Madame Arcati

Susan Penhaligon poetry: The Ashes - in memory of actor Richard Warwick

2012-01-28T10:43:00.000Z

Susan Penhaligon

Madame Arcati debuted (post-Coward rehearsal) as warrior. These days, this site is a salon of the precious talents - a refuge from the tyranny of media criminality and tiresome reflexes (I have yet to see one decent media cock-cocker or cunt-cunter at the Leveson inquiry - do you now see the playground prejudices at work? The recycling of stereotypes in real-life real-time?).

But enough of transitory fashion. The passing delusions. One of the talents the Madame Arcati salon adores is actor Susan Penhaligon. I have already showcased her poetry (click here to read); and I'm honoured to publish yet another example of her work - I ho hope publishers are paying attention.

The Ashes was written in memory of actor Richard Warwick (1945-1997). Susan tells me: 'He played my husband in A Fine Romance. Tragically he died of Aids. He was one of my best friends.'

The Ashes

Into the spider's web and stone of

Cheltenham

past the Daffodil cinema,

into the sleet

towards your favourite place,

on the day we left you for the

boatman.

Down familiar roads,

maps drawn heavy in the mind,

the lines of childhood unsmudged,

your brother rattling memories on

speed -

where the tree house formed

an ark in the Yew tree,

a hidey hole by the Holly bush,

in 61 the flooded fields iced over

for you to skate the Cotswolds.

We ford the mud-filled, wet-filled

fields,

the Severn banks collapsed,

a racing, river road

collapsing trees and sky and us,

us three,

the friend, the lover, the brother,

our faces wet with flooding.

We stand before the Elephant tree

and pour you out,

from our palms where we held you

we pour you out

like spice, like adding salt,

we put you to the liquid earth

in the flooded wetlands of your

childhood.

And through the rising deep,

across the seascape fields,

the waters covered the face of

the earth

and the Ark sailed on towards us.

Roger Lewis: Very fat ladies and their gunts

2012-01-26T19:33:00.000Z

Britain's wittiest writer Roger Lewis has written again - I thought I'd share our correspondence with his gagging-for-it public. The 'Paris Connaught' he mentions below is a commenter to his last letter, should you wonder....

Dear Madame A,
Who is "Paris Connaught"? And if it is a "nasty little site" what is she doing accessing it? Paris Travelodge more like.
It's like Groucho Marx, who complained to some magazine in high dudgeon and moral indignation, and said any more of it "and I will be compelled to cancel my subscription."
Molly Noyle Parkin sends me "jokes" with rude words. I have taken to addressing her as Noyle, which is probably Welsh for the vadge.
Talking of which -- I have just discovered from my new doctor friends in The Royal Cornwall Hospital that the part in very very fat women between the overflowing belly and the vast bulging thighs is known by the profession as the "gunt".
It has almost been worth my while nearly dropping dead to know this. I offer it as my New Year present to you.
Always,
Roger Lewis

XXX

My Darling Roger

Only this afternoon, Moll and I were gossing about you - and she sent me a delightful joke of yours. I don't know who Paris Connaught could be: the oddest people pass by en route to the porn sites. At least the bint - a word I love - is not Paris Premier Inn From £29 A Night.

I have never heard of the word 'gunt' and thank you for it. I wonder whether Fern Britton or Dawn French are familiar with it. Do you think their diet doctors fingered their gunts? Questions, questions.

Love, respect (but save me from 'Love and Light')

Your MA x

(I'm bunging all of this up. Francis Wheen 'liked' your last letter on my Facebook page, btw. A lovely poppet. Pity about the atheism)

Roger Lewis: Pancreatitis and being taken for Sir Roger Moore CBE

2012-01-23T15:41:00.000Z

Roger Lewis

Fans of Roger Lewis were most concerned to hear he was at death's door over Christmas with pancreatitis. Happily, Britain's funniest writer was refused an astral tunnel visa and is now back home convalescing. In response to my solicitude, he wrote me the following:

Dear Madame Arcati,

Home at last, where I creep about the chimney corner in a brocade dressing gown like John Hurt doing Beckett's Krapp.

Pancreatitis. Not recommended. My fault for ignoring the diabetes symptoms. But still. 1 in 3 die of what I had -- and once I was on the IV morphine drip, death seemed quite a nice option. (As it still does)

Because I have been patched up by the docs only to have to face fucking bills, fucking invoices, fucking VAT and fucking income tax demands and fucking trying to make fucking ends fucking meet in that fucking freelance way.

I think that's all part of what made me ill: 30 years of doing what I do and mostly all I get are inadequate and irresponsible reviews and (save for yourself and a handful of discerning others ) scant recognition.

Thrilled you seem to like the new book, What Am I Still Doing Here? - darker and madder (and better) than Seasonal Suicide Notes. If I ever do a 3rd volume I have the title ready: "I'll Just Die And Then You'll Be Sorry."

I'll go down in history for at least being Ronald Searle's final patron -- his cover the last thing he ever did.

One funny thing happened this week. I got these fulsome ("Darling Roger") emails from veteran film director Bryan Forbes, whom I only know very vaguely -- from my Peter Sellers research days. Turns out he thought he was communicating with Roger Moore. He (Bryan) only twigged when he asked with justified bepuzzlement "What were you doing in hospital in Truro over Christmas?" As indeed, what would 007 Sir Roger Moore CBE be doing in Truro over Christmas, or at any time?

The boiler has gone kaput this morning. On the whole I'd rather be back in the High Dependency Ward.

Gluckliches neues jahr !

ROGER

The Standard's Londoner's Diary picked up this story. Click here)

Cheiro: The man who foretold Wallis and abdication

2012-01-22T10:04:00.002Z

Cheiro

Darling Madonna has single-handedly revived interest in dick chick Wallis Simpson with her much-mocked movie W.E. Since I have not seen the flick, and will probably successfully dodge it, I shall confine my commentary to a far more interesting aspect of this 'royal love story' - one that perhaps owes its provenance more to the exquisite bonding joys of PG-threatening tongue-fu than anything else.

I have in my possession an original copy of Cheiro's World Predictions, published in 1925. For those who don't know of Cheiro, he was an Irish astrologer and clairvoyant, aka William John Warner. Oscar Wilde's palm was familiar to Cheiro in which doom was writ large - the reading is recounted in Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde.

Thinking of Madge's W.E., I turn to page 72 of World Predictions to read Cheiro's forecast for the then Prince of Wales, later Mr King-Emperor Wallis Simpson.

'Rumour says that Queen Mary, and in a lesser degree, King George, have worried themselves seriously over this problem of the Prince who may be fond of a light flirtation with the fair sex but is determined not to "settle down" until he feels a grande passion,' he writes. Cheiro goes on to foretell: 'But, it is well within the range of possibility, owing to the peculiar planetary influences to which he is subjected, that he will fall a victim of a devastating love affair.

'If he does, I predict that the Prince will give up everything, even the chance of being crowned, rather than lose the object of his affection.'

Written 11 years before Edward VIII's abdication over Wallis, I'd say - in the spirit of compromise - that this wasn't such a bad guess.

Duncan Fallowell: The death of Diana

2012-01-21T12:30:00.002Z

'Death is the normality, life is the exception.' I like this line from Duncan Fallowell's essay 'The Death of Diana', in his latest book How to Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits. A newspaper should buy the rights to this piece for the next death anniversary of Diana. Fake iconoclasts will be appalled.

Madame Arcati performs a resurrection (before Easter)

2012-01-20T13:21:00.000Z

Ssshhhh! Don't say anything but I'm back. It's true I died and passed into an astral waiting room and met the Dear Leader and others; but what people don't realise is that you can return to this vale of crocodile tears if you wish - and if your body is still intact.

I won't be updating regularly, just when I feel like it. I am so distressed to read that Andy Coulson is having to sell up his house, take the kids out of private school and ignore Rebekah Brooks at parties - it's no way to treat a former lackey and professional liar, is it?

As for myself, many changes are swirling about - doubtless Neptune's passage into Pisces on February 3 will trigger certain things. I'll keep you informed. It is most important not to get bored, don't you agree? There will be more astrology on this site amid the usual updates on literary and cock-cunting matters. If you don't like it, just fuck off, dearies.

The next big party is Molly Parkin's 80th (no further invites available!) - and Madame will be there. In person.

Madame Arcati blog

2011-11-29T09:13:00.008Z

An interview with Victor Olliver.

Jonathan King shock horror! A 'fair' press interview

2011-11-28T14:54:00.000Z

The new Independent editor Chris Blackhurst can't be all bad. He has actually run a fair interview with social media pariah (du jour) Jonathan King when the press convention is to label him a paedo, run doctored pics of him ogling kids in parks (as Andy Coulson did at the News of the World) or pretend he never existed (as at the BBC, until the DG Mark Thompson reversed that foolishness in a written apology).

The Indie relates how its interview with JK came about: he wrote to Blackhurst pointing out that his memoirs had recently topped an Amazon book sales chart and that thousands had viewed his movies on YouTube and elsewhere.

Such maverick responsiveness in a sitting editor must be almost without precedent in modern times. To read the piece click here.

Duncan Fallowell's Turin letter: Magical mysteries... and a dark porn cinema

2011-11-24T16:34:00.002Z

Dear Madame Arcati

I have just returned from an intoxicating period in Turin and, since you have an Italian name and also an interest in mystery, I thought you might like the series 'Tredici Misteri di Torino' [Thirteen Mysteries of Turin] which I have to-day posted on YouTube.

Here is a taste, click here.

The city is fortresslike and of massive blocks on a stone grid with secret baroque courtyards and rococo interiors. For its size it has a greater number of bookshops than any city in the world. And its caffés are even grander than Vienna's with better food and more gymnastic waiters. You will also be interested to know that it is one of the three cities of the white magic triangle (the other two being Prague and Lyon) and doubtless even more excited to learn that it is one of the three cities of the black magic triangle too! (the other two being London and San Francisco - how on earth did Frisco get in there?).

It certainly has the darkest porn cinema I've ever visited, a cosy retreat when the weather is inclement. Not that it was inclement. Glacial blue skies, starry at night, and the Alps snowcapped as backdrop. Anyway the city is weatherproof with nearly 20 miles of glorious arcades in the historic centre and something of interest round every other pillar. You probably want to know more about my erotic adventures there - but I'm still in a secretive romantic glow so allow me to fondle my memories privately a little longer.

With best wishes, Duncan Fallowell

My Dear Duncan

Thank you so much - it's been years since I stayed in Torino. As to your intriguing film, I find that an iconic water feature in a place of worship is never so much sullied as by stigmata of its electrical power source. Don't you find? Still, your average Roman Catholic is a pragmatist. Which is just as well.

I think Turin has found its re-creator.

Love & Light (to quote the hideous New Age lingo)

MA x

Modern manners: the graceless stupidity of ignoring emails

2011-11-20T10:44:00.002Z

When a Jehovah's Witness rings my bell, I make certain he or she sees me through a window before I go about my business and decline to come to the door. JWs are easy to spot: they usually travel in pairs (may I just say that the Watchtower is quite well written), are clad in a chic I term shabby neat and always stand impassively and patiently at the door, as if embarked on a picnic-fuelled siege. Sales people tend to fidget.

My purpose in manifesting my person at the window is of course a calculated offence: I want them to understand that they have been observed and that I have elected to ignore them. It's a kind cruelty of a sort: it does at least invite the option not to call again, thereby saving them much in hurt dignity, if any.

A very modern variation on this rudeness is the ignored email. You, the sender, have gone to the bother of directing energy at a certain target (an editor, say). Perhaps you have suggested an idea, or pointed something out: in other words, you have bothered. The effect? Nothing.

You know the email has arrived because emails don't go missing: that's a modern myth. There is no such thing as a lost email, unless it has been wilfully deleted by some lazy cunt (ie the sendee). You may be on good terms with the sendee who reads your email - and then decides not to respond. You may be well known to the sendee, you may even have enjoyed carnal knowledge (perhaps not), yet silence is the answer.

Suddenly I am the Jehovah's Witness treated as an unwelcome visitor.

In the case of the office-bound editor or journalist who ignores emails, this is a behavioural exhibition of arrogance or sheer ignorance arising from tenure. The individual has started to imagine, thanks to the plastic security of status, that they are being inundated - that somehow everyone 'out there' is trying to sell them something. Thanks to their elevated position, the normal rules of etiquette are suspended because no equality is perceived. Silence is a type of response (in that it falls short of an expectation): its purpose is to advertise the importance of the sendee.

Silence is the flamboyant twirl of Big I Am.

The Silent are in transit, see - they hallucinate that their lives are moving at greater speed than those who are 'out there' - and the absence of response is a living demonstration. In any case, an ego trip based on not doing something is one of the delights of tenured journalism. It adds to the quilting of contract life, to the relish of professional hibernation on a Caffè Nero drip feed.

What I love most though is that The Silent usually come calling later, pretending not to have received the email or attempting to gloss over their graceless stupidity. That's when the real fun starts.

Jonathan King: The Sun, The Moon, Paul Merton and HIGNFY

2011-11-15T19:00:00.001Z

The Moon in Me Me Me

The witty topical TV quiz Have I Got News For You? this week had Andy Hamilton suggest that, if The Sun closes down, the new tabloid should be called The Moon.

"What a brilliant name!" exclaimed Paul Merton.

Yes - so brilliant that six months ago Jonathan King's second movie, satirical Me Me Me - premiered in London and screened at the Cannes Film Festival - featured a national British daily paper called… The Moon.

In fact, the film's already had 12,000 full length downloads and views to the free website - you can watch the movie for nothing here. It was the No1 film on YouTube last week for 13-30 year-olds.

The film was revealed exclusively by Madame Arcati last May. Perhaps the scriptwriters should borrow Madame's crystal balls or invite JK back on - I'm sure he's more than capable of giving them a run for their six-figure fees.

To read Madame's 'non-review' of the flick, click here.

Duncan Fallowell: Krautrock, acid wildness and.... The Spectator magazine

2011-11-13T18:29:00.001Z

Duncan Fallowell back in the 1970s

Lovers of krautrock awake! Spoon Records and Mute are bringing out a 40th anniversary edition of the classic, 'genre-defying' Can album Tago Mago this week.

