the buzz log

Mrs. Peel, you're still needed... and wanted.

Diana Rigg, who played the coolly delicious, leather-clad Emma Peel in the playful '60s British spy series "The Avengers," turned 70 on Sunday. A birthday Search salute exploded: Lookups for the septugenarian surged a staggering 90,086%, landing her leather boots among the day's top 25 terms. That's more searches than Miley Cyrus with her new "Breakout" album, Britney Spears and her custody loss, or Angelina Jolie hoisting her new twins.

The fervor over a Dame turning 70 speaks to the cult power of the spy show, and calls for a TV history lesson: "The Avengers" (no relation to the Marvel comic) breathed campy aesthetics and thumbed its nose at all convention and storytelling while still looking timeless thanks to designer duds, spiffy vintage cars, and gender-role tweaking. The show also made small-screen history by casting a woman as a partner (to dapper spy John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee), rather than a sidekick or damsel in distress.

The postmodern Mrs. Emma Peel was built to appeal to men—"man appeal" or M-Appeal (get it)—which in the '60s meant putting a Shakespearean-trained lass in leather and stretch jersey. The lady also fenced, published scientific papers, ran an empire, dispensed bad guys with karate chops, and was fearless in the face of cackling villainy. The Man Appeal still holds up 40+ years later: Guys not only conducted more than 80% of Rigg's birthday searches, but also made up 8 out of 10 "emma peel" searches (which strode to the top 500 Sunday). 

Rigg left the show in 1968, starring next as the only Bond wife ever in the movies. Still, two seasons had been enough to establish her as an iconic, liberated character who even now still seems before her time. Rigg herself has said for years that image is "not relevant to me," although a recent interview shows she still hasn't lost her cool.