Gadjo’s Bottommost Vampires

Now, I’ve got a problem here, as in the inverted world of vampirism it’s likely that being a bad vampire means being a good vampire, if you get what I mean. But I’ll just go with what I know. After the previous, seemingly ill-informed top vampires offering, you’ll be pleased to hear these vampires are at least all from Transylvania, (or thereabouts)!

#5 Domnişoară X

Somebody I've worked with in an office. Wears only black, like a goth. Though I know she’s intelligent etc, she is the possibly the most cold-blooded person I’ve ever met – she wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire (though, come to think of it, I wouldn’t want her to). Vampire. And yet, she let herself down: a runaway canary once flew into the office; some of the lads were so thrilled they went out and bought a cage and some birdseed; it then flew over to sit on a windowsill near X, but instead of seizing upon it savagely and stuffing it alive into her mouth à la Jonathan Harker she just went back to her work. Sorry, but for me that’s poor vampiring.

#4 Vlad The Twat

The first Romanian male (I hesitate to use the word “man”) I ever met; a colleague at the Open University and somebody who narrowly avoided getting thrown into a very prickly holly bush. He obsessively generated rumours that other people were homosexuals - and inclined toward the younger end of the market at that - a hobby which could have earned him very good money in the country of his birth up until the year 2000. But he was raised in Switzerland, which kind of makes him even more of a twat. I'm spreading rumours that he is crap at everything, including being a vampire of course.

#3 Tracey Emin

Actually, Mr Can Bass 1 pointed this one out. She claims her father is Turkish but that’s Transylvanian enough for me – heck, there were more Ottomans through here than there ever were Romans, and it’s a surprise we aren’t speaking a dialect of Turkish. She’s exhibited works like “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With" and that unmade bed thing. She wants to shock us – just like a crap vampire would. Gadjo Dilo applies to such artworks the Gadjo Dilo Theory of Art Criticism, which is: If Gadjo Dilo could have done them then they are surely crap.

#2 Draga Olteanu-Matei

A Romanian actress with a distinguished film career from the 1950s to the present day. A decidedly matronly woman but effortlessly the most watchable thing on the screen. And however plump and mature she was she oozed sexuality in a way I find hard to describe – however, the lack of movie stills of her in her pomp rather suggests that I am alone in this view! Probably not a vampire, but she’s in this list of bottommost vampires simply because her bottom was the mostest.

#1 Mrs Dilo

Top of nearly every list, including this one. All requests to bite my neck and suck out my blood till I’m reeling like that sick kid in Airplane have been refused, and I respect her for it.

Gadjo’s Top Vampires

Noted vampire chaser and scholar No Good Boyo has recently raised the subject of vampires from its coffin. As I live in Transylvania, people - or the “un-undead”, as I’m required to call them - often ask me about vampires. “What are they really like?”, “Do you know any personally?”, “Can you get my friend Tina a date with one??” etc etc... Oh it really does get tiresome. So, to satisfied people's prurience - yes, alright, my own included - I've composed a top five list of vampires. The fact that they're all female and have no proven track record of vampirism is neither here nor there.

#5 Nigella Lawson

Gentleman Gyppo Byard recommended Ms Lawson’s book How To Be A Domestic Goddess so I bought it for Mrs Dilo for Christmas. Sadly, the cover picture is not of the raven-haired raver herself but of a fairy cake, but one could still imagine her as a vampire if one wanted to, and the recipes do look rather enticing. As the late Humph Lyttelton said: “Bakewell, tart!”.

#4 Spampyra

a.k.a. The Soup Dragon. A dinner lady we used to have at skool. She dished up the liver and onions, boiled cabbage, custard, “pink sauce” (eh, what was that?), toads (individual toad-in-the-holes), gravy and, yes, Spam fritters. Maybe she wasn’t a vampire at all but her hair was always a mess which is a sure sign that she couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror of a morning.

#3 Frøken X

X was a real woman I knew in Denmark, stunningly attractive as a fairytale princess, tall with high cheekbones and long blond hair. She was also several loaves short of a bread basket. She invited me to dinner once and after we’d eaten the soup she'd made and listened to Bowie records she started laughing manically about ways in which she could do away with her father. She then married an eminently unpleasant and expendable chap who died of unknown causes a few months later.

#2 Fennella Fielding

Frying Tonight!! Vampish actress and one of the few truly horny things in pre-Summer-of-Love Britain. I also have loving memories of her in The Poetry Society episode of Hancock’s Half Hour. She’s got actual Romanian blood in her, and “never married” – we all know what that means... I reckon No Good Boyo does, and it’s really only to leave Fennella for his own more expert consideration that she doesn’t quite make the #1 spot here.

#1 Kate Bush

Kate Bush is not a vampire, she is the woman I loved, but she has long dark hair and dances like a maniac so she’ll do as a vampire. As a teenager I used to lie feverishly awake at night listening to her songs on my portable cassette player, so everything I know about women (and therefore vampires) I learnt from Kate. It was also for her that I started going to expressionist mime classes – bless!