As it happens, leading Arcatiste Duncan Fallowell provided the original liner notes which were taken from an article he published in Melody Maker in October 1971, reprinted for the reissue. He didn't really want them to, but the record companies said: 'Oh yes, that's the whole point, it's historical. And would you like to write some new ones too?' So, he has done so.

Duncan was the first person in the UK to visit band Can in Germany and write about them - he 'broke' them here as it were - and did it - guess where? - in the once old codgery Spectator. 'Can you imagine it now?' Duncan tells Madame. 'It was really marvellous of the Speccie to go with my wildness in those days which was down to the arts editor really, Kenneth Hurren, but George Gale and the wonderful Harry Creighton were amused by it too. I was 21, 22. It was young fresh acid wildness, not the Jeffrey Barnard sozzled old mackintosh wildness of subsequent Spectator years.'

When Duncan went on the hippy trail for a year at the end of 1974, Kenneth Hurren gave him a letter of introduction on Spectator writing-paper. 'By that time Kenneth had become Associate Editor because George Gale had been sacked - but Harry would never allow Kenneth to call himself 'editor' as such, which caused unhappiness,' says Duncan.

'Harry liked to consider himself editor but of course he wasn't. Patrick Cosgrave, I believe, was also annoyed at not being called editor. Anyway this gave rise to the story which I include in How To Disappear (p 78) about the British Embassy in Bangkok which I used for a few weeks as a forwarding address. They were so astonished that I should be a sort of roving correspondent for such a magazine that they rang the Spectator office in Gower Street. Gill Pyrah, who was editorial secretary at the time, picked up the phone and asked them, "Have you seen him wearing tight, bright-yellow flared trousers?" "Yes, we have as a matter of fact." "Then that's Duncan".

'By the time I got back from India at the end of 1975 the magazine had been sold to Henry Keswick and soon moved to Doughty Street where Alexander Chancellor retained me as a columnist for quite a long time - but eventually my anarchies got the better of both of us and I went off to do the punk glossies Deluxe and Boulevard.'

Of Can, he adds: 'They fed my Dionysiac side and still do - but they are intellectuals as well, so this re-release of Tago Mago is a terrific feast for the mind and body.'

For more info or to order a copy, click here.

A flavour of the Can festival: click arrow once to play....

Londoner's Diary mwah for Madame Arcati over Guardian's naughtiness

2011-11-11T12:43:00.000Z

Britain's most wonderful gosser, the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary, sweetly mentions the Madame Arcati blog (what a common word 'blog' is, on second thoughts) - do have a read here. I'm far too busy with my horoscopes to précis the matter, but tribute is paid to my fine manners (well, I am The Lady's weekly astrologer - and its first, fans rush to tell me).

I shall only say, in the wake of the Diary's item, that the Guardian must resist the temptation to emulate the BBC in its formulaic claims to have 'learned' of a news story when really they should give credit where it is due and admit that they're ~~cutting and pasting~~ lifting.

That's the problem with atheism. It leads to immorality and pogroms.

London life: Molly Parkin and the man with a big one

2011-11-09T09:26:00.000Z

My permanent fiancee Molly Parkin shared this story with me the other day and I felt it only right to give it the wider dissemination it deserves..... She writes:

YESTERDAY'S ENCOUNTER ON THE WAY TO THE APPLE EMPORIUM

AS I CROSSED THE PIAZZA AT COVENT GARDEN
TWO COCKNEY CHAPS DRESSED IN PEARLY KING KIT
WERE THERE WITH A TRAY.
THE TWINKLY, PORTLY, WRINKLY BOOMED OUT
"MOLL, I'VE GOT A BIG ONE FOR YA!"
I TURNED AND YELLED BACK
"SORRY, MATE...BUT THOSE DAYS ARE OVER.."
HE SHOUTED BACK
"TALKIN' BOUT A CARNATION, LUV

THE WHOLE SQUARE LAUGHED
(HE MAY HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE MEAT PORTERS FROM SMITHFIELD, GROWN OLDER!)

Kirk Douglas on bisexuality - and why Tatler is now soooo gorgeous

2011-11-03T15:04:00.002Z

Kirk Douglas by Darrell Robinson
aka Wooden Horse

There's no point moaning about my non-attendance or imagining that I'm dying of a communicable disease. I have the Christmas and New Year horoscopes to work on. I am sozzled on future doings. However, the unprofitable present still has the capacity to stir my torpid interest.

First, I am delighted that the immensely improved Tatler has placed Duncan Fallowell's How To Disappear travel memoir [reviewed here] among its sexiest reads of the year. Ever since the 'spinning vagina expert' took over as editor, and Tiny Tears fucked off to the Mail, the magazine has gone from strength to strength in its championing of aristocratic and models-look eugenics: I can only aspire to the perfected physical and mental entitlements as showcased and celebrated in its glossy pages - but silly me!

This fabulous exhibition of good taste in Tatler draws me inexorably to the second thing to stir me - a YouTube video conversation about bisexuality, threesomes and cock-cocking prison sex. Once again we have Duncan F to thank for anchoring me in the present. It is in his interview with the legendary Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas that our attention is drawn to sexual practices that may be foreign to our nation's prim, comme il faut tabloid journalists.

Kirk wisely declines to say whether he has ever done anything that might outrage the Tinseltown homophobes, but he does reminisce about a big butch cock-cunter who went to jail for 10 years and there discovered that a pretty stubbled face in twilight is a perfectly acceptable substitute for organic relief. Having served his sentence and rejoined the public, our hero reverted to his normal sexual service without apparent need of psychotherapy, priest or agony aunt.

Suddenly, the present has its attractions - but the future beckons once again.

To watch the Kirk Douglas video, click here. Darrell Robinson's gallery can be viewed here.

Silvio Berlusconi and his joyless cock: a poem by Fake Daniels

2011-10-29T12:26:00.005+01:00

A learned writer calling himself or herself Fake Daniels recently commented on actress Susan Penhaligon's poetry - his or her critique betrayed a referential if not satirical bent. Here, Fake Daniels draws on an ancient Latin source to reflect on Silvio Berlusconi, the noted satyr and occasional PM of Italy.

An imitation of Martial's epigram 1.34 (translated original below)

Remarkably unguarded for a man with Security...
I think you like the cameras more than cunt.

But working girls keep the factory door shut.
Learn from them how to hide your labouring bones.

I don't care what you do with your joyless cock -
Viagra-hard like a hammered thumb -
but I forbid you, Silvio, from keeping getting caught.

The translated original:

XXXIV. TO LESBIA.

You always take your pleasure, Lesbia, with doors unguarded and open, nor are you at any pains to conceal your amusements. It is more the spectator, than the accomplice in your doings, that pleases you, nor are any pleasures grateful to your taste if they be secret. Yet the common courtesan excludes every witness by curtain and by bolt, and few are the chinks in a suburban brothel. Learn something at least of modesty from Chione, or from Alis: even the monumental edifices of the dead afford hiding-places for abandoned harlots. Does my censure seem too harsh? I do not exhort you to be chaste, Lesbia, but not to be caught.

And for classicists, the original:

XXXIV

INCUSTODITIS et apertis, Lesbia, semper
liminibus peccas nee tua furta tegis,
et plus spectator quam te delectat adulter
nee sunt grata tibi gaudia si qua latent.
at meretrix abigit testem veloque seraque

raraque Submemmi fornice rima patet.
a Chione saltern vel ab lade disce pudorem :
abscondunt spurcas et monumenta lupas.
numquid dura tibi nimium censura videtur ?
deprendi veto te, Lesbia, non futui.

Susan Penhaligon debuts as poet: A MILF at 50 and Bloody Cornwall

2011-10-25T18:46:00.010+01:00

The actress and writer Susan Penhaligon - best known for her starring role as Prue in Bouquet of Barbed Wire and for appearances in many other TV dramas such as A Fine Romance - is also a poet (on the quiet).

'I write poems as a sort of diary,' Susan tells Madame Arcati. 'So they go back years. Some of them are just a moment trapped in time.'

It's a body of work that I'm sure will find its public - and I'm honoured to publish Cornishwoman Susan's Feeling down and Now I'm Fifty.

Now I'm Fifty
By Susan Penhaligon

Now I'm fifty I shall wear
Too much make up.
I shall look admiringly without shame
at young men's bodies,
Muscles firm stretched out
In the sun.
I shall sit with dark glasses and red lipstick
dressed in black at a table outside
an Italian restaurant, my mobile phone
poised importantly at my ear.
I shall wear all my gold rings at once,
And my perfume, though sweet, will be
Full of lemons.
I shall dwell without melancholy on the
Richness of my past,
And the heels of my shoes, perhaps a
Touch too puissant, will not make me stagger,
Now I'm fifty.

Feeling down
By Susan Penhaligon

Bloody Cornwall,
bloody granite,
bloody Cornwall,
bloody sea,
bloody sand smells,
bloody rocks,
bloody life boat,
bloody fish Market,
bloody Methodists,
bloody primary school.

Bloody London,
bloody no air,
bloody no God,
bloody no sea,
bloody no life.

Bloody Cornwall.

(Copyright © Susan Penhaligon 2011)

Poetry Olympics Superjam: Join Molly Parkin, Michael Horovitz and Steven Berkoff

2011-10-25T11:12:00.006+01:00

Darling poet Michael Horovitz - a still potent septuagenarian - invites you to join him and a clutch of lyrical luminaries at his Poetry Olympics Superjam Parts 1 & 2 this Friday (Oct 28).

Among the arts circus acts are Elvis McGonagall, Gwyneth Herbert, Ayana Witter-Johnson, Adam Horovitz, Steven Berkoff, Barry Miles, Niall McDevitt, Annie Whitehead, Molly Parkin, Sophie Parkin and Francesca Beard, as well as Miles Davis Landesman, Kath Best and Hanja Kochansky celebrating the late lamented lyricist and poet Fran Landesman.

The Venue: University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY. Starts 6pm. For more info, click here.

Roger Lewis book party: Adult nappies, posh gits and names galore, darling

2011-10-19T18:33:00.012+01:00

Perfect

Party reports from guests Molly Parkin, Jonathan King and Duncan Fallowell. And a letter from host Roger Lewis on his glorious celebration.

'Roger was wearing sandals. The last person I remember wearing sandals at his own book launch was Jeremy Sandford, circa 1985.' So reports Duncan Fallowell, one of many notable guests at Roger Lewis' launch party for What Am I Still Doing Here?, his fabulous and funny autobiographical follow-up to acclaimed Seasonal Suicide Notes.

Madame Arcati couldn't make it, of course. but she had not one, not two, but three famous appointed ambassadors dispatched to the Chris Beetles Ltd event on Tuesday (Oct 18) evening in London's SW1: the blessed Duncan (a biped concordance on party lore), the divine fiancee Molly Parkin and last and never least - oh yes - Jonathan King, lately the recipient of an apology from the BBC DG Mark Thompson himself.

Molly Parkin portrait by
Darren Coffield

JK tells me: 'My dear friend Lynn Barber just e-m'd me to say Duncan Fallowell was terribly keen to meet me because of our mutual friend Arcati! I'd have liked to have seen him with his clothes on.'

He adds: 'Molly Parkin looked gorgeous and took most of the attention in a room which ranged from Richard Littlejohn and Quentin Letts through Barry Cryer to Lynn Barber and Valerie Grove. Literally anyone who is anyone in London literary society was there and most had read about the BBC apology on Madame Arcati's site, so I spent the time fielding journalist questions. But the main puzzle was - how does Arcati know everything? I'm sorry to say I revealed the existence of the crystal ball, the cards and the stars.'

Isn't he adorable? OK, if you're a tabloid cunt he isn't adorable.

Duncan Fallowell

Molly Parkin reports: 'The party was full of posh gits - literary, artistic and fashion types I normally avoid - and loads of old Colony people, and Gyles Brandreth and (film director) Joe McGrath (82 now!) who worked a lot with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. Even Clair Woodward, the Arts & Ents Editor of the Sunday Express, was there. Men at the party kept on coming up to me and saying, "I want to shake your hand so I can say I shook the hand of Molly Parkin."'

A little confusion attended the opening minutes of the do. 'We couldn't get in initially and it was already 6.20 pm,' says Moll. 'Then a funny little girl opened the door; a bit of a cock-up. It was in a gallery of sorts with loads of water colours on the wall; the party was split over three separate areas.' Duncan adds: 'It was such a weird basement of cramped chambers.'

Moll continues: 'I met that wonderful journalist on the Independent Matthew Bell who was there with a difficult girl - he told me Duncan was trying to get my attention - it was terribly crowded. By the time I was free he'd gone - Roger wasn't happy about that. Roger said, "Duncan's prematurely disappeared."'

Moll paraded in a self-made tall magenta turban which excited the interest of author and journalist Valerie Grove - 'What have you stuffed the turban with?' she asked after calling it a 'fantastic hat'. Moll replied: 'Adult nappies.' Poor Val gave a disgusted 'Oh' and hoped the nappies had not been used first.

Jonathan King

Moll confides to Madame Arcati: 'Actually, the nappies were not used but I had bought some after someone told me about incontinence in the elderly. I'm not incontinent but I wanted to see if they work. So I put one on and went for a piddle - and not a drop leaked out. So next time I go to the theatre or cinema I'm going to wear a nappy and I can have a piddle without getting up. Nappies make great padding for turbans.'

And as for Duncan's early exit... he explains: 'I had to leave Roger's launch to go on to the Keats-Shelley party at Carlton House Terrace - followed by dinner at the Academy Club.

'But I then caught up with Roger around 11 pm at the Groucho where he was staying with his wife [Anna] and 3 sons - they'd been for a slap-up at Rule's. There were more drunks in the Groucho than in the Academy which must be a first. And so the Groucho was strangely quiet, several out cold slumped in armchairs. Roger on the other hand was just warming up and waving a glass of champagne around in the air and chatting up the pianist.'

Moll pays tribute to the surprising youthfulness of their 50-something host Roger and the 'beauty' of his sons. Duncan adds: 'I asked Roger, "Where did you find your handsome barman?" He replied "That's Sebastian". I didn't recognise his youngest son who last time I saw him some years ago was a hippy in embryo.'

How annoying! Madame Arcati regrets not attending this party. And yet she feels she walked among Roger Lewis' guests after all, in three persons, one nappied.

