Godmother Shirley is getting ready for her cruise ship close-up

Dame Shirley Bassey is getting excited about her new role as a godmother to P&O cruise ship Adonia. The 74-year-old singer will be breaking a £37 bottle of pink fizz – from the Hush Heath Estate in Kent – across the bow of the ship at the christening ceremony in Southampton on May 21.
Not sure whether she has any plans to sail on her new baby, however. As she says in this video: “When the ship comes to Monte Carlo I shall be on my balcony and I will see her come in. I will jump in my car, go down there and greet her personally. Yes!”
She’ll have a few months to get ready – by my reckoning, Adonia’s first visit to the principality which Dame Shirley now calls home will not be until November 6.
And there’s no possibility of Bassey getting her wish for her dream cruise companion – she plumped for John Wayne when surely she should have been thinking about someone like Lady GaGa.
Adonia is still sailing as Royal Princess, and will go into dry dock in Freeport, Bahamas, on May 2. After a few tweaks to turn her into a P&O ship, and then the naming festivities, the ship will be sailing a series of cruises to the Mediterranean, Baltic and Norwegian fjords before leaving Southampton at the end of October for a series of fly-cruises in the eastern Med and an exciting voyage round South America early next year.