Have you heard the one about Cher, Salvador Dalí and a fish-shaped vibrator? The performer and her then-husband Sonny Bono – he of the unfortunate bowl haircut and future in right-wing politics – had been invited to Dalí’s art studio on a trip to New York, where they found the surrealist cleaning up after an orgy with a parade of French oddballs. His pet ocelot was there. So was, at Sonny and Cher’s behest, Francis Ford Coppola. It was the late Sixties, if you hadn’t guessed that already. Cher began fiddling with an odd contraption she found stuck down the back of her seat cushion.
“It’s a beautiful, painted rubber fish – just fabulous,” she once recalled. “It has this little remote-control handset, and I’m playing with it, and the tail is going back and forth, and I’m thinking it’s a child’s toy. So I said to Salvador: ‘This is really funny.’ And he said: ‘It’s wonderful when you place it on your clitoris.’” Later, at dinner, the madness continued. “[Dalí’s assistant] Ultra Violet was there, and she kept rubbing me with her cane, and I thought… I’m going to break this cane across this bitch’s head.”