What Am I Still Doing Here? can be bought here.

Oh, and a letter from Roger Lewis himself....

Dear Madame Arcati,

Yes -- a great do. Barry Cryer said, "It's your book come to life!"

Luckily, the Booker Prize dinner siphoned off the dreck.

A highlight for me (in addition to your Molly) was the presence of Biddy Baxter! It was as if Dame Sybil Thorndike had turned up. She said: "Did you get a Blue Peter Badge" and I said, "No I bloody well did not!"

Also, we had Lord Archer, who unsportingly refused to exchange Belmarsh tales with young Jonathan King.

Judi Bowker

But also sneaking in -- the divine Judi Bowker. That's right, that vision of loveliness from Black Beauty and Clash of the Titans, where she was last seen lashed to a rock being menaced by Laurence Olivier. She was also blonde and gorgeous in The Shooting Party, with James Mason. But best of all -- Brother Sun, Sister Moon, where Zeffirelli got all these English lads to Tuscany and tried to, well, you can guess the rest.

We also had Eric Potts, the world's greatest pantomime dame -- this Christmas he's doing panto in Wimbledon, but with Barry Humphries. How can that work? Dame Edna as one of the Ugly Sisters ?

Perhaps Chris Beetles was still mourning his chum Rob Buckman, the celebrity doctor, who died on a plane heading for Toronto last week, but he was so gloomy, Rachel Johnson went up to him and said: "Are you Hungarian?"

Beetles shut the lights off at 8 sharp and 30 seconds later we were all on the street. A humorous sight, Gyles Brandreth, Barry Cryer, Stephen Frears, Joe McGrath, Molly Parkin, Francis Wheen and documentary-maker Tony "All You Need Is Love" Palmer tottering up the spiral stairs, from this dungeon where we'd been boozing. Everyone hung around for so long on the pavement, I thought, Christ, I'd better write another book so we can carry on celebrating.

A cab then drew up at the kerb, and executive editors from the Daily Mail piled out. A mob from the Sunday Express squared up to them, as if about to have a fight out of a Western.

Myself, Lady Lewis and the 3 little Lewises then went to Rules. The rest is as Duncan described, including my orthopaedic sandals for my diabetic foot.

Love,

ROGER

Jonathan King: BBC says sorry for editing him out of TOTP re-run

2011-10-17T18:53:00.002+01:00

Much to my astonishment, the BBC Director-General Mark Thompson himself has personally apologised to Jonathan King for a recent BBC Four Top of the Pops re-run from which King had been edited out. You may recall Madame Arcati's tirade on this last month.

After an assurance that King will not be excised from future re-runs, Thompson writes: 'I want to join BBC Four in apologising for this incorrect decision.' Thompson's 'colleagues' at BBC Four are quoted in the letter. They write: 'We accept that this should not have happened and we would like to apologise for any upset this caused.'

To read the letter in full, click here.

But who decided to play taste-Nazi in the first place? Whoever h/she is, they're in the wrong job. The Daily Mail needs you! As for Mark Thompson, sensible man, even if he did bite a man on the ear once.

Chris Blackhurst: Is the Independent editor a bit of a cunty?

2011-10-17T15:02:00.013+01:00

Jemima Khan

I have no idea. But given that blogging and journalism are about nine-tenths hearsay or speculation or gossip or plain wrong, we should not permit mere complete absence of any knowledge whatsoever to inhibit a voyage into the fog bank.

A story in the Guardian today informs us that Jemima Khan has departed the Indy for the New Statesman and its sexy former mascara'd New Romantic editor Jason Cowley. Apparently, Jemima - who as guest-editor this year single-handedly reinvented the Staggers by showcasing Hugh Grant's espionage skills in the phone hacking scandal - was disinclined to tolerate de facto demotion and reduced column inches as decreed by Indy new editor Chris Blackhurst.

Troublingly, these saddening events were preceded by 'warm' praise for Khan from Mr Blackhurst.

This reminds me of the fate of Richard Ingrams. The former Indy columnist reported a reassuring lunch with Mr Blackhurst, but the pabulum had scarcely reached the ex-Private Eye editor's sigmoid colon and he learned that he had been dropped by the paper.

Now, we've all done it as editors. Not been entirely straight with contributors before the axe is swung, usually to get the publication through a tricky, holiday-strewn Christmas or mid-summer schedule. But Mr Blackhurst must beware of saying one thing and doing another: not only is the Indy supposed to be nicer than the rest of the Dacre-alikes but he is alienating luminous revengers. No one forgives surprise dismissal, constructive or otherwise, and the tentacles of tit-for-tat spite are without end, though I'm sure Mr Ingrams and the investigative Goldsmith plutocrat are honourable exceptions.

Mr Blackhurst didn't entirely do himself credit in the Johann Hari scandal, either: there he was on Newsnight gamely attributing Hari's mishaps to a lack of journalistic education while the viewing public scoffed on their sofas. I'm afraid even the rather pleasant face of Mr Blackhurst betrayed a little of his own inner-scoffer, as the smiles waxed and waned a little too readily.

It pains me to write this as the Indy has been so sweet about Madame Arcati in the past. Then again I always question face value, as we all should in these uncertain times.

Beautiful Books announces administration news

2011-10-11T19:22:00.003+01:00

Sadly, publisher Beautiful Books is closing down. A notice on their website reads: 'Today, 11th October 2011, Beautiful Books entered administration.... All the employees at Beautiful Books would like to thank everyone with whom we have worked over the past six years.' Its many authors include Molly Parkin, Darren Coffield, Joseph Conrad, John Waters and so many other wonderful talents, new, established or legendary.

BB took great personal care of their authors and actually understood the value of marketing and PR: I can only assume that the great rush to e-books is among the reasons for the company's closure.

Here's hoping a multi-national fish comes along and swallows it up, and doesn't turn BB into homogenised sushi.

Amanda Lear: Chinese Walk is the best tongue-fu

2011-10-10T20:28:00.001+01:00

Oh wow. Is Amanda Lear really 72 in November? (or should we say 65?). Well, whatever. Who's counting. A friend heard this great dance track in a Rome nightclub recently - turns out to be Amanda's latest release, Chinese Walk. No doubt the BBC or some other taste-Nazi decreed it didn't quite fit a committee Nappy-Dappy playlist, so listen to it here (click arrow). Amanda was possibly born Alain Tapp, known to April Ashley as Peki d'Oslo when they worked at Le Carrousel, a '50s transvestite revue in Paris. For certain she was a protégée and mistress of Salvador Dalí - oh, but, just listen.

Stephen Fry and Jonathan King: A £600 dinner date at Le Gavroche

2011-10-08T16:21:00.005+01:00

Jonathan King

While I'm loath to give Stephen Fry yet more publicity, I am nonetheless intrigued to learn that the ubiquitous polymath and audiobook favourite had dinner with self-described 'vile pervert' Jonathan King last Thursday evening. This suggests a healthy disregard for the opinion of tabloid phone-hacking scum, or at least a degree of personal loyalty or, at the very least, hedonistic tendencies, despite his professed love of tea.

Their venue of choice was London's Le Gavroche. Yet le menu exceptionnel appears to have been the least of it as two (shall we say) monster egos tussled over whose (er, ego) was the largest of them all. Or to quote JK in his message to Madame Arcati: 'Upon boasting about my achievement [presumably of reaching the No1 spot in Amazon's Pop Culture Kindle chart with his memoirs 65 My Life So Far], I had to suffer his numerous No1 positions in every known chart in the Universe.'

Personally, I should have drowned Fry in the watercress soup, but JK bore this onslaught with magnanimity. As he says: 'Oh dear. But he is a lovely person.'

Naturally, their date could not go unnoticed. JK reveals: 'We then had a very loud disagreement about the value of language and the abilities of different species - as we left I apologised to the other Gavroche diners and a lady said, with a huge smile - "Absolutely brilliant"!'

I wonder who settled the £600 bill. [Answer from JK in comments]

PS - JK adds in a private email - 'I had lunch with Neil and Christine Hamilton last week [See photo]; Anne Robinson a few months ago; Jane Moore next week - real friends don't desert - even when one becomes a Vile Pervert!'

Chris Huhne and his awfully odd tweet (now deleted)

2011-10-07T18:46:00.004+01:00

Well, we've all done it. Sent an indiscreet or faintly embarrassing message to an unintended destination.

Embattled MP Chris Huhne today tweeted an intriguing message into the public domain and then promptly deleted it. Perhaps he should have DM'd it.

It read: 'From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story. C'

[See timeline to the left, my thanks to @Tweetminster: read top tweet. Click timeline to enlarge]

Westminster cynics will assume reflexively his dark involvement in another media foray.

But Madame Arcati prefers to think it's all perfectly innocent.

Jonathan King autobiography hits the No 1 spot in Amazon's Kindle chart

2011-09-30T15:26:00.001+01:00

I am delighted to see that Jonathan King's autobiography 65 My Life So Far hit No1 on the Amazon Kindle pop culture chart. This is amazing given the near-universal attempt to edit our tastes by our nation's media by ignoring the intriguing tome. Thanks to Madame Arcati's review and that of Roger Lewis in The Lady, however, and a little PR by the author himself, and... well, success!

You don't have to be signed up to the JK Fan Club to appreciate his priceless anecdotes about bisexual John Lennon and sooo many other stars he worked and (well) hung out with. Despite the BBC's best efforts to delete him from public record there's no denying his huge contribution to pop culture, for better or worse.

Madame's review can be read here. To buy the e-book, click here.

Gavin James Bower interview: 'Big Society? Big fuck off and die'

2011-09-28T18:42:00.008+01:00

Gavin James Bower

Gavin James Bower is back! Britain's best-looking male novelist, former runway supermodel and strategic tweeter has survived the forbidding hell of first novel acclaim (Dazed & Aroused - see labels for more) and just got on with the second. Made In Britain is a very different kind of fiction, urban grungy to the first's mannequin glam, which gets down with the post-industrial 'feral underclass' kids - the kind of hoodie urban cunties who back in August gave great copy by tearing down our cities in order to return animal sentience to certain vegetative newspaper columnists. As marketing ploy for Made In Britain, the riots should surely win Gavin's publishers Quartet a Campaign award for product placement prescience. Naturally, Madame Arcati was most keen to catch up with a man whose literary antennae miss no societal nook.....

Gavin, poppet. Such a joy to be interviewing you again! I have forgiven you for not attending Duncan Fallowell’s launch party for How To Disappear as my gossip-spy. I hear you went shopping instead. What did you buy?

GJB: I really should have gone. My shopping partner would attest to that. I spent a good hour looking at plaid flannel shirts, only to discover that every other man in London has at some point in the last twelve months done exactly the same. I've since ceremonially set fire to the bastard. (The shirt - not my shopping partner.)

Now, it’s been about two years since you published Dazed & Aroused and your new novel Made In Britain is just out - will it make me dilate the way your debut novel did?

GJB: I'd like nothing more. In fact, when my publisher and I plotted world takeover earlier this year, atop our white board of primary action items was 'Dilate Madame'. To carry on the conceit, it's a bit of a stretch from my first dip, the length feels just right - and, even though it's bittersweet, there is something of a happy ending.

I gather - because I’ve not read it yet (except for a few pages on Amazon) - that Made In Britain dwells on the so-called teenage ‘feral underclass’ of Burnley - their drugs, dreams, dicks, etc. The August city riots couldn’t have been timed better! (Not that I’m saying….) Did you will the rioters on from your TV sofa? And while we’re on the subject, I think a few of the judges and magistrates got rather carried away with themselves, sending convicts off to the colonies and what have you - middle-aged baby-boomers with fat arses are quite brutal, aren’t they?

GJB: People on Twitter - middle class pseudo-journalists with nothing better to do than spray textual diarrhoea all over their iPhones - cheered these riots on, certainly, while the government couldn't get enough. Big Society? Big fuck off and die. Unaccountable though the powers that be may feel, the riots sharpened the discourse about the betrayal of former industrial towns and the working class, which is no bad thing - not just for my book, but for where I'm from and the people left behind.

How would you characterise the present coalition government of Old Etonians and multi-millionaires? Do they cause you to dilate?

GJB: They cause me to constrict; indeed, I've a sort of exacerbated constipation. I'm in rectal retrograde, Madame! The powerlessness that's characterised politics for a decade is starting to dissipate, while power's simultaneously becoming more concentrated - in, and at the hands of, the reactive and the reactionary. There's a perennial sense of déjà vu with capitalism - but nothing's inevitable, one way or the other.

Drugs appear to be a major contributory cause of social and psychic defeat in your novel. What’s to be done about urban chemical romances? And what do you do when you’re offered a line of coke at a party?

GJB: I needed a 'cool consultant' for my first novel, to help with the pills, lines and, even, fags (not that kind). I'm still the same 'clean cut lad' who was told by a mother of a friend at school, after I'd egged her house, that he's 'poison inside'.

I can’t imagine that you, a former celebrated runway model and feted novelist from a northern town, were ever feral or an underclass trog - perhaps you observed your peers from the sidelines and made notes….?

GJB: I needed to leave my home town and get distance from it before I wrote about growing up. I ended up taking ten years - from the point at which I started the book, to the age I was writing about. I went to a state comp, I didn't live far from where the riots were - and I did all the things normal working class kids do (play on the field, smash up derelict buildings, kick a football about when the factory finished). My experience of feeling awkward, like I didn't fit in - that's in all three characters. But the abuse, the drugs, the violence - that's all taken from somewhere else, albeit very close to home. Just not my home.

Gavin in a former life

Made In Britain has already received a very favourable reception. Sophie Waugh, the well known anarchist, gave it a rave in the Guardian, and I see my darling newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore has thrown a critical bouquet. How would you compare the reviews of the new book with those of Dazed &amp Aroused? Any cunt-critics we need to sort out?

GJB: I've had some criticisms - about the fine line the book treads between 'grown up' and YA, and about the leap in subject-matter - but yes so far the reaction's been good. It's a more ambitious book - but also more vulnerable to criticism. The first was premise and style, and a bit take it or leave it. This one's plot and good old fashioned tragedy. The stories and voices have to stand up. There'll always be cunt-critics, though I'm savvy to when it's straight criticism and when it's just personal.

