The discovery that the expansion of my shoulders and thigh muscles meant that none of my civilian clothes fitted me had brought me into the city for emergency shopping—Stanley Kubrick having messed up my first attempt— and therefore I was obliged to don my hated uniform once more—spit-polished boots, slouch hat at a cocky angle, the works. What bothered me most about it was that I tended to march—there was something about khaki dress-suits that made you stand tall and throw out your chest when you walked.
    Indeed, when Bucky Buckland appeared through the automatic doors of the office tower where he worked doing I know not what, we each had a little trouble recognising each other. Bucky’s great mass of curls was now a neat short back and sides and he was also in a uniform—that of the forces of commerce. He advanced, staring in disbelief.
“Is that you in there, Griffin?”
 “I thought you never wore ties, Bucky,” I grinned, “So you’ve sold out completely then.”
    Bucky was shaking his head sadly. “Utterly and completely, I’m afraid.”
    The Bucky I remembered would have knocked my block off at such a suggestion, or at least tried to.
 “Umm, I think we both need a drink?”
 “Sure.”

Barbarella, based on a dirty French comic about a space girl who had a propensity for losing her clothing and an astonishing way of screwing her way in and out of trouble, was brought to life in a magical flick by Frenchman Roger Vadim, who usually made Brigette Bardot sex-ploiters. Not sure where BB was, but in this one she was replaced by Vadim’s main squeeze of the time—Henry Fonda’s naughty little girl Jane.
“She’s a super sexy astronavigatrix whose mission is... “love.”
    Great fun throughout, from the spacesuit strip-tease of the opening credits to the defeat of the indomitable sex machine—Barbie causes it to blow all its fuses—at the end. Along the way she has palm-of-the-hand porno with David Hemmings, seduces an angel and gets a few words out of Marchel Marceau. And, some trivia for pop-music fans; what was the name of the character Barbarella is assigned to rescue, played in the film by Milo O’Shea? Duran Duran.