BARGAIN FROCK SAVES DAME HELEN'S IMAGE

The zip on her original frock, a “beautiful designer Grecian gown”, had become stuck just before the ceremony and she recalls: “It wouldn’t move up or down. My make-up was melting, my husband was trying…

I was so hot and bothered. Eventually, I said cut it off me. Instead I found a dress that I got from an outlet store, for £7.45.”

Dame Helen tells Heyday magazine: “It was a wardrobe malfunction but that little red dress made all the best-dressed lists, even though the other was more beautiful.”