Would you like Made In Britain to be made into a movie? If so, who should be director? Not Ken Loach I hope.

GJB: One criticism I had of the book early on was also a compliment; namely, that the book was very cinematic. So yes, I'd like to see that. Billy Walsh could direct - if he were a real person. Otherwise someone with a bigger chip on his shoulder than mine. Someone who gives a shit about the real consequences of post-industrialisation. Someone who can capture what it is that gives us our identity - as a town, and as a class. 'The next Vincent Gallo' would do, especially as he's retired.

Now Gavin, this wouldn’t be a Madame Arcati interview if we didn’t delve a little into your amatory life department. How many times have you had sex in the period between the two novels and with how many partners?

GJB: I had one girlfriend between the publication of Dazed and this summer. But now les paris sont ouverts.

And just so it’s on the record, I take it that the photograph that came in to my possession, of the headless man with a rather extravagant erection, is not you. Be honest, now.

GJB: You'd almost certainly be correct. Though I'd like nothing more to have my erection described as 'extravagant'. Well, after making Madame dilate.

I see you’re a Scorpio - said to be unforgiving, among other things. Do you regard astrology and related divinatory practices as mumbo-jumbo? Put another way, how many drug-addicted astrologers and psychics do you know?

GJB: I value loyalty and am unforgiving, that's true. It's a one-strike policy with me. I lack faith, so it's hard for me to accept anything 'divinatory'. I only know you, but I'm rather glad to say so.

And finally, Gavin. Are you working on a third novel? If so, tell us more.

Lady Gaga or Claude Cahun,
born 1894 (a Scorpio)? GJB is
writing about one or other

GJB: Book three's a non-fiction biography/polemic for Zero Books, on the surrealist artist Claude Cahun. Google her immediately, fall in love and, if you're anything like me, shave your head to get into character.

Gavin! Thank you so much for your time. And good luck with Made In Britain.

GJB: xxxx

Made In Britain: To read an excerpt and buy a copy click here

Duncan Fallowell: The night he took off with Muriel Belcher's crutches

2011-09-22T13:05:00.006+01:00

Duncan Fallowell

Alas, I was unable to attend 'libertine' Duncan Fallowell's dazzling London launch party for his new travel book How To Disappear: A Memoir For Misfits the other day. And my appointed gossip-spy, model-turned-novelist Gavin James Bower, substituted retail therapy for promised mission - tsk. It's just as well I am forgiving. However, I learn from the London Evening Standard's Diary that 'an eclectic bunch of misfits, hedonists, socialites and the odd Zoroastrian' turned out and a fab time was had by all. (Click here to read the item]

The Diary, which seems to have lost nothing in the paper's transition from paid-for to freebie, relates an amusing tale told by one of the guests, art dealer James Birch. He 'recalled his first encounter with Fallowell, which left an indelible impression. “He went up to my father and asked if he was heterosexual. When he said he was, Duncan kissed him full on the lips. My father nearly fell off his chair.”'

Ah, yes, the event is recalled and I can tell more.

The encounter was at a large sit-down dinner at the Royal College of Art for the late artist and writer Dicky Chopping's retirement. Birch was indeed there with his father. Fallowell went with sometime lover and Britain's first transsexual, April Ashley; and unfortunately he got incredibly drunk. James Birch was wearing a fetching all-white suit and Fallowell pursued him all round the hall with a trembling glass of claret. Birch proved to be too quick for his pursuer - so Fallowell ran off with Muriel Belcher's crutches which she'd parked neatly beside her seat. This had never happened to her before. The filthy-mouthed Colony crone looked panic stricken - 'For God's sake stop that young man!' she wailed as he ran off out of the hall with them.

I am happy to report that when he gallantly returned them to her 10 minutes later she made him an honorary member of the Colony for bravery. And thereafter Fallowell was always called 'Young man' at the Colony, even after her death. Once or twice I heard Ian Board call him 'Young man' when he was 40 - er, some years past now.

Incidentally, in other matters, my friends in the book trade tell me How To Disappear: A Memoir For Misfits sold out before the launch - the warehouse cleaned out - but fortunately his canny publishers Ditto kept a couple of boxes in reserve for the party. They are now rushing to reprint.

To read my review of the book, click here. Worth reading (also!) is Byron Rogers' marvellously batty Spectator review. And to think, Byron used to write Prince Charles' speeches - 'Such big hands,' he is wont to say of his once royal master.

(PS: One minute [interview] with Duncan Fallowell in the Independent.)

Eve Branson: Why can't the mother of a very famous man find a decent publisher?

2011-09-21T19:10:00.002+01:00

Eve Branson

I imagined that the mother of Sir Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Books - would have no problem in finding a paying orthodox publisher for her work. Yet Eve Branson has had to 'self-publish' her children's book Sarky Puddleboat via Authorhouse, which charges around £1000 per title (and does not even list Eve's book in its online store, neither .co.uk nor .com).

The London Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary reports: 'Rescued [by Kate Winslet] from the fire on Necker Island, she is just about to publish her first book [Sarky Puddleboat] at the grand age of 90.'

Ooh, I'm not sure about that. The book appears to have been released in February of this year and is already available through all good online retailers the worldover at various discounts. Even her age may be disputed. She tells the Telegraph she was born in 1924.

The Standard's Diary and Telegraph also report that Eve's working on her memoirs, Mum's The Word, which she hopes will be out for Christmas. As do I. Except that as far back as 2006, Mrs Branson was tantalising us with book news: the Mail reported then: 'She has just finished her autobiography, is starting a book called Life Begins At 70 and has been taking lessons in how to write romantic novels.' Alas, I see nothing of these sorts listed on Amazon.

I really do not like being kept waiting. None of us is getting any younger! And in the light of Eve's latest exciting escape from conflagration, Branson's Pickle is the obviously better title for the promised life story.

Private Eye: The First 50 Years - a non-review

2011-09-19T14:19:00.004+01:00

Just after the Madame Arcati blog arrived on this planet in 2006, Private Eye was sweetly among the first of the media to notice. A contributor to its pages even invited me to one of the magazine's regular Soho pub get-togethers - naturally I declined, politely alluding to my osteoporotic fragility in city street breezes. This was one butterfly that had no intention of being pinned in someone's collection cabinet. Let's just say I know how journalists' minds work, dearies. Oh, yes.

(It has occurred to me since that I should turn up one day with fiancee Molly Parkin. That could be amusing)

Private Eye: The First 50 Years is out now and I have absolutely no intention of buying a copy. I say this in full confidence that a relative or ex-lover will read this and pick up on the hint. I could hassle for a review copy but I have no intention of reviewing it as it is unreviewable and can only serve as prompt for a dreary magazine history lesson or analysis of British satire or slagging of priggish editor Ian Hislop. Not that the book is expensive. On Amazon it's only £17; and I notice that you can buy this book, and the Private Eye Annual AND The Best of Matt 2011 for a knockdown all-in £27.32.

If you like your satire small c conservative (hello, Matt), then this is a must.

Johann Hari: As I said, scandal will do him no harm whatsoever

2011-09-15T12:40:00.000+01:00

As I wrote on June 28, the fuss over columnist Johann Hari will do him no harm whatsoever. So I told you so. Many privately assured me that he would lose his job at the Independent but I knew better. Once you understand that newspaper editors are craven in the court of celebrity - even a micro-celebrity created by themselves or predecessors - it was rapidly deducible that a laundering formula would be found to retain Hari's services which did not include the words 'You're fired!'

What impresses me most is that Hari has clearly paid attention to Madame Arcati. In my piece (linked above), I lectured that a celeb interview is an 'encounter' not an 'intellectual portrait' as he self-servingly put it: so, in yesterday's apology, what word does he use to display his new wisdom and describe a celebrity interview? 'Encounter'. He learns fast. No wonder he's good at exams.

At heart is not Hari's lack of journalistic education - as his new editor claimed ludicrously last night on Newsnight - but his very low opinion of journalism. You don't stuff up your interviews with quotes from elsewhere and then pass them off as your own work unless you think that no-one will notice or care. You don't pinch someone's name to attack critics on Wikipedia unless you imagine colleagues are stupid. Ease of career passage has bequeathed Hari nothing but contempt and cynicism. His 'apology' is a lesson in cynicism.

Hari does not need yet more education. What he needs is to find a new career he can respect.

Natalie Rowe and Molly Parkin meet in a shop and discuss George Osborne and toff sex

2011-09-13T16:04:00.006+01:00

George Osborne and Natalie Rowe
back in the early naughty 90s

What is it about my darling (everlasting) fiancee Molly Parkin and shops?

Only the other day she told us about her encounter with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their kids in Ad Hoc, the King's Road cutting-edge fashion store. Now she tells me that about 18 months ago she chanced on another noted beauty of some notoriety in a shop - Natalie Rowe, the lady and 'dominatrix' who claims to have kept the smile on George Osborne's fresh, shiny face long before he unleashed austerity upon us as Chancellor.

This unscheduled meeting took place in King's Road newsagent Lucky Me Enterprise. 'It was early evening,' says Molly. 'I understand now she's a regular customer there. I went in to buy my chocolate eclairs and rubbish celebrity magazines. And this beautiful creature wearing a wonderful perfume approached me and said, "It's Molly Parkin isn't it? I'm one of your biggest fans - I love your writing and reading about you...". And then she told who she was - Natalie Rowe.

Molly Parkin

'She had such glamour, translucent skin and a beautiful mouth, and laughing eyes. An educated girl, an upper class Chelsea accent; high bohemian. She waited for me to make my purchases and then we walked out together and along the King's Road in the Sloane Square direction. I asked her what she did for a living - I didn't recognise her name or recognise her from the famous party photo [above] of her with George Osborne when he was a 22 year-old Oxford graduate.

'She said: "You've not heard of me? I used to be a madam, I ran Black Beauties." And I said: "Oh, I always wanted to be a madam!" I'd conducted orgies in New York and at my old house in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. She told me she'd sold a story to the Sunday Mirror about George Osborne, and mentioned something about the News of the World and phone hacking (when Andy Coulson was editor) and how George was denying using cocaine at one of her parties [which he has repeatedly denied since].

'I asked Natalie: "Did you fuck him?" She replied: "Absolutely".

'I said that he's a typical Old Etonian, isn't he. [Osborne did not go to Eton, btw] In my experience, Old Etonians have a predilection for vice girls. I told her of an Old Etonian I'd known, an aristocrat, and how he'd asked me to wear a tightly belted mackintosh in a bed with rubber sheets - he loved the feel of them - and I'd asked him, "Are you incontinent?" He'd given me a vintage yellow Rolls Royce and had champagne delivered to my door every morning. He even gave me diamond rings which I gave to mother. Sadly the rings were stolen by a window cleaner.

'We laughed a lot talking about Old Etonians and their love of exciting sex which some call kinkiness and then she told me that publishers had approached her to write her story - I know she mentioned Bloomsbury, which surprised me, as publishers of Harry Potter.

'We must have talked and laughed for about half-an-hour. She said, "I love talking with you and would love to talk again." We hugged and parted our separate ways. I felt we were sisters under the skin; she's a sweetheart.'

Natalie sounds adorable. Do get in touch if you read this, poppet. Certainly bachelor George had great taste in, er, interesting friends.

PS If you're famous and see Moll in a shop, do go talk to her. I'm all ears!

Glenda Bailey OBE: Erstwhile queen of the Marie Claire cocks supplement

2011-09-11T16:03:00.001+01:00

Glenda Bailey

New York's other British fashion queen, Glenda Bailey, is keeping docile feature writers busy, I see. The 52 year-old editor of Harper's Bazaar has a book to flog, Harper's Bazaar Greatest Hits (a mere £28.99 from Amazon; or if you prefer, £35.99 from Telegraph Books), and a V&A talk to publicise - September 18. Not to mention 'Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style' which runs until 8 January 2012 at the International Centre of Photography in New York. Book return flights now!

In the Observer today, a grazing fawner avers, 'While running the American version of Marie Claire, [Bailey's] penchant for risk-taking was legendary.' I'm sure it was. But nothing compared to her pioneering antics on British Marie Claire - I wouldn't expect any of the newspaper indentured tots to know anything about that time (the 80s-90s, darling); or even to imagine that sentience was alive and kicking even before their own natal birth.

Who can forget (if one knew to start with) Glenda's notorious penises supplement? When I tell people who doze through Glamour now, they think I'm making it up. But Glenda Bailey OBE, and friend of Karl Lagerfeld, actually persuaded the dull Old Spice scrotes of IPC that what the world needed was the gift of a penises supplement. And there they were, dozens and dozens of different disembodied dicks, a bonanza of Bobbitt-like chopped, cropped choppers, all close-shot - and this before pajazzling. An Argos catalogue of sausages, winkles, cigars, buttons (?) all manner of types; some cut, some not; though all flaccid. This exhibition of cock caused a fuss at the time and sales rocketed.

Glenda's genius was simply this: no mainstream women's glossy editor had ever thought or dared to do this before. Like Warhol and his art. She was copied briefly of course; and then the novelty was done. And later, Glenda got her OBE.

Deservedly so, I'm sure.

Molly Parkin: So, what's Angelina Jolie really like in a London shop?

2011-09-09T16:24:00.010+01:00

Angelina Jolie

My everlasting fiancee Molly Parkin has told me of her encounter with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their von Trapp-like brood in a London shop the other day.

Moll had time to kill before sitting down to Almodovar's latest movie The Skin I Live In at her local Curzon cinema in the King's Road. 'So I popped opposite over the road into my favourite punk boutique Ad Hoc, also known as "Boy",' she says. 'I take all visitors to London to this tiny outlet - it personifies everything that Chelsea was once world-renowned for: originality, flair, theatrical excess; in direct contrast to the dire conformity of Marks & Spencer further up the King's Road.'

There, she bumped into the Hollywood star - whom she'd never met before - and soon got on chatting terms with her and two of her children, daughters Zahara and Shiloh: 'To open the conversation I congratulated Angelina on her family. Not her beauty or her fame or her film performances. At rock bottom she is a mother.

'There were no nannies present. I assumed no security, but I later learnt that before Angelina's arrival, about eight Brangelina security men and women had checked the shop out first and had kept an eye on me when I approached.

