Sabrina

Sabrina (her real name was Norma Sykes – the name Sabrina was invented by the BBC) drove British men to distraction in the 1950s with her version of the fuller figure.

With vital statistics of 42-19-36 she was an enormous hit when she debuted on Arthur Askey’s television series Before Your Very Eyes in 1953.

Aged just seventeen and the daughter of a Blackpool landlady, she was the original dumb blonde. Indeed, part of her gimmick was that she never said a word on the screen.

More TV shows followed, and then the film Blue Murder at St Trinians (1957), but stardom was not forthcoming.

After four years of travelling around the world as a stage and nightclub entertainer, she quit Britain for America in 1963 in an attempt to establish herself without the overwhelming publicity she received at home (yards of newspaper columns were devoted to her).

In 1967 she married a successful young Beverly Hills surgeon, Dr Harold Melsheimer, who had never heard of her. This, she said, was part of the attraction.

They subsequently divorced in 1977 but Sabrina remained in California.

After suffering from ill health for many years, partly owing to botched back surgery, she died of blood poisoning in 2016, at the age of 80.