"Well, she’s drunk all the time on champagne."

Such is the envy and bile, the gossip and bitchery you must deal with when your are the grandest Diva in the entire known world. Oh, you can talk about your Judy Garland, your Maria Callas and even — poor thing, if you are so bereft of queer references — Madonna, but two of those are dead and the other, while increasingly pathetic, is not yet fabulouslY, self-destructively insane. No, on the earthquake scale of Diva-locity, Shirley Bassey is a full-tilt 27.9

First of all, there is that Voice. Shirley Bassey is very simply a steamroller who sings. Goldfinger, once your hear it, the bones in your skull are permanently fused. Listen to her balls-out belting on Tonight I Gave the Greatest Performance of My Life and, girl, you can kiss any dreams of going to an Ex-gay camp good-bye. Shirley Bassey has spent, since 1958, more time on the top-20 charts than any other British singer.

As we said in the first part of our meditation on Diva foreverness (which was primarily about Joan Collins, another 70-something force of nature in fabulous shape and high form), Shirley Bassey is "the High Priestess of drag queens everywhere, thanks to her big, bossy renditions of such affirmations of identity as This is My Life … and I Am What I Am."

Past the hurricane winds of The Voice, though, there is the Auntie Mame pizzazz of her self-presentation. With every outfit, every word, she marks her exalted territory, as when asked why — now that she had been awarded damehood by Queen Elizabeth and was what the British refer to as a "notable" — she preferred to live in Monte Carlo, off the French Riviera. "Where else," she replied with utter Diva logic, "can I walk around all the time in jewels?"

Like her pal Joan Collins, Shirley Bassey, at 68, will not go quietly into dignified senility. Both women continue to raise hell in the headlines with their brash and imperious takes on modern life. We offer you a Bassey sampler of recent edicts and royal death sentences:

THOSE NEW, UPSTART ‘DIVAS’: "Mariah Carey? Charlotte Church? — Divas! Please, they cheapen the word! Mariah Carey with her demands! She gets her dressing room repainted. I would never do that. What proper singer would? The fumes, hmm?… And Charlotte Church? Ten double vodkas a night! When I was that age [19], there was no such thing as binge drinking … We used to say, ‘Let’s go to a dance and see what gorgeous fellows we can meet.’ Now, girls like Charlotte say, ‘Let’s go and see how many drinks we can knock back!’ … You know, if they live to 30 or 35, they’ll know all about it then. You damage the liver and it is not good for the voice." [This unasked-for advice is what prompted Charlotte Church to retaliate with the remark that leads this piece: "I don't know why she's always so nasty about me," said Church to reporters. "I mean she's a bit wrinkly, isn't she? She has a cheek - she's drunk all the time on champagne.")

SHOW BUSINESS TODAY -- SAD, SAD, SAD: "Show business has gone. Gone! People just want to get on reality shows and make money. They don't care about talent. Anyone gets on television -- fat people, tall people, skinny people, people in wheelchairs. Someone else makes millions out of them and their lives are ruined forever. I hate it, I really hate it."

HORRID, GREEDY FANS: "My fans are very possessive. They always want seats in the front row when I go on tour. .. I walk out there, there they are in the same seats -- rows of them! They follow me across the country but I don't want to see them there night after night. They think it is mean of me and unreasonable, but they don't see my side of it. I am going to a different town every night and I don't want to see the same old faces -- it is psychologically upsetting! And to be honest with you, I get sick of singing Goldfinger! Night after night! Gah! It was a hit in 1963!"

WHY SHE AUCTIONS OFF THE GIFTS FANS GIVE HER: "I can't keep these presents forever. I've been in show business for 50 years and things just pile up. But even the lesser-talented stars get gifts ... just because they are in the paper ... So ... I mean, really ... no more gifts! Nothing. Except I love pink champagne! I love chocolates! ... One woman used to bake me a huge cake and ring up to find out what color dress I'd be wearing on stage, so she could ice it to match. Now that was perfect." (At right, Shirley's leopard-skin high heels that recently fetched $1800 at a charity auction after she signed them on the instep.)

THE COMPLETE AND TOTAL HORROR OF BEING MISS THING: "Sometimes fans come up to me in the street and ask if I am Shirley Bassey. Not today, I say. And by the time they have worked it out, I have gone."

JUST LIKE THE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER IN ABFAB: "We are exactly like that -- Sharon and I! [Sharon -- father unknown and certainly not, according to DNA tests, the daughter of Shirley's first husband, a gay film director -- only learned in her 20's that Bassey was her real mother and not the aunt who raised her.] Sharon is always saying ‘Oh, Mummy you are not going to wear that?’ Yes, I am! ‘Oh, Mum would you please stop talking nonsense and don’t be so loud.’ I am not talking nonsense and THIS IS NOT LOUD! — this is my singing voice, tra-laaaaaaaa!”

No, neither Shirley nor Joan will be going quietly any time soon. And, like we said, a diva stands in no one’s shadow. They are, quite proudly, royal pains in the ass. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. At 68 and 72 respectively, these diamonds are forever.

Burn on, Big Divas. Burn on.

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