'I liked the way she pointed out to the clamouring children that if they spent their pocket money on "fripperies", they would have none left for ice cream later - and they accepted this without demur.

Molly Parkin

'On introduction they offered their hands for a handshake, with enchanting smiles. Heart-breakers; pre-teen. When I told Angelina my name was Molly and that I was an artist she responded, "I can tell that!" Angelina herself was very demurely garbed and devoid of makeup. She had the aura of a schoolgirl chum you could stay in touch with for life.

'She responded eagerly when I said this was the very best shop in London for the young at heart, kids of all ages, confiding that she had been a customer there since the age of 14.

'On my departure I noticed they were being picked up by Brad who expressed admiration for my Andrew Logan brooch - my pulses quickened, I do admit that. His handsome features were those of a younger understudy, or a cloned minder, so maybe it wasn't Brad; but the effect was the same.'

How enchanting. A lovely celebrity encounter for a change. Coincidentally I have just completed Brad's and Angelina's horoscopes (not commissioned by them) and would say she is the disciplinarian of the two while he is the controller of purse strings. A pair built to last together despite periodic rumours to the contrary.

Ad Hoc

And incidentally, in other matters, Molly Parkin talks about her girlhood paper round in Radio 4's The Paper Round on September 20 at 3,45pm (details, click here) - this features her duet with Bing Crosby.

And if you didn't catch her Desert Island Discs appearance on Radio 4 earlier this year, click here to listen to it. She's at 13th if you scroll down the page.

PS I learn from Ad Hoc, that after Moll had left the shop, Angelina asked the staff who that 'wonderful, extraordinary lady' was. Now she knows.

PPS Molly is now certain it was Brad Pitt at Ad Hoc and not a security man. She has examined recent shaved pics.

Jonathan King: BBC edits him out of a Top of the Pops rerun

2011-09-06T19:26:00.000+01:00

The BBC's vacuous decision to edit out an appearance of Jonathan King on a 1976 edition of Top of the Pops for a BBC4 rerun sets an intriguing precedent. We all know King was convicted and jailed for sex with underage teenage boys a few years back, but what could be the rationale for this show 'laundering'; this charade that King never existed?

As columnist Terence Blacker writes in the Independent, "Certainly, if the BBC's new policy is to give musicians a retrospective morality test before allowing them on the screen, its censorship department is going to be busy. There will be no room for Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Pete Townshend, Ike Turner and many others – and that's before one has even reached jazz."

To this roster of BBC disappearing acts we should perhaps add, among so many others, George Michael, Michael Jackson (OK never convicted, but, y'know....), Boy George, Gary Glitter of course, Sid Vicious. Oh, and not forgetting convicted murderer Phil Spector and all his work. And if past notoriety is a factor in deciding spiritual contagion, should we not even consider Sir Elton John for footage oblivion - after all, that well known hack-moralist Alison Boshoff of the Daily Mail felt compelled to write this line in worthless huffy-puffiness back in 1999: "Sir Elton John was last night facing the possibility of legal action after he appeared with a troupe of male strippers dressed as Cub Scouts at a gay rights concert." Sir Elton still awaits the writ.

Whoever at the BBC made the decision to airbrush King out is in the wrong job. There must be a Murdoch red-top that needs you.

Duncan Fallowell: A Cruel ghost tale of a Craven death

2011-09-04T20:10:00.000+01:00

Long-distance followers of Madame Arcati will know of the unclassifiable (yet detachable) bond between myself and writer Duncan Fallowell. I know he had mixed feelings about my publishing the nude photo of him - passed to me by a mischief-maker-by-the-Med. Now we must test our alliance once again: he may not be entirely happy to learn that information has reached me of his mysterious 'ghost novel' - and naturally I feel compelled to repeat it.

One of the episodes in his new travel book How To Disappear (Madame Arcati review) was to be about the so-called Curse of the Cravens: holders of the Craven title are prone to dying young. However, I learn that this turned into a book in its own right, his ghost novel which is titled Cruel - and remains unpublished. This is because it contains a vivid deathbed scene for the actual Dowager Countess of Craven whom he assumed to have died long ago. Oops. It turned out she was still alive (a Gemini, natch) - in her 90s - and very much the matriarch! - so of course he couldn't put the novel forward.

My informant tells me that Duncan had had his eyes peeeeeled for her obituary ever since, desperate to sell his novel - but nothing. Then last week a death notice for her appeared in the Telegraph - she died peacefully in her sleep in June. A cloud with a literary silver lining: Cruel is now unleashed, ready to spook and tell the tale of the horizontal Countess whose two sons tragically predeceased her.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time Fallowell has determined someone's death prematurely. In How To Disappear, he pursues the social climber Bapsy Pavry (aka Lady Winchester). At one stage he is quite convinced she must be dead until disabused. Then he has his 'supernatural Pavry obituary' experience - for more about which you must read the book. (click here to buy)

Anthony Burgess: Listen to his Tarot short story

2011-09-03T18:08:00.001+01:00

On Christmas Day last I posted something on Anthony Burgess and his unpublished short story on the Tarot, Chance Would be a Fine Thing. You can now hear it read on BBC iPlayer by John Sessions - my thanks to Arcatiste poet Köy Deli for drawing this to my attention. It's only available for four days from today for reasons not given.

The BBC explains: 'Burgess himself was fascinated by the idea of cartomancy (or predicting the future with cards). He designed his own set of Tarot cards for domestic use, and, when working as a schoolmaster in Oxfordshire in the 1950s, he disguised himself as 'Professor Sosostris the famous clairvoyant' and told fortunes at a village fete.'

Written in the early 1960s, the short story is a slightly amusing cod-morality tale about the perils of misusing the divinatory cards (as opposed to using them at all). A middle-aged woman wants to know if she is ever likely to come into any money but is befuddled by the card-reader's deft ability to avoid specificity. Sessions' crone voice impersonations are a titter.

To listen to the story, click here.

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi: an innocent man lies dying in Tripoli

2011-08-29T18:23:00.002+01:00

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi: many of our informed senior politicians know him to be innocent as do many of our informed journalists and editors and lawyers - but they choose to say something else in public. Sadly, many of the poorly informed relatives of Lockerbie victims and many US right-wingers, including a fool with a 'tache, actually believe him to be guilty.

Every time a UK newspaper or other news outlet writes another ridiculous story about al-Megrahi's 'guilt', it lets down itself, journalism, the truth.

In 2004, Private Eye's investigative reporter, the late Paul Foot, wrote in the Guardian: ...'The Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship. This was the line followed by both British and US police and intelligence investigators after Lockerbie. Through favoured newspapers like the Sunday Times, the investigators named the suspects - some of whom had been found with home-made bombs similar to the one used at Lockerbie.' He concluded: 'It follows... that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice.'

If you're still interested, read the entire piece. Click here.

Also, I suggest you follow the blog of Professor Robert Black QC, The Lockerbie Case: '[Black] is often referred to as the architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.' His book Lockerbie and the Trials of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi is due out next year.

Al-Megrahi's website: http://www.megrahimystory.net/.

Roger Lewis: 'Lesbian' Agatha Christie, death threats and a new book

2011-08-27T13:49:00.002+01:00

What Am I Still Doing Here? My Years As Me by Roger Lewis.
Cover by Ronald Searle, 91

I had no idea that Roger Lewis had wondered aloud (in the Mail) whether Agatha Christie was a lesbian. The very mention of dread sexual practice in conjunction with one of the treasures of English heritage and TV sleepathon drama was enough to elicit death threats, presumably from a few of the cock-cunting or cunting-cock readers of Britain's leading family qualitab.

As a seasoned recipient of past death threats myself, mainly from anonymous journalists and other people purporting to be writers, I am familiar with the exquisite pleasure that greets such communications of terminal promise. One just knows that such incited fury will probably activate a cancer in one's crazed aspiring killer, a few years down the line.

Anyhow, Christiegate is one of his many experiences exhumed and dramatised in new memoir (or 'self-portrait') What Am I Still Doing Here? I have not read it so I can't say it's brilliant. Yet. But I can say that his last memoir Seasonal Suicide Notes made my Christmas 2009: the book is a darkly comic and mischievous counterblast to the otherwise infernal jolliness of the genre. It reads like a rave at a crematorium. Roger tells me the new book is 'far madder and darker' - this I can believe. I can't wait to review it.

I'm only sorry that Lewis' publisher Coronet has seen fit to use a customised testimonial from Stephen Fry: ordinarily I would avoid anything this simperingly wet lump of ubiquity recommends. But on this occasion I shall make an exception.

What Am I Still Doing Here? is published on October 13. To buy click here.

Susan Hill: The-willies queen is missing in blogging action

2011-08-26T10:01:00.003+01:00

Susan Hill

The writer Susan Hill hasn't blogged at the Spectator since February - this observation was made in a comment to my review of Duncan Fallowell's new travel book, How to Disappear. What could the matter be? I visited the Speccie site where a few of her commenters are grumbling among themselves over her non-appearance. The word 'twat' gets used - how common.

A Hill loyalist has helpfully left the comment: 'Susan is one of the judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, and according to her posts on Twitter over the past couple of days, is working on the proofs of her latest novel, starting a new book and making notes for a collection of short stories. It's hardly surprising that she's not been blogging. Let's hope she'll be back soon.'

The key words here are 'according to her posts on Twitter...' She has time to tweet but not to blog. The truth is Susan is always busy so far as I can tell, always up to her neck in deadlines, celebrity visits to pubs and cavorting about in fashionable beauteous rusticity. And tweeting. She's always writing books, publishing books, writing about books: she is a production line, a sausage factory of hauntings hokum for lovers of the-willies. None of this has ever stopped her from churning out another batch of finely-tuned opinions for her various blogs over the years.

Obviously she has fallen out with the magazine. I hope no one's bitter.

(Do read Duncan's book which describes his stay at her Gloucestershire home while working on a book: oddly, she declined to eat with him though was otherwise friendly.)

Robert Tewdwr Moss: Fifteen years on and a bio's planned

2011-08-24T11:01:00.004+01:00

Robert Tewdwr Moss with Wayne (my thanks to Nesta Wyn Ellis for identifying the cat)

Fifteen years today (Aug 24), the writer Robert Tewdwr Moss was murdered in London by two pieces of worthless, opportunistic trash who may be entitled to apply for parole now. If you've not read Robert's fabulous travel book on Syria, Cleopatra's Wedding Present,* I highly recommend it, especially as the murderous regime there faces the chop. It's not by any means a political work; it is a sexual and romantic odyssey in a world frozen in time. But Boy George is famous there. There's hope yet.

An American writer recently got in touch with me. He's planning to write Robert's bio and asked me for contacts and insights. At first I was tempted to cooperate, then another mood took over. What's the point? His 'bio' is Cleo and the rest is goss. And the prospect of hunting down the crawlers who accreted to him because of his micro-celebrity, for their permission to pass on email contacts and other whatnot, filled me with a profound boredom. The truth is I couldn't stand many of his friends and acquaintances - many of them tiresome hypocrites and snobs. You don't set up a blog like this as a love letter.

No, let Cleo be Robert's memorial. It's a bright jewel still sparkling in an expanding desert.

* Duckworth is reissuing the book on September 22, 2011. Click the link above to buy.

Review - How To Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits by Duncan Fallowell

2011-08-16T18:50:00.006+01:00

Duncan Fallowell

Adult warning: enlargeable naked author pic below. Don't panic!

Is Duncan Fallowell’s seventh book How To Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits his actual life story? True, he confesses on p236 to an impressive 40 ‘sexual partners’ in the month following Princess Diana’s death, ‘including a group of women in a naturist Jacuzzi in Brighton.’ And certainly he liberally seeds us with tantalising glimpses of private multi-generational Duncan, including the nosey little boy whose first instinct was always to boldly go and duff up any mystery. But be clear: this is no autobiography.

It is instead something much more… typical. It is, for the dorky genre-spotters, a mongrel private parts book - ‘part memoir, part travelogue, part biography,’ to quote his unusually accurate latest publisher Ditto Press. In other words, How To Disappear is not unlike, in form and style, his other classic private parts books To Noto, St Petersburg, ‘New Zealand’ (Going As Far As I Can): each a brilliant self-portrait of the feral Duncan Fallowell on location, as spotted in the looking glass of adored or maligned travelled nation.

Is he then a narcissist whose World Atlas serves exclusively as his mirror? Well, I’ll come back to that.

Let’s just not get ahead of ourselves. There’s the business of the cryptic title: How To Disappear. The early dread threat of a self-help book from California soon gives way to compelling true-life stories of strangeness: each of the four of the five long pieces comprising this book cradles a social Houdini, a personality once great or associated with greatness, who has performed a public disappearing act and now lurks shyly in the shadows awaiting (willing or unwilling) rediscovery by Fallowell.

Will force be necessary to open up these exotic clams? These misfits? Part of the joy of this book lies in wondering whether.

There’s reclusive Alastair Graham who was Evelyn Waugh’s ex-boyfriend; and the elusive social climber Bapsy Pavry (aka Lady Winchester); not forgetting the absent Maruma who bought the alcoholic Isle of Eigg; and who could forget dead Diana? DF himself ‘disappears’ in ‘Sailing To Gozo’ where a ubiquitous, faintly menacing stranger haunts Fallowell’s way on a quaint island yester-world.

The feral DF: click to enlarge

Like the little boy he once was, DF the man is first drawn to mystery or it is drawn to him. Not any mystery, mind. The mystery is usually well-connected and/or old world glamorama. And if his overriding instinct is to dispel mystery then his fix is to be found in the tricky process of unravelling it.

Take the case of Alastair Graham, for example. Fallowell first chances on the old dipso in a pub in New Quay and only later discovers who he is (or was) precisely. Sherlock Holmes himself would be impressed by the lengths to which Fallowell goes to track down witnesses for enlightening demystification: awe-inspiring. In the case of poor old Bapsy, who spent her life in posh hotels hustling for royal party invitations, Fallowell’s decades-long quest begins with the discovery of her potted bio in a book in India: he’s hooked by her sad eyes in the accompanying photo, he must meet her!

