IN 1957, WHEN Brigitte Bardot starred in Et Dieu crea la femme, a media survey showed that a million lines had been devoted to her in the French dailies and two million in weekly magazines, accompanied by 29,345 reproductions of her image, and that she featured in an estimated 47 per cent of all conversations in France. If her hair had stayed its original dark colour, could she have achieved this?

One of the themes that emerge from Joanna Pitman's book is the gullibility of the public where famous blondes are concerned. As far as one can make out, they were almost all dyed, yet that didn't stop people going crazy for them. Presumably even Aphrodite had some divine recipe for