At 84, David Bailey is “as outrageous and indiscreet as ever”, says Lucy Davies in The Daily Telegraph. Princess Diana? “Terrible hair,” says the photographer. “You know, from the hairspray – solid as a plastic dummy.” Still, those rock-hard locks may have saved Diana from injury. During a shoot in the 1980s one of Bailey’s assistants dropped a light on her head. Thankfully, the princess was very understanding – she made a point of reassuring the girl afterwards that she was fine.
Bailey, the son of an East End tailor’s cutter, certainly isn’t overawed in the presence of royals. When he was photographing the Queen in 2014, he wanted to make her laugh. So he asked her if her jewellery was real. “I said: ‘I bet that cost a few bob, girl.’ It just came out, I call everyone ‘girl’. But she was girlish.” The Queen giggled and Bailey got the shot. “We had a laugh. Beautiful skin, the Queen.”