Fallowell’s dazzling analyses and asides (the book could be subtitled, But I Digress…) do not spare his own primal motivation: ghosts of a sort, such as the subjects of his book, absorb him. He is drawn to ‘the disquieting state in which someone is neither present in one’s life nor absent from it.’ He is the ghostbuster in the ‘abyss which can open up between being here and not being here.’ In his Bapsy piece, the spectre metaphor is bettered by reality when Fallowell has what could be an actual supernatural experience. He remains agnostic on what it is; but to risk ridicule from literary followers of the atheistic faith by writing about it at all is most admirable.

Fallowell’s ghosts come in all shapes and sizes and dead places sometimes tickle his inner Madame Arcati. He adores Pompeii as a zombified still of disinterred pagan sexuality while sluttish ever-dying Venice is subject to such a fantastic Fallowell flogging (a ‘desexed city’) that doges in the Roman Catholic hell must be planning revenge should he ever convert.

As ever, Fallowell seduces with an electric prose style which straddles knowledge high and street like a whore plugged in to a well-stocked Kindle. Why else would I want to read about some sad old snob like Bapsy but to relish the vervy manner in which he compassionately grants what eluded her in life: the right kind of attention. Pathetic she may have been but Fallowell’s mockery is only very faint: he observes the human constant in her, the disappointment that urged her pointless epic life.

Certainly no narcissist (to return to my question above) ever spent as much time preoccupied with how others tick as Fallowell. Beautifully packaged in art-worked hardback, How To Disappear is a beyond-fabulous wallowing in weird people in wonderful places - magical and mesmerising. Oh, and very gossipy, too.

How To Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits by Duncan Fallowell.

Published by Ditto Press
on 7 September 2011.

To buy a copy click here.

David Starkey: If only Queen Elizabeth I had been black....

2011-08-14T12:42:00.001+01:00

I'm sorry to see that 'historian' Dr David Starkey is in the Twitter stocks for his metaphorisation of black skin for criminality. His problem is that he has never to my knowledge written a history of a black homicidal maniac. If only Elizabeth I or her dad Henry VIII - his favourite book and TV topics - had been black he might now be metaphorising white skin for criminality: strange how chance, circumstance and schooling play a part in our avowed certainties and comforts.

Instead, like many other 'historians' before him, he has taken to identify with his lucrative subjects and even to adopt a prose style which could be mistaken for Tudorbethan pastiche. Some intellectual crossdressers go the whole hog and end up on pub stage as Madame Trollette to the joy of many. Others, merely write books and cultivate a persona that requires no wig or nail technician.

Dr Starkey has only to open his mouth and I see the Spanish Armada yonder.

Michael Winner - here to stay, apparently

2011-08-12T08:59:00.000+01:00

In the wake of a riot of rumours about the restaurant critic, insurance TV salesman and former film director Michael Winner - that he plans to emigrate - I have interrupted my ylang-ylang spa bath to help him set the record straight. He has this morning tweeted the following message to his followers (caps his) which I am happy to amplify:

'I'M NOT LEAVING THE UK NEVER HAD ANY PLANS TO DO SO. WOULD APPRECIATE IF THE "JOKERS" WHO KEEP SAYING I AM WOULD KEEP THEIR GOBS FIRMLY SHUT'

Back to my spa bath, faintly depressed.

Duncan Fallowell teaser: When The Scientologist Fell In Love With The Buddhist

2011-08-06T13:50:00.001+01:00

As the global economy combusts and certain over-remunerated journalists swan off on yet another holiday, having first informed their creepy followers on Facebook, Twitter, et al, here's a chance to forget it all. Gather your thoughts into the moment (any moment) and consider the import of Duncan Fallowell's latest movie teaser on YouTube, delightfully titled When The Scientologist Fell In Love With The Buddhist.

What do they signify, these draining popping suds in Duncan's bath, sink, or whatever? And what is that curious red protrusion at the end? Is it what I think it is? Clad in Edinburgh knitwear? Who knows. But the question could make you wise.

Incidentally, Duncan's memoir How To Disappear is now due out on September 7. I have a copy and I can confirm that it is part-reminiscence, part-travelogue and peopled by shadowy exotics in foreign places, not excluding DF himself. It betrays disturbing signs of brilliance: Madame Arcati shall review it shortly - and I would recommend you secure a copy while you can. Ditto Press has produced a splendid edition for pervy strokers of books (oh sorry, I mean bibliophiles). I could write 2000 words on the covers and paper alone. Instead, I'll (re-)watch this...

Ronnie Kray: The Sun repeats 'fat poof lies and rubbish'

2011-08-04T09:53:00.000+01:00

"East End gangster Ronnie Kray confessed to being bisexual in secret recordings," reports The Sun. The story is not Kray's bisexuality but the recording itself - the property of writer Robin McGibbon whose book The Krays: Their Life Behind Bars was released last month.

The report ends with: "[Kray] shot dead fellow gangster George Cornell in an East End pub after being called a 'fat poof'." Not according to McGibbon's taped interview with the psycho which you can listen to here. After McGibbon prompts the subject with: "A lot of lies have been told about the Cornell thing...", Kray replies: "[Cornell] never called me a poof in his life, I'd have killed him then and there. Lies and rubbish." Kray killed him for other reasons to do with threats - I'm inclined to believe this.

Pity the churnalistic Sun didn't bother to listen to the tape.

Walter Ellis: Old Madame Arcati moaner publishes an e-novel

2011-08-03T19:47:00.002+01:00

Long-in-the-tooth Arcatistes may recall regular yesteryear commenter on this site, Walter Ellis, a former Sunday Times grunt and occasional obituarist. He remains a warmer of my cockles for this observation of me: "You may be clever and you may (sometimes) be shrewd, but your mind is diseased. If you were a young man, you would be arrested. Take my advice - get help."

I now see that the cock-cunting fart has got in touch with an old colleague of his, one cock-cunting Roy Greenslade of the cock-cuntingly edited Guardian, to promote his e-novel London Eye. Apparently he's only flogged two copies at 10p, or whatever, on Amazon's online Kindle Store. Roy, who only shares his helium with grizzled former colleagues for presumed psycho-professional reasons, sweetly gives the book a mention and that should shift another two copies I'm sure. It's not what you know....

Let it not be said that Madame Arcati bears grudges. Though I'm far too busy to read e-novels, I'm happy to provide a link to his novel and a link to Walter moaning about his book's 'invisibility'. When he has stopped whingeing and whining, he may want to read one of my posts on the US author Laura Van Wormer who now runs an e-literary agency and whose republished work in e-format enjoys great success.

Talent finds its audience, Walter!

St Catherine of Siena: What really happened to Amy Winehouse?

2011-08-03T12:07:00.002+01:00

St Catherine of Siena

St Catherine of Siena (who passed away in 1380, is regularly 'channelled' by the US medium Elizabeth Baron and who hosted on her feast day the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) takes a keen interest in the news - as Arcatistes will know (see labels for more).

In Baron's latest newsletter, St Catherine turns her spiritual attention to someone close to home: 'What really happened to Amy Winehouse?'

St Catherine's answer via Baron: 'Amy took her own life by not taking the responsibility for her own health. The amount of drugs and drink that went into her body could have killed ten men. She was a very sick person and everyone around her knew it, not only mentally, but physically.'

I wonder if St C knows anything about rehab.

The News of the World: Time to bring it back!

2011-08-02T10:34:00.002+01:00

One of the joys of being me is that I can change my mind without shame. So while it is true I rarely ever had a good word to say about the late News of the World, I now say this: bring it back! I don't make this plea because I think it was especially brilliant: its absence simply draws attention to the sheer awfulness of the survivors.

The Sunday Mirror is a thin soup of nothing-in-particular and lame commentary - who cares what the pompous teeth-bearing TV newsreader Mark Austin thinks about anything? Its TV supplement Celebs is printed on nasty cheap bog roll paper and makes the Screws' Fabulous look like Vogue. The People may still interest a few pre-internet thugs who use ITV Teletext to find last minute holiday bargains. The Sunday Express at least has a short story - amazing. The Mail on Sunday is no substitute: its market is quite different and lacks the essential celebrity smut the Screws served up with a side dish of moral nosegay.

No, bring it back. What I need is prurient eye-anchoring to fill the 20 minutes I dedicate to breakfast cereal and two black coffees on a Sunday morning. If the Murdochs think the brand irreparably toxic then retitle the paper as part of the exorcism. The World might work. Yes, call it The World. Most of the staff could be brought back, even Carole Malone from her rhetorical hells, and saved a fate in Finland or wherever. Its return need not stop Twitter's @exnotwjourno2 from writing her Hackgate play.

I'm astonished James Murdoch didn't think of this himself. How much is he on?

Hackgate: The Sunday Times and the gigglers

2011-07-25T16:03:00.003+01:00

I bought the Sunday Times for the first time in ages yesterday, thinking I might find contrition over Hackgate on every page. And how wrong I was! Chortles, chortles everywhere. The diktat from on high is plainly to laugh off the scandal, to treat it with amused patience. News International's many critics are not the enemy: they are source material for knowing giggles. Which brings us straight to AA Gill.

Dispatching him to review the parliamentary select committee's bungled inquisition of the Murdochs was a clever move. Such is Adrian's unstoppable eye for physical imperfection, he could mirth up Treblinka. Tom Watson, we are reminded, claimed £4,800-worth of food exes in one year (cue fattist joke); and the committee chairman's reaction to the pie splat was the 'horrified demeanour of a dowager duchess who has discovered a naked Zulu in her bath.' Ah yes, a naked Zulu. Foreign.

None of this gentle knockabout will have exacerbated reader-hernias, but the branded (ie Gill-ish) comic intention, harnessed to a practised prose power, was sufficient to maintain a virtual smirk. More to the point, this souffle propaganda posed no threat to Gill's long-term contract with the paper.

Close by was Adrian's pal Jeremy Clarkson who has already told readers that one of his best friends is Rebekah Brooks. Buried in his usual auto-throwaway shtick was his take on Hackgate: 'The people who knew the person who once met someone at a party who may or may not have illegally listened to Sienna Miller making a hair appointment.' Giggles! Renew that man's contract!

Over on the next page, an interview with Chipping Norton resident Alex James by Giles Hattersley lay in wait. Young Giles kicked off about Hackgate's Chipping Norton set - 'The Camerons, Rebekah Brooks and the junior Murdochs, all hanging out in the Cotswolds, being fabulous and powerful in... honey-coloured homes.' Y'know, bit like Dallas, but with the oil flowing copiously at Wapping. This was mild court foolery, licensed, liveried impudence. Yet the Sun would never have permitted it.

Boldest of all the gigglers was the anonymous author of the Wendi Deng profile, the 'Crouching tiger, hidden big hitter'. She was described as the 'quietly dutiful wife of Rupert Murdoch'; and readers of Private Eye's latest Murdoch pisstake, featuring Wendi and her reputed Anglo-Chinese joke pronunciation, will be interested to learn that she does indeed call Rupert 'Lupert'. Irksome pre-marital gossip was rehashed; even Murdoch's hostile biographer Michael Wolff got quoted without insulting epithet. We were told that the old man's habit of banging the table as he talks 'must get on [Wendi's] nerves at the breakfast table'. I don't doubt it.

Certainly the ST's Hackgate damage limitation strategy is cleverer than the Sun's, but then the market's different. A well-informed readership wouldn't tolerate express attempts to justify, extenuate or downplay journalistic illegalities. Instead, we get the worldly yawn veiled in toothless irreverence, the 'Oh yah, yah. Next!' treatment. The emperor's nakedness is observed without drama; the sense of a passing fuss about nothing in particular is implied in sundry asides. A case of hoped-for Hackgate death by wisecrack.

Put another way, the gigglers made their own case for the abandonment of press self-regulation. Pronto.

Johann Hari - his website's back! Funny that.

2011-07-21T09:28:00.001+01:00

I am delighted to see that Johann Hari's website is back up* after my post yesterday. It's not for me to speculate but I guess he realised that one can read his stuff in the Indy's archive; and then there are the versions in cache. One way or the other Google proves there is indeed life after death.

*However, the links on the site are dead. My thanks to an Arcatiste for pointing this out.

Missing: Johann Hari's website.

2011-07-20T18:09:00.003+01:00

The website of the Independent's suspended columnist/interviewer/awards hoover Johann Hari has disappeared: http://www.johannhari.com/. And if you click cached on any of his Google story links, the message informs 'website closed'. This is a most worrying development. I should have thought this is the time to brazen out the accusations (of plagiarism, made-up quotes, etc) and proclaim one's innocence by maintaining accessibility of the evidence (of putative authentic journalism). I wonder whether Hari's judge and jury Andreas Whittam Smith knows about this.

Jonnie Marbles and and his pie-eyed Murdoch tweets

2011-07-19T21:03:00.001+01:00

After Murdoch R's marvellous Young Mr Grace act (of Are You being Served? fame) at the select committee hearing today, it was entirely in keeping with the theatrical atmosphere that an idiotic anarchist comedian called Jonnie Marbles should do his bit to turn Wendi Deng into an action hero. I'm going to ask her to guest-edit this blog. You need sharp reflexes in this job and a fearless approach to retribution.

Mr Marbles is of course on Twitter (@JonnieMarbles) and the tweeted build up to his shaving cream pie assault on Rupes is riveting:

'The queue for the select committee is already 50 people long. It's like a shit festival.'

'Apparently, if you keep your souvenir Select Committee wristband, you get a free beer next time Murdoch gives evidence.'

'The SWP have arrived. Bloody protesters'.

'Rupert Murdoch appears to be going senile.'

'One gets the sense that they haven't really done the required reading ahead of their presentation. Think they may fail this module.'

'It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat.'

@ExNOTWjourno2: Mystery 'M' of Twitter who knows all about News International

2011-07-18T20:15:00.006+01:00

Who is the mysterious @ExNOTWjourno2 who has been dropping prophetic cryptic clues on Twitter about the phone hacking scandal? I have no idea. But having once been myself an anonymous supplier of juicy nuggets, who fooled hundreds of gullible London hacks by dint of intimidating talent, I cannot but be intrigued. 'She' answers to Marie and signs off as M. So we're looking for a man who likes Sudoku.

Her bio reads: 'Journalist @ NOTW for last 5 years. Axed to save skin of Rebekah Brooks! Enough Is Enough Of This Horse Sh#t !'

