Eartha Kitt, 81 years young and high-kicking her pins around London's posh-curtained supper-club La Pigalle next week and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival the week after, is the grrrrrr-eatest woman ever invented. This, my friends, is a fact. For ever since the eyelinered pussycat of perviness grrrrrr'd into her way into my life (as the glamorously naughty Catwoman to Adam West's bedwetter of a Batman), I've been on a mission to tell the world about her cult dameness. And this – grrrr – is why.

Her rise to fame was extraordinary

Being born into poverty on a cotton plantation in South Carolina didn't stop our Eartha, nor did the fact that she never knew who her mother and father were. This self-made megastar joined the all-African American Katherine Dunham company as a teenager, bagged her first film role at 20 in the film Casbah, and at 23 got cast by someone called Orson Welles – you know, big bloke, directed some films – as Helen Of Troy in Dr Faustus. He called her "The most exciting woman in the world", which was quite right of him.

Her music in the '50s and '60s was really filthy

If you like the idea of filthy music hall and dirty torchsongs, Eartha's your girl. My personal favourite (and the song I try and open DJ sets with when I'm allowed to be odd) is the horntastic I Want To Be Evil, a song about a good girl who wants to be bad. Here's an amazing TV performance of it from 1962, and the very reason that YouTube was invented.

She made the President Lyndon Johnson's wife cry

In 1968, now properly famous after her Catwoman stint, Eartha was invited to a charity lunch at the White House by President Lyndon Johnson. Asked by the First Lady what she thought about juvenile delinquency, she said: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” Amazing.

She's the barmy grandma we all wish we had

Take her classic version of Santa Baby, a song she's still taunting old St Nick with as an octagenarian. Watch her below, growling like a kitten who's just spotted some Whiskas in Santa's beard, and dream that your pensionable years will be full of similar madness.

Her gay icon comeback was exemplary

Remember Eartha's 80s comeback hit, Where Is My Man? Now there was a song, my friend. She followed it up with a Hi-NRG duet with Bronski Beat too, and invented camp disco heaven in the process. Those of an aversion to growling, glitter and shiny keyboards are advised to prepare themselves.

She starred as the Fairy Godmother in a production of Cinderella with Debbie Gibson

OK, in my weird world at least, this is amazing.

Her CIA record is priceless

Set up in the '60s and revealed to her only recently, it described Eartha as “a sadistic nymphomaniac with a vile tongue”. Us mortals can only dream of such heights.

More than anything, there's life in the old girl yet

Watch this clip of here from last year, singing:"I still believe in chasing dreams, and placing bets / And I have learned that all you give is all you get / So give it all you've got". What a woman. You show 'em, Eartha.