Today is the 31st birthday of one of my favorite British racktresses, London native Rachel Stirling. So it seems like a good time to muse on her greatest work to date, the lesbian-laden three-part BBC miniseries Tipping the Velvet. In this Sapphic serial, the title of which is old British slang for rug-munching, Rachel plays a working class oyster picker who becomes a high-class clam digger when she discovers the hidden world of Victorian vag-itarians. Over the course of her sexual awakening, Rachel grinds groins with other girls, gets her carpet cleaned, and even walks among a crowd of women wearing nothing but gold body paint and a huge strap-on dildo. Rachel's hotness comes with a pedigree; her mother is Diana Rigg (Emma Peel from The Avengers), who was second only to The Beatles as Britain's hottest export in the swinging sixties.