'What is the Colour Of Justice?' she tweeted around 10am today. This afternoon we heard the news that the boss of Orange had resigned. Could Hackgate (and justice hue) have something to do with Orange? Enjoy the game if it's not a con!

Some tweeters claim that M with her capitalised clues has anticipated many of the major happenings in the unfolding scandal. She claims to be on a revenge mission ever since the Murdochs shut down the News of the World and made her redundant. Apparently she declined to sign a gagging order yet it's news to me that redundancy offers have been made to ex-staff. I could be wrong.

The news today that Hackgate whistle-blower, and former Screws showbiz hack, Sean Hoare, has been found dead in his home in un-suspicious circumstances, prompted M to write: 'RIP Sean.. Now i'm really going to go for the jugular... I Don't Feel I Can Continue.. Sean would want me too... This isn't right possums. This situation has spiralled out of control. I will ensure the people behind this pay.'

Of the select committee inquisition due, she growls: 'I have a front row seat for tomorrow possums.. It's going to [sic] ad a bloodbath. NI thwarted the first investigation.'

Another prediction? 'It's Only Monday.. You wait until Thursday.' I'm not sure Madame Arcati can take much more excitement.

Rupert Murdoch sexes it up for gerontophiles: The elder as harried quarry

2011-07-15T19:35:00.007+01:00

Rupert Murdoch

The still-potent elderly media villain is a rare creature of celebrity. Periodically, the grim mugshot of yet another suspected doddery octogenarian Nazi war criminal (or Hugh Hefner) graces our media pages and screens, but in the main we are simply not accustomed to the sight of an ancient elder being set upon by baying hacks and paps on our city streets for crimes allegedly committed in our lifetime.

For this is the lot of Rupert Murdoch, 80. As the phone hacking scandal mushrooms on various Bikini Atolls here and abroad, Rupert finds himself alone in the genre marked Media Harried Quarry. What stands him apart from, say, Lady Gaga, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, Jonathan King and the many other magnets of media screaming hunting parties, is his sheer age. The deep facial furrows, the fried bacon eyelids, the tufted pate, the faintly rolling gait of the faintlier unsteady - I note the blonde personal trainer and concede he can jog upright - yes, all these mark him out as special, if not unique, in the iconography of... the Media Harried Quarry.

Part of the reason for this latest polish to his celebrity is his failure to die. By 80, apparently, few of us are fit for anything much. If a person dies aged 80 we say, 'Mmm, not a bad time to go.' Eighty is about 15 years since usual retirement age (for men in the UK); about 20 years if you're a UK female. If a sports journalist managed to reach 80 in post we would cast doubt on the competence of Human Resources at his/her publication. This is not how things should be, just how they are.

For Rupert to get to 80 while still running his multi-national, multi-media empire is in itself an extraordinary thing.

So for him to metamorphose into Public Enemy Number One and to have ghastly journalists a third of his age waving their notebooks and dictaphones under his nose, actually running after him when he has plainly waved them off en route to the gas-guzzling company four-wheel drive; bellowing questions and demanding answers (pause for breath, dearies) - well, this is an event worthy of memorialising.

Welcome to the still-potent elderly media villain on our bustling streets; on our TV screens. Ready yourself for the sight of other rogues of advanced vintage pursued by the hacks and paps. I sense a new fashion! Unwittingly and unwillingly, Rupert has broadened our view of what can be achieved at 80. Old age is now no barrier to the media persecution of non-Nazis (or of Rebekah's elderly sink estate paedos). Once again he has proved his pioneering spirit.

Thank you, Rupert.

Roger Alton: Why is this ludicrous oaf still in journalism?

2011-07-13T16:26:00.001+01:00

A word on Roger Alton's shambolic appearance on Newsnight last night. I was surprised that the Times wheeled out its decrepit executive editor to counter the suave super-hero of the hour Hugh Grant on the topic of phone hacking. At one point Lord Fowler dismissed Alton's lame attempts to defend the press as 'rubbish'. And cringe-worthy was Alton's fake justification for hacking when he asked rhetorically whether it had value as an investigative tool if it exposed a paedophile scandal.

Like many other journalists he seemed oblivious to the small matter of illegality.

Alton himself is a curious sight, part Harry Hill, part fall guy in a Benny Hill sketch. The late comedian would have patted Alton's bald head and sent him on his way with a kick to the arse. How such a man lacking in any obvious sign of intellectual accomplishment, any philosophical coherence whatsoever, or just plain street-smarts, came to edit the Observer and Independent is well beyond my understanding.

Only the other day, he made a complete fool of himself on TV when he attacked Mumsnet for its campaign against the late News of the World. Instead of expressing proper regret over Milly Dowler and other cases, he ridiculed Mumsnet members as 'yummy mummies' and 'organic shortbread' eaters, and castigated them for making poor hacks unemployed. All very Alf Garnet.

This is the man - Roger, not Alf - who of course at the Observer cosied up to Blair and Campbell and supported the Iraq War, all because he was flattered by their courting of him. That such an oaf of a man splutters on in a senior role at The Times is itself yet further evidence of the mental rot in British print journalism.

Clemency Jopling and her erotic musings on Rupert Murdoch

2011-07-11T10:41:00.001+01:00

Clemency Jopling of yesteryear

Delighted to see that the erotic fiction author Clemency Jopling has set up a blog called Clemency Jopling's Erotic Jottings: she vows to write 'about anything erotic that seems likely to amuse, arouse, or interest the reader.'

In dubious fulfilment of this promise, she naturally name-drops the less-than-nubile Madame Arcati in a posting on the Dignitas pin-up model Rupert Murdoch. Apparently I am a 'scarred and grizzled' veteran of Fleet Street - even if finding one wrinkle on my moist flesh would challenge the talents of the late hawk-eyed Helena Rubenstein - which I think may be misrepresenting my varied background. Like a humming bird I have dipped my beak in many a career bloom so that versatility is my key quality.

In her next work of fiction, she may wish to focus on a passionate liaison, that transgressively crosses the age divide, between an 80 year-old media mogul and his worshipful, flame-haired CEO, 40-something. The trauma of ED might be highlighted in graphic scenes of ~~phone hacking~~ vacuum pumping.

Those unfamiliar with Clemency's oeuvre may wish to immerse - Amazon. Her titles include Mr Biddulph Sees a Ghost (The Erotic Adventures of Mr Biddulph) and Mrs Smith's Academy IV: Zuleika's Correction.

Henri Llewelyn Davies: 'It was I who brought her to "Death" Rowe and Woman's Own'

2011-07-10T12:56:00.002+01:00

Psychic astrologer
Henri Llewelyn Davies

My recent piece on the untimely death of pychic astrologer Henrietta ('Henri') Llewelyn Davies at 56 drew this letter from a former colleague of hers....

Dear Madame,

I hope you don't mind me e-mailing you.

By pure chance (fate?) today, I came across the news of the death of Henri [Llewelyn Davies] on your web-page. I am so shocked and saddened; I didn't know. Please could you tell me how she died?

I knew Henri very well in the early Eighties -- contrary to what your blogger 'Liz' has to say, it was I who took her to Woman's Own.

It seems you knew her well, so you might also know of her time at Look Now magazine. This is where I met her -- she was a good friend of the then-features editor, Adele-Marie Cherreson, and I joined as a junior, working my way through the features dept to become Deputy Editor. We became good friends, and when I found myself working for Bridget 'Death' Rowe as Assistant Editor at Woman's Own (!), I suggested Henri as the new astrologer. Bridget R wasn't easily convinced, but I think she was interested in trying something different, which Henri certainly was, and so it began.

I later went to TVTimes, and, of course, took Henri with me. When I left, Henri stayed on and we kept in touch for a couple of years: she came to my wedding, and I keep an astrological chart and reading she wrote on the birth of my son 18 years ago, scribbled in her unmistakably spidery handwriting! She came out to visit me here in St Albans, but said she felt twitchy leaving the city. Reading her quotes in her obit tonight, I can hear her voice in my head so clearly...Life went on and we probably last spoke about eight years ago, when I began writing a novel on life after death.

Sorry for the unloading, I'm sure you appreciate how I feel. If you could find a moment to tell me what happened to Henri, I would be extremely grateful.

With all best wishes

Doretta Sarris Hogan

Dear Doretta

Thank you for your letter. Henri told me that before she was hired at Woman's Own, 'Death' Rowe took her out to lunch - perhaps to Joe Allen's though I can't be certain. Bridget was perfectly fine and chatty until she rose at the end and suddenly gave Henri a bizarre look as if to remind her who was in charge. The bipolar-ish change in countenance from friendly to hostile was intimidatory. It might not have helped that during lunch, Henri told the editor that her journalistic career would end in her late forties. This proved correct.

Henri died of a brain tumour after treatment for lung cancer. Here is her Telegraph obit.

Best wishes

MA

Duncan Fallowell's How To Disappear memoir: The movie

2011-07-08T18:26:00.000+01:00

Duncan Fallowell's new book How To Disappear: A Memoir For Misfits is now due out mid-August (preferably before the 12th) from Ditto Press. Nazareno Crea, who has designed the book, was inspired to make this short film with Stewart Smith to accompany it. Click arrow once to watch on this site before sitting back with a glass of opiate.

Rupert Murdoch arrested: the words we dare not speak for some reason

2011-07-07T18:34:00.001+01:00

The end of the News of the World: let me savour those beautiful words. Allow me to roll those delicious vowels and consonants over my tongue. Never did I imagine Madame Arcati would outlive the corrupt farrago that became the Screws. Of course, the Sun on Sunday, or some such, will serve as replacement, though its SOS acronym is perhaps too ironic to prevail.

Rupert Murdoch is lauded for his dark genius in pressing the nuclear option and distracting us for a few seconds as we mouth silent shock-horrors and wonder what will happen to Carole Malone and her 'hell' tropes. This is not genius but guile, though I must admit he caught me and the rest on the hop.

Actually his true genius is more subtle, entirely mercurial and located in an omission. We debate the heinousness of his past editors and journalists without ever entertaining the idea that he, Murdoch himself, should be arrested, tried, and if convicted, jailed. Every line of police inquiry should not end just at the point of executive control of corruption - such as with the Andy Coulsons or Rebecca Brookses - but should journey on to the fount, the inspiration - to the baby factory of journalistic nightmare. To Rupert.

Book after book by ex-Murdoch editors chronicle the same story: of a bullying, manipulative proprietor ever pushing back the boundaries of decency and legality in his Borg-like mission to reduce the world to a mindless form of voluntary moronism, with programme guides. Rebecca Wade nee Brooks became what we see today by imitation of her boss. She and others translated his desires via practical, modern-day methods. Did he ever give any thought to how stories were obtained as he licked his cash-fingers? The DNA of this hideous chapter in British journalism may be traced to Old Rupes and what he expected by way of results.

What he knew or didn't know precisely is neither here nor there. He was happy to shovel the profits even when, as years ago, he knew something was up. Now with his usual ruthlessness he dumps 200 staff on a heap. Some will make it to SOS of course.

But he remains at large.

Alastair Campbell: A Twitter interview with Madame Arcati in (approx) 140 characters

2011-07-07T16:00:00.001+01:00

Alastair Campbell tweeted this morning: 'Vol 3 of my diaries Power and Responsibility published today. Trying out new and interesting strategy - not doing media, off to Burnley.'

So I tweeted back: 'How would you describe your new strategy so I can quote you in blog? 140 characters... '

His Twitter interview in full without Hari-esque additions or refinements:

'Extracts major bestseller. Full vols more historic record. Reviews, word of mouth and ongoing 'normal' media engagement.'

And that's it. Perfect. I hope Madame Arcati counts as a 'normal media engagement.'

Diaries Volume Three: Power and Responsibility (The Alastair Campbell Diaries), click here to buy

Rebekah Brooks and Milly Dowler: Simple, just apply the Sharon Shoesmith test

2011-07-05T09:29:00.013+01:00

The matter of Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International's UK ops, and what as editor of The News of the World in 2002 she may or may not, or ought to, have known about the Milly Dowler phone hacking outrage, bears an uncanny resemblance to the matter of former Haringey boss Sharon Shoesmith and what she knew or ought to have known about Baby P.

Brooks, nee Wade as editor of The Sun in 2007, was merciless in her persecution of Shoesmith, holding her to account because she was a highly paid executive presiding over a tax-funded, dysfunctional children's service. Personal knowledge was an irrelevance. In a fateful twist that involves a child-victim, Brooks now finds herself in a not dissimilar situation, trying to save herself by making a virtue of her ignorance when she presided over what was plainly a dysfunctional newspaper.

Surely, in deciding whether Brooks go now, or when she's pregnant next year (see the current Private Eye for more), we should apply the principle she championed against Shoesmith: take personal responsibility because she was there. Like Shoesmith, Brooks was on a huge, perks-fattened salary, in return for her management skills. Indeed, Brooks' salary and perks far exceeded Shoesmith's.

Like Andy Coulson at the Screws, Brooks raised the stakes and imposed a bullying staff culture which made failure a no-option. Cheating was an inevitable consequence of her mindless careerism and pandering to Murdoch. She was happy to take the credit for her newspaper when promotion was dangled before her, but not the debit when disgrace is the alternative.

So Rebekah, practise what you preached against poor old Shazza.

Duncan Fallowell: Do you understand The Catatonic Sequence video?

2011-07-02T18:24:00.001+01:00

Duncan Fallowell has posted a very annoying video on YouTube called The Catatonic Sequence. It features seven Tarot cards and carries a warning to those who are 'easily influenced' and mentions something called The Seventh Game.

Could the film-ette be a satire on the Tarot (my brother is a most proficient reader), or a cryptic tease of some sort, or a secret message to Al Qaeda? I seriously doubt any of you will know, but comment if you must. (Don't post anything news-worthy which you don't want noticed by the media. I shall use it. You have been warned)

Incidentally, Duncan's memoir How To Disappear has a new release date: mid-August. I understand his publishers Ditto Press took account of my astrological warning against a June 15 publishing date (wrong kind of Moon phase) and are now entirely in my heavenly thrall. I shall permit a mid-August release. It's possible Duncan, as a life-affirming agnostic secularist thingumy, is cross about my pagan intervention and has hit back with this vid. If so, I forgive him. Madame Arcati is used to being much misunderstood. And abused. (Click screen arrow once to play)

Ian Shuttleworth and Madame Arcati fall out over Johann Hari and a thin-skinned egotist

2011-07-01T01:07:00.001+01:00

The very gifted stage critic of the Financial Times, Ian Shuttleworth, is awfully cross with Madame Arcati. This is what happened.

