Dear Moira, women in their 40s who use fancy dress as an excuse to go to a party in a bikini, while comparing themselves to Ursula Andress, are sadly foolish

Published: June 3, 2014 at 12:46am

not ursula andress

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Malta is full of beautiful young women in their 20s with the full glory of youth, against whom no woman in her 40s should ever try to compete unless she wishes to look sad, ridiculous and increasingly desperate.

The 20-year-old is always going to look better, no matter how many hours the 40-something spends at the gym. But Moira Delia is still banging, banging, banging at that door. Instead of being content with looking good for 40-something, she wants to get in there and fight girls young enough to be her daughters on their own turf.

The moment has passed, Moira. Let it go. There is a reason why Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible – because it is true.

However, I’m uploading this photograph because Ms Delia really, really wants me to, and I’m feeling generous. I’m told (I didn’t watch the show myself; I was away) that on Ilsien In-Nisa on the Labour Party’s television station a few days ago, the animal rights campaigner, who is quite obviously deaf to the sound of the ongoing controversy about hunting and trapping, made much of the fact that she was off to a 50th birthday party with a James Bond theme.

“I’m going as Ursula Andress,” she said. “I have an exact copy of her famous bikini, including the knife. But I’m going to wear it with a trench.”

Not Honey Ryder, do note, but Ursula Andress.

“Hmmmm,” her co-host Pauline goes, having recovered from last week’s marathon bout of soft-soaping the prime minister’s wife. “Mela the next morning I’ll go to www.ahemahemahem.com and see your photo.”

Because we’re still not allowed to mention her name, as if we speak her name out loud she might materialise before us…or carry on up the charts.

At which point, Moira the Animal Rights Activist who’s too scared to take a stand on the hunting referendum, in case it upsets her beloved Partit Laburista and her show on Labour TV1 gets cancelled followed by her show on Labour TV2 (TVM), gets all excited at the prospect and begins squeaking.

So who I am to deprive an ageing show-girl of a good time?

I just have a few sartorial observations, apart from the very obvious one that women in their 40s should not go to parties in a bikini even if they wear a coat over it. The beach, fine. A boat, excellent. The pool, great. Context is all. No matter how trim a woman is, 40-something is 40-something and it shows.

A woman in her 40s who turns up to a party in a bikini is telling everybody that this is the only way she can get the men to stop looking at the nymphs in their 20s and look at her instead. But they’re still going to look at the nymphs in their 20s, and what’s worse, the nymphs in their 20s will be looking at the woman in her 40s, at a party in a bikini around men in dinner-jackets and thinking ‘God, how sad.’

I actually remember doing that myself – though it was Madonna-style bustiers the try-hard middle-aged women wore then to Saddles and Club 47 (it was the 1980s).

The other very obvious observation is that Honey Ryder’s famous bikini in the Bond film Dr No was 1. white, 2. highly structured, and 3. worn by Ursula Andress at her most beautiful.

You have to be very, very vain and delusional to think of yourself as Ursula Andress, a tall, tanned brunette built like a Greek goddess with a face renowned for its perfect bone structure, when you are 4’10”, with legs the length of Ursula Andress’s calves, brassy-blonde hair and a face that would go unnoticed on the streets of Manchester.

As for that diving-knife borrowed from a subaqua club, and the goggles worn like Family Therapist Charlie’s sunglasses – words fail me.

And I would have said nothing, of course, if Moira Delia knew her limitations and went as Miss Moneypenny.

No prizes for guessing why the animal rights activist couldn’t wear a white bikini, incidentally – especially a structured one like Honey Ryder’s. She’s not Ursula Andress. So why bother?

What we really want from Moira Delia is not yet more bikinis with goggles, hot pants with see-through blouses, perkiness and stupidities, and an increasingly palpable air of despair behind the rictus smile, but her views on spring hunting and the referendum.

Is Michael Falzon right to say that the hunters can’t be ignored because of their ‘100,000 signatures’? Is Joseph Muscat right to commit himself in favour of spring hunting?

Is the government right to allow itself to be held hostage by bird-shooters? To collude with trappers to make plans for finch-trapping for the entire three months of autumn?

Or has the cat got her ilsien in-nisa?




31 Comments Comment

  1. Matthew S says:

    erm, can we have a photograph of Ursula Andress (not Moira Delia) stuck permanently to the side of the website?

    I’m sure it will increase traffic.

    [Daphne – It’s an idea. But then of course they’ll say I’m a lesbian, because the progressive liberal party thinks it’s an insult.]

  2. H.P. Baxxter says:

    Bond, Bond Street. Home of Yves Saint Laurent in London.

    Which brings me to my mission. In two parts: 1) to observe the man in the first photograph, 2) to sartorially terminate with extreme prejudice.

