Shame!

Oscar Wilde's grave in Paris has put up with a lot in its first century - the flying angel headstone has been castrated (twice), commemorative candles have scorched the front, and multilingual graffiti are regularly scrawled over the tomb. But now it's suffering from its most damaging assault: hundreds of lipstick kisses.

Wilde died aged 46 in poverty at the Hotel d'Alsace, 13 Rue des Beaux Arts, Paris, and was buried in a tomb paid for by an anonymous 'lady'. The headstone - a winged, naked and initially well-hung angel - was considered so offensive that the cemetery's head keeper castrated it and for several years used the testicles as a paperweight. Genitals were later restored to the angel, but they were stolen during the Sixties. In the early Nineties, Holland and the family of Wilde's literary executor, Robert Ross, paid for restoration work and a plaque at the base of the tomb which reads (in English and French): 'Respect the memory of Oscar Wilde and do not deface this tomb. It is protected by law as an historical monument and was restored in 1992.