Penny Valentine says I'm "beautiful".

Penny Valentine, middle and Dusty Springfield, right. Sometime in the 1960's.

Valentine, according to fellow journalist Richard Williams, "...was probably the first woman to write about pop music as though it really mattered.". She became for a time Britain's most influential reviewer of new pop singles and also wrote about and was a participant in the "social whirl of receptions, parties and night-clubbing that made Swinging London such fun", interviewing The Beatles and Rolling Stones. She co-wrote an biography of Dusty Springfield, Dancing With Demons (2000) and died in 2003 at the age of 59.

Valentine's article, “This is how it feels to be a beautiful person”, appeared in the UK weekly Disc and Music Echo in 1967 or 1968 alongside a picture of Paul McCartney and then-girlfriend Jane Asher. I came across it while perusing my Christmas gift from Donovan & Maria & Grace & Gwyneth (in California) - the book, A Hard Day's Write - The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Son, and is said to one of the influences behind the Lennon-McCartney song, "Baby You're A Rich Man".

I noted YES or NO after each point.

Beautiful people have existed for years.

It’s nothing to do with what you look like or the clothes you wear. It’s what goes on in your mind and your approach in life.

Beautiful people, as a phrase, has come to the foreground today because of the flower movement, the emergence of the hippies, Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles and Scott McKenzies’s “San Francisco” .

But even the hippiest hippy, surely, has harboured some pretty evil thoughts and some pretty anti-feelings. Has been unkind, insensitive, thoughtless. Not noticed things around him.

It’s been borrowed by the hippies. But even if you don’t wear kaftans, beads, bells and granny green glasses take heart, you can STILL be a beautiful person. Read on and find out how.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL IF YOU:

1. Like dancing on cool grass in your bare feet (even if there are no pipes of Pan and the grass is in your own back garden). YES

2. Read Professor Tolkein’s The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings and love Bilbo Baggins. YES

3. Have watched the dawn come up and actually realised what was happening. YES

4. Dream. YES

5. Love your dog, the postman, the blind man who sells matches on the corner, your neighbours (even when they bang on the wall when you put Sgt. Pepper on full volume). YES to the dog. I don't know any blind people on streetcorners.

6. Dislike war, the Government, anti-people. YES, except for the last one.

7. Think the countryside is a gas and ought to stay wild. YES

8. Enjoy splashing through the rain, laughing, children, colours, poetry, people. (YES, though Penny seems to contradict herself – see #6)

9. Refuse to tread on ants, spiders and beetles. SORT OF

10. Know where Granny Takes A Trip is. NO. (By the way, this was a boutique on Kings Road in London formed in 1966.)

11. Give a daisy to the policeman who tells you your party is too noisy, drags you away from Wanstead Flats when you are merely admiring the view or pulls you feet first up a dirty road to a waiting van during a sit-down protest. NO

12. Harbour a burning desire to visit Mexico or India. NO

I scored a 7.5. Good enough to be "beautiful"? I think so. That's me being "beautiful" in a production of "HAIR" in 1995. That's Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary (left) and Michael Butler (right), the original producer of "HAIR" on Broadway.