{"id":492700,"date":"2026-03-24T14:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492700\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:10:12","slug":"dame-shirley-bassey-wont-reply-to-fan-mail-after-hand-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492700\/","title":{"rendered":"Dame Shirley Bassey won&#8217;t reply to fan mail after hand surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dame Shirley grew up in Tiger Bay in Cardiff, leaving school at 14 to work in a packing factory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the evenings and on weekends however, the teenager could be found singing in local clubs and pubs &#8211; where her star potential was spotted in 1955. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her subsequent career has spanned more than seven decades and seen her become a global star, with an unsurpassed three James Bond theme tunes to her name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Between 1964 and 1979, Dame Shirley recorded theme tunes for Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, and Moonraker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her 1960 recording of As Long As He Needs Me, from the musical Oliver!, spent 30 weeks in the charts, and in 1999 she memorably performed the official song &#8211; alongside Bryn Terfel &#8211; at the opening of the Rugby World Cup at Cardiff&#8217;s Millennium Stadium, wearing a gown based on the Welsh flag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dame Shirley grew up in Tiger Bay in Cardiff, leaving school at 14 to work in a packing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-492700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}