A CANE throne at the centre of parties held by Swindon’s blonde bombshell Diana Dors is to be auctioned.
The throne and a matching footstool had pride of place in the swimming pool room at Diana’s Sunningdale home. But it took on a new life at Diana’s sex, drugs and booze parties which made regular tabloid headlines during the 1970s.
According to her son, Jason Dors Lake, the throne was used in his mother’s notorious party game of Hot Seat where celebrities, lords, porn stars and gangsters exposed many truths which subsequently led to couples breaking up.
Jason has spoken of taking drugs at the parties when he was a child and of two way mirrors in the bedrooms, later replaced by cameras.
Once featured on the cover of Woman magazine and Diana’s book Diana Dors A-Z of Men, below, Diana’s throne is 6ft high and 4ft wide and was commissioned for her birthday by her husband Alan Lake and created by Victor Shepherd.
The chair and footstool will be auctioned at the Jubilee Auction Rooms in Pewsey next Wednesday and were previously valued in 2010 to be worth £34,000.
Born in 1931 at Swindon’s Haven Nursing Home, which now has a blue plaque in her honour, Diana Mary Fluck lied about her age when she was 14 and gained a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After she became famous she often joked that she had changed her name to Dors (the surname of her grandmother) so that if she ever made it big and found her name in bright lights it would avoid an embarassment if a letter fell off or a fuse blew.
Diana’s career started in sex comedies and risque modelling. But by the 1950s the siren had become known as the English Marilyn Monroe.
After discovering her first husband had mis-managed her accounts she launched a one-woman touring show talking about her life and became a chat show host.
At the height of her fame Diana became close friends with Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, as well as the Kray Twins and their mother Violet.
Diana died of ovarian cancer in May 1984 and it was claimed she had left an estimated £2m to Jason in her will via a secret code which was in the possession of Alan Lake.
But Diana's heartbroken husband shot himself five months after her death and took the secret code to his grave.
Jason visited Swindon earlier this year to unveil the plaque on the Kent Road site, which was arranged by Swindon Heritage.
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