Shirley Bassey is quite right to give chart divas a dressing down

Dame Shirley Bassey or as my dad affectionately calls her, Burly Chassis is a class act.

She’s a brilliant, unique performer, but she’s not at all happy with today’s young performers.

This week, Shirley revealed she thinks they’re far too scantily clad.

She was shocked by the eye-popping gown Rihanna wore to the recent Met Ball in New York which left nothing at all to the imagination.

Shirley is clearly exasperated by the way young singers appear to be in a competition as to who can wear the skimpiest outfit. And she’s got a point.

Some of these young women look like two-bit hookers and if they actually walked down the street in their stage outfits, they might end up getting arrested for being virtually naked.

Obviously they can wear whatever they like, but it does get a bit worrying if you are the mum of a young girl who wants to copy the style of her pop idols.

I really don’t know why they all want to look like porn stars when they have enough money to pay for the best stylists and designers in the world.

I also don’t buy the line that they feel empowered by showing off their bodies in tinier and tinier little dresses that resemble dental floss held together by itsy-bitsy scraps of see-through tissue paper.

Apart from anything else, they are highly likely to catch cold.

Shirley still looks incredible at 78 and, back in her hey-day, she was a total sexpot.

Her glittery gowns were sometimes low-cut and slit to the thigh, but she always looked alluring and never slutty even when flashing the flesh.

Shirley is quite right when she says you have to leave something to the imagination.

She admires the talents of the new female vocal artists, but not their dress sense.

She also had some sound advice for singers who lose their voices, after Sam Smith had to cancel his tour and have an operation on his vocal chords.

Shirley says he need to work with opera singers.

When she lost her own voice a few years ago, she took a year out and recovered with the help of an operatic vocal coach.

She is back to her belting best and has even said she’s up for singing a fourth Bond theme if they want to sign her up for the upcoming new movie Spectre, starring Daniel Craig as 007.

She already has the famous Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker under her belt and I reckon she’d be fantastic.

She’d also obviously wear a beautiful and elegant frock when performing the track instead of a diamond-studded thong and a couple of nipple tassles that might be the preferred option for one of today’s divas.