Dorothy Parker

If you took Oscar Wilde, AA Gill and Marlene Dietrich and whizzed them up in a blender, you'd get... well, you'd get a bloody mess, but the metaphorical result would be Dorothy Parker, the sultry and cynical writer who, if she was only slightly more alive, would be a fixture on every panel show today.

Born on August 22, 1967, Dorothy's early life was shrouded in tragedy. She lost her mother before she turned five and was raised by her father - a man she detested and later accused of being physically abusive. Her first poem was snapped up by Vanity Fair magazine, and after a stint at Vogue, she returned to the publication as a theatre critic. It was here that Dorothy began developing a national reputation as a complete and utter wit.

Known to her legions of gasping admirers as Mrs Parker, she was one of the most feared critics in 20s and 30s New York, not so much reviewing books and films as crushing them under a stiletto. "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly," she once wrote, "It should be thrown with great force." And what did she think of the legendary screen icon Katherine Hepburn? "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."

Mrs Parker's own stories and poems focused on cheery topics like suicide, depression and sexual betrayal. She took a perverse glee in all human weakness, not averse to mocking her own failures as rigorously as she mocked the failures of others. Like a lot of great wits she was a complete depressive with suicide attempts and a whole host of mangled relationships under her belt. That, together with her dark looks sort of makes her the great-grandmother of Emo kids everywhere.

But we won't hold that against her, because she was a true icon of her time - she even had cronies in the form of the Algonquin Round Tables, a notorious gang of wits who met at New York's Algonquin hotel to get bladdered on cocktails and mock each other senseless. In a way it was like a panel show, but played drunk. And with horrified hotel staff instead of a studio audience.

So if you consider yourself a connoisseur of exquisite humour, make yourself a very dry gin martini and raise a glass to the divine Mrs P.