of the play opens with the heroine – Maggie, Diana, whoever – embracing her lover, her back to the audience, and then she doffs her robe and walks quite naked with him upstage and off, though you can’t see her face. Then the real heroine, the actress, sidles out stage left and tells the audience that the sex wasn’t all that great, and the action continues. Yeah, I was disappointed – that WASN’T Maggie Smith’s bare tushy that paraded offstage, but in hindsight (oh hush) I realized how TRULY devastated I would have been to have thought I had seen Diana’s bare bottom only to be rudely disabused of that notion. I think Tom Stoppard is dead but I may be wrong. If he had jerked me around like that with such a sudden but erroneous image of Diana, I would make sure of it.

I just watched “Evil Under the Sun,” an Agatha Christie book made into a mystery film with Diana as the beauteous, philandering movie star and corpse. It was the 1982 version, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot – a major fifth in intensity below David Suchet’s performance in the BBC series. I always enjoy the Gershwin background, and most especially Diana’s singing of a Gershwin tune, which I think was authentic. Often the director will overdub another singer, but in this case I don’t think he did. Maggie Smith was in this movie as well, and sang along with Diana, or tried to – it was one of the funniest bits in the movie, that melodious interchange – and I have to wonder if the two were friends. I like to think so.

There are a lot of sites and blogs and information and DVD collections and so on regarding Dame Diana, and I’ve looked at some of them. The later pictures of her and her performances on PBS’s ‘Mystery,’ so different from her days as Emma Peel, still intrigue me in excess and in no wise diminish my heartfelt desire to have dinner with her, perhaps (gasp!) to hold her hand and tell her how much she means to me. Yeah, I know, she’s heard it all, she’s single and mother of one, and if there’s any justice in the world, and just a modicum of that precious sparkle still in her dark eyes, she would agree that a much younger (!) man should take her over his lap, lower her no-doubt fashionable knickers, and give her the sound spanking her two husbands never thought or bothered to give her – it might happen. I’m convinced that’s why she got rid of them, the lack of smacking to her deserving derriere. That’s the romantic in me, of course.

“I don’t mean to be so pouty, honest, Professor!”

Just BTW, ‘Dame’ is equivalent to ‘Knight’ in the British hierarchy, and I’m betting Dame Diana Rigg could still slap Sir Paul McCartney senseless. No doubt he’d like it too, the little wimp, but I’d still be honor bound to spank her for doing that. I’m sure Patrick Macnee thought the same thing, every day on the ‘Avengers’ set. One has to wonder if ever he did – and more so, did she like it? Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax on ‘Deep Space Nine’ – keep up, please) reminds me of Diana Rigg. That’s probably why I like her so much.

But there’s another dark haired, expressive-eyed minx who also reminds me of Diana, and has my likes, my love, my intense desire to inflict deep and impressive sting on her bare, somewhat willing bottom, though little does she know just how intense that desire, that intensity might become.

You’ve not seen her face, dear reader, the one of whom I speak, but you know her – not so well as I do, but that’s as may be, and I assure you that if you did you would want her bare-bottomed over your lap as surely and strongly as I do, or else envy her the privilege. Her hair is raven’s tresses, cut short like a boy’s, yet is there naught else boyish about her – lips full as a maiden’s in blossom, skin soft as dove’s down, breasts pert as the air of dawning, and the firm curve of her behind the very breath and essence of invitation, to caresses, to squeezes, to firm no-nonsense slaps!

Such are the deserts of a princess, deny it though she may. Perhaps there is ‘nothing like a dame,’ but there is only one Gwen, and she is mine. Deal with it.

Enough said.

Devlin out.