When I was a teenager I had posters of two blondes on my wall: Debbie Harry and Marilyn Monroe. Debbie is sixty later this year, Marilyn would have been eighty today.

Born on the 1st June 1926 she is one of the twentieth-century's most famous movie stars, she's actually more than that - she's an icon, a sex symbol and, with respect to Jean Harlow probably the most famous blonde movie star of all time.

She only made about thirty five films and to be honest there are only really half a dozen which are worth watching. She wasn't a great actress but she had charisma, charm and a vulnerability that appealed to me as much as her sexiness.

Today she is remembered as much for her death on 5 August 1962 as for her film carrer. Her involvement with JFK and his brother-in-law Peter Lawford have been the subject of endless speculation and there are conspiracy theories a plenty surrounding her death.

I was talking to Angela at work yesterday afternoon about her saying I wonder how she would have survived in today's more intrusive media driven world. Would she have retained the grace of Lauren Bacall, the sex appeal of a latter day Barbara Stanwyick or would she have ended up becoming a parody of herself in the way that Britain's Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors did?

It's all irrelevant, but I for one will spend a couple of minutes in quiet contemplation, giving thanks that the blonde from Los Angeles touched my life for a few years during puberty.