    I don’t do women’s fashion. And even if I did, a bikini is just a bikini. I mean if I had to comment it would be about what’s inside it.

    But enough digressions.

    That man appears to think he is wearing a dinner jacket, otherwise known as black tie. He isn’t. That’s just a very shiny black office suit, with ticket pocket! Good god in heaven.

    No cuff! James Bond couldn’t even take his pistol out of his ticket pocket with the sleeves falling over his fingers, let alone fire it.

    And when Ursula Andress turns up, one cocks one’s pistol, one does.

    Also, isn’t James Bond supposed to be well-groomed and shaved to perfection (esp. after the latest Bond caper where he is shaved by a beauty with an cut-throat razor). And what about the full head of hair?

    I bloody give up. This is a Waltz with Bashir, not a James Bond party.

  3. rob says:

    Miskina let her be. So she wants to feel young again for one night. So what? She can let her hair down.

    The only pathetic thing I see is her announcing it on TV. That’s sad.

  4. ken il malti says:

    Moira wants to be forever milfy.

    • P Shaw says:

      I remember Moira when she was 14 in a Junior Lyceum uniform, hanging around boys of the same age, copping a feel for instant popularity with their horny friends in school.

      Fast forward thirty years and the situation is still the same. How sad.

    • albona says:

      Wouldn’t that be cougarish?

  5. Roy says:

    She should have tried dressing up as Rosa Klebb instead.

    Talk about being original.

  6. M. Cassar says:

    It would take guts and brains to defend the birds in this climate. It is much simpler to just dress up as one.

  7. bookworm says:

    I happen to have seen other photos of this party. All the women were in elegant cocktail dresses, but she was the only dumb blonde in a bikini and diving-goggles.

  8. Katrina says:

    So these days, she’s a cartoon??

  9. Wilson says:

    Mostly entertaining. You would have thought it was a Vicars and Tarts night.

  10. silvio says:

    Well done Moira.
    Since you have it flaunt it,
    Smashing.

    [Daphne – As a friend said to me the other day, one of the fascinating things about growing older is that older men begin to look attractive. It works the other way round, too. Being thought smashing by a man in his late 70s is no compliment to a woman in her 40s, I can assure you. It’s the 30-somethings whose attention Ms Delia clearly wants.]

    • silvio says:

      The fool that I am.

      I always thought that 30 year old girls are not usually attracted to elder(mature) men but to the amount of zeros in their bank accounts.

      As to whose attention Ms Delia clearly wants, I have my doubts.

      P.S. next time make it EARLY 70s.

      [Daphne – Women in their 30s are women, not girls. Moira Delia is in her 40s. And she already has a boyfriend.]

      • silvio says:

        Lucky man.
        Well as they say “Some people are just born lucky””

        To some all women are either Chicks,Gisem,etc, to me they are always girls.

  11. Scarlet says:

    So looks trashy! Grow up, woman.

  12. verita says:

    Moira loves cats. What about all the birds being slaughtered as soon as they reach Malta? Bird shooting and trapping is a political area Muscat can’t ignore.

    What are you going to do, Moira, to defend the birds?

  13. Biillies says:

    I think that Moira is really ugly.

    [Daphne – Oh come on now. Of course she isn’t ugly. She’s just sort of ordinary-looking, but that’s because she really doesn’t help herself with the brassy hair, all that make-up and the tacky outfits. She’d do a lot better with less make-up, more natural hair and good clothes. Heavy make-up is the enemy of older women, not their friend.]

  14. kev says:

    I say no bikini shot is complete without a camel hoof.

  15. Random says:

    Lovely article, Daphne!

    What a shame one of the main self-declared animal rights activists is not campaigning against spring hunting – she has all the means and following to get the message across.

    Surely she must be against it if she does love animals as much as she wants us to believe.

  16. Nauseabundo says:

    I’m curious, was there some kind of ban on people having sex under the Nationalist government? The Labour crowd seem to have all come out of their caves and want to copulate with anything that comes in their way. What a bunch of sex starved loonies.

  17. Quebramar says:

    Ursula Andress is very tall.

  18. A. Bonello says:

    When was the last time Moira Delia cleaned out a stable or a dog shelter?

    • Timon of Athens says:

      Moira Delia always had an agenda behind her animal rights’ campaigns. She uses this to enhance her image. Yes, true she loves animals, but then so do most of us. She feeds a couple of stray cats and that’s it. Of course she wouldn’t upset the political party she supports by speaking out against spring hunting or the attempt to stop the referendum.

      How many times has she rolled up her sleeves, removed her make up, heels and short skirts to help out in a dog sanctuary? Hardly ever.

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