Sadly, I didn't know Jane Birkin, the Anglo-French actress, singer and beauty, who died in Paris in mid-July at the age of 76.
I had admired her since I was a teenager and saw her, naked, in Antonioni's seminal Sixties movie, Blow-Up. Later, I got to know the star of the film, David Hemmings (19412003). He told me that Birkin only agreed to get her kit off in Blow-Up because her husband at the time, John Barry, taunted her, saying she wouldn't dare.