The other day I posted my enlightened view of Johann Hari and his quotes-lifting activities. I said his career would soar on the controversy. Among the many comments, sent in voluntarily and unsolictedly, were two by the man known as Shutters. He had a beef about Hari. Years ago, the Indy columnist had 'begged' him for quotes to grace a star profile Hari was composing. Shutters withheld the name of the celebrity in question, for some reason. Much to Shutters' horror, these 'quotes' were then used in what turned out to be a snide piece about a very famous showbiz person once close to the critic: while the profile was anonymous, Shutters' words were ostentatiously credited.

It seemed wrongly as if he had contributed knowingly and abundantly to an assassination piece on the secular deity of film and theatre. His friendly intent had been cruelly distorted by guileful, hateful Hari. Apparently, Shutters was struck off someone's Christmas card list from then on and left out to dangle on his FT rotary clothes dryer. Zebra wept far away.

The comments section of a post is a public place so Madame Arcati thought: That's an interesting story, it requires amplification. She gave it its own post and drew attention to it on Facebook and Twitter. Cue Shutters' drama-queening, his abject boo-hooing. Now, on Twitter, he whines: 'Twice inside a week I've found my throwaway comments dined on. I keep forgetting how many people dine on throwaways, and with what relish.' And: 'I am, I fear, irredeemably naive. I've tried to learn, but. I really must just shut up, one way or another.' Then he did the thing that can't be forgiven: he unfriended me on Facebook!

An Arcatiste has now kindly supplied me with a copy of this mystery Hari profile. In 2002 the young mite turned his attention to the many cuts on Sam Mendes, all latterday Orson Welles and no rosebud. The piece is indeed a tad irreverent. Actually, Hari really can write. I commend it. In vain I sought Shutters' 'quotes' until towards the end I happened on these (Shutters' words in double quotes):

'"The mood in Cambridge drama back then wasn't so much bitchy or malicious. It was that very 1980s climate of careerism." In that milieu, where "Sam was quite obviously the business, and didn't exactly have to struggle", Mendes inevitably attracted a considerable degree of resentment and envy.'

And that's it. Only.

Ian, poppet: this is called journalism and plainly your erstwhile pal Mendes is a thin-skinned egotist who doesn't like members of his circle talking about him. End of. And as for your 'throwaway comments' dined on by me: you supplied them of your own volition. Comments pop up on Google searches, too.

If you're going to howl, don't whimper if you're heard.

And as for Hari: my apologies to him. I assumed he had done something very wrong in his Mendes piece. In fact I find it spot on in tone and insight. And he is to be congratulated for not relying entirely on other people's written work.

Nick Clegg could be British PM, predicts Old Moore's Tory-loving astrologer

2011-06-30T16:29:00.000+01:00

Nick Clegg could become Prime Minister one day, claims the astrologer in the new edition of Old Moore's Almanack 2012. Oh, but hang on a minute. There's also Theresa May to consider. She, too, is potential PM material according to a profile in the mag which unveils the year (and more) ahead, occasionally with startling accuracy.

I've long suspected that 'Dr Francis Moore' - the eponymous astrologer of the title, still going strong at 314 years-old - is a celestial right-winger who treats the bit between Thatcher's fall and Cameron's rise as a moral low in British history. Last year, he wrote enthusiastically of the Tory tide: 'This is the beginning of a period that is going to be more difficult and very different to the freewheeling, destructive influences we have been enjoying for the past twenty years.' He relished the return of 'traditional, old-fashioned values of discipline, respect and responsibility [his italics]...largely missing for twenty years.' Oddly, profilgate bankers played no part in our bankruptcy; and anyone might think Tony Blair had not been a right-wing wealth-lover.

Not content with ignoring any possibility of a Labour return this side of my death, he then foresees that politics will gradually move more to the right as 'political uncertainty' prevails until 2018. If this is correct then may I be the first to extend my congratulations to the Murdoch press on their sterling work.

I think it time the Left encouraged a few of its followers to take up astrology instead of farting about with humdrum atheism and Dignitas-bound sociological materialism.

Ed Miliband is missing a trick, I fear.

Johann Hari: Why the FT critic Ian Shuttleworth is still waiting like Diana Ross

2011-06-29T18:50:00.004+01:00

Ian Shuttleworth

Further to the delightful media rhubarb on Johann Hari and his thieving of quotes, another story reaches me touching on the antics of the Independent's newly glamorous and rather sexy 32 year-old columnist and interviewer. The authoritative stage critic of the Financial Times, Ian Shuttleworth, tells Madame Arcati that he, too, once fell victim to Hari's inventively maverick approach to journalism.

The good news is that this story is not about plagiarism. The bad news: it's about trust.

Mr Shuttleworth writes: '[Hari] begged some quotes from me for a profile piece on someone I'd worked with years before, ran them in a snide tone 180º opposite from mine, credited me ostentatiously whilst the article itself was anonymous, and thus ruined my most prestigious professional contact. When I kvetched about it to mutual friends, they said, "Oh, that's just Johann," as if that mitigated matters rather than aggravating them with pattern-of-behaviour evidence. On subsequent meetings he seemed to imagine we were still friends.'

Had Hari done this to Madame Arcati, a fearful vendetta would have commenced and cocks would have shrivelled in terror. Just ask Kevin Spacey. But allow Mr S to continue....

'In today's Indie [Hari] protests, "I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different" - maybe not, but with me he took words from the immediate context and twisted them to mean something not just different but opposite. And "When I've been wrong in the past [...] I have admitted it publicly, tried to think through how I got it wrong, and corrected myself." In the words of Diana Ross, I'm still waiting... '

I did tweet the Indy's editor Simon Kelner last night, drawing his attention to this matter. Perhaps due to other commitments, he has not yet commented and is perhaps dismissive of a silly little blog such as this when there are Radio 4 shows to attend for marketing amplification.

If Johann would like to acknowledge his fault and apologise to Ian he is free to do so via Madame Arcati. I am a disinterested medium for harmony, ever striving to bring peace where strife reigns. Presently.

Ian Shuttleworth's website is most entertaining. Click here

Johann Hari: Plagiarism confession will do him the world of good

2011-06-28T15:16:00.008+01:00

Someone called Johann Hari, a columnist on the UK Independent and a gadabout for various other up-there publications, has confessed to lifting quotes to beef up his celebrity interviews. If his star subject is not making much sense, Hari will pinch a better quote on the point-in-hand, truffled from the written work of the interviewee (uncredited), and pass it off as part of his own splendid cross-exam. Naughty!

Blogger scorn and fainting have greeted this confession: why, it's even trending on Twitter as I write.

Hari's problem, one of many I fear, may arise from what he thinks an interview is for. He imagines his interviews are 'intellectual portraits'. Oh dear, I wish he'd spoken to Madame Arcati first. A newspaper 'interview' is nothing more than entertainment whether it's in the Sun or Le Monde Diplomatique. The object of the exercise is to bring to vivid life an encounter of usually short duration. The good writer-interviewer, as the ruthless, opportunist carnivore he or she must be, will be alert for signs of weakness in the subject, ie for signs of entertainment material that makes a mockery of the PR or of the book/film/whatever that whorishly accounts for the interview in the first place.

If, say, a star interviewee-author coughs up blood and dies while boring the shit out of us on atheistic conformity in British journalism then there's your money shot. Readers are not interested in ideas or lectures, not even godless ones. Alas, Hari imagines his role to be that of transcriber of great words - or great words obtained by others' efforts if needs be. Reality check: any collection of his interviews will struggle to sell 500 copies (100 of those flogged to friends and relatives), eBook or otherwise.

Has Hari damaged his career? Absolutely not. He has already done the essential thing and made a name for himself. Once you're a name, it is very hard to self-immolate, professionally. What may look like public scorn and contempt now is nothing more than glamour-enhancement without sequins. Readers just love a name, and harmless notoriety goes down well with editor-scrotes desperate for promotional material (eg names).

If I were Hari, I'd go to the Independent editor - while he survives - and ask for a pay rise. A daytime TV show hosted by Johann Hari cannot be far away.

Click here to read his confession.

Liz Brewer: How to be a 21st Century socialite and not a twerp on Twitter

2011-06-22T19:42:00.003+01:00

Liz Brewer is a living legend - and you're just very sad if you've never heard of her. For decades she has graced many cities of the world with the glitteriest parties and media-friendly stunts on behalf of her royal, high society, celebrity and corporate clientele.

In recent times TV broadened her fame with Ladette to Lady on which, as 'Etiquette and Social Protocol Teacher', she sought to turn 'innit'-spewing chavs into presentable princesses who held their table knives not as pens. Liz now has a new book out (details below), a trove of wisdom and instruction on good manners and social form. Madame Arcati caught up with her....

Liz Brewer! Party planner extraordinaire! Someone once described you as Krug on legs. You party-plan for Ivana Trump, Dame Shirley Bassey, London mayor Boris Johnson and many others, don't you? And who else? (Is it just party planning?)

Actually it was the front cover of one of the Sunday mags that described me as 'Fizzy Liz Krug on legs'!* You have an amazing memory! At the time I was Ambassador for Krug and Remy Krug was a good friend. Now I am the Roving Ambassador of Laurent-Perrier who have flown me a number of times to their impressive Chateau Levois. On one occasion to be presented with the honour of being made a Dame Chevalier de Champagne for L'Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne. (And Dame Shirley Bassey received the title of Dame d'Honneur de Champagne at Champagne de Castellane for the ceremony of the ordre de Coteaux de Champagne).
*Ahem, it was actually Woman's Journal, phrase coined by one Victor Olliver

Which is the best party you've ever planned for a client?

I know this may sound corny but every party has been special and you always feel your last party was the best; however, that is very much to do with the people and content. There are memorable happenings which make certain events unforgettable but in general I have loved them all in different ways. Dame Shirley's was visually significant and was filmed by CNBC for their Luxury channel, going out to a possible 200 million homes in Europe about five times...! It was called The Party Guru and filmed by Fiona Sanderson over a couple of years. Incidentally I just found the following clip which was when I organized for Dame Shirley to receive the Legion d'Honneur from the French Ambassador in London: Nobility News.

You've a new book out, Liz Brewer's Ultimate Guide to Party Planning and Etiquette - tell us a bit about it.

My new book is really about bringing party planning and social behaviour into the 21st Century.

Liz with Ivana Trump

The early chapters cover speech, posture, making a positive impression, self-esteem, breaking bad habits, the digital age, social networking, personal presentation, dress sense, table manners, financial etiquette, relationships, kissing/greeting/saying goodbye, mobile phones, answering invitations and thanking. Then the chapters cover everything to make a memorable occasion special and successful, covering money matter, equipment, rules & regulations, invitations, dress and dress codes for both men and women (e.g. what is white tie & tails, morning dress, highland dress, appropriate dress for hunt balls, formal, cocktail, smart casual, business dress, attending sports events etc etc.

Neighbours, safety, catering, decor, table plans, place settings, menus, drinks, correct way of serving wines & champagne, entertainment, lighting, party games, fireworks, staff & helpers, 'the morning after the night before'. Duties of the host and duties of the guests and dealing with difficult situations.

The book ends with Forms of Address, e.g. how to address members of the Royal Family, Royal Consorts, Peers of The Realm etc etc both in person and writing. Finally there is an Index showing all those referred to and photographed.

What precisely is bad manners and/or a behavioural malfunction?

Liz with Dame Shirley Bassey

I explain in my book that etiquette or good manners is to do with treating people not simply with respect but putting them at ease and making them feel comfortable. That where there is a rule there is a very good reason, so when in doubt people often simply need to use their commonsense and they will discover the solution.

You're the Queen of Etiquette. Give one example of appalling manners that drives you to faintly criminal temptation.....

One of the things which I find tedious and annoying is people who do not answer invitations. This is often due to the fact they never entertain and therefore are unaware of how not replying to an invitation causes complications when deciding on numbers of glasses, cutlery, staff etc.

For example you may be having a significant occasion and have sent out invitations to 100 guests. A couple of weeks before the event only half of the invitees have replied. You now have to figure out, are 50 guests attending or 50 guests who could possibly even be rude enough to turn up without warning you that they are bringing a guest or worse still, most of the guests attend without even replying some with guests and others without, thereby causing difficulty with the catering. Drink & food runs out, as do the glasses etc!

I also have little time for gatecrashers. There is a band of people who feel they have the right to turn up to an occasion uninvited. Perhaps one should be flattered that they consider your events are worthy of their attendance but over the years I have observed these are the non-contributors to the party scene and merely a waste of good space. I have no problem politely explaining that this is a private party and they are therefore cannot be included on this occasion.

Who is the rudest person you've ever encountered and why?

Liz Brewer with London Mayor
Boris Johnson

Concerning rudeness I have found this is usually due to the fact that the person in question is new to the social scene and has limited knowledge of how to behave. My book addresses areas which otherwise could be a minefield for newcomers to this world.

Do you think social media such as Twitter and Facebook have led to a breakdown in manners?

Social networking sites, media, Twitter and Facebook, as I explain in my book, have a place in the world in which we live today. They provide a service for people to connect. However they need to be thoroughly understood and controlled. Used correctly they can be to your advantage but should not be used simply to demonstrate that person does not have a life. Reading some of the inane remarks being twittered around the world however, it does make you wonder!

What do you think of the modern tendency to convert celebrity names into z-filled nicknames as in Chezza (Cheryl) or Gazza (Paul Gascoigne) or Shazza (Sharon Whoever). Isn't it just too common?

This is not something that really concerns me.

And finally, poppet. A challenge. Do you think you could ever turn Katie Price (aka Jordan) into an elegant princess who minds her ps 'n' qs for one evening at least? Where would you start?

Why would I want to change her? She is obviously a star in the world in which she exists and probably wouldn't fare well in a different level of society. I did do a grand job with Lily Allen .... see following link!

Liz Brewer! Thank you so much for your time. And give my love to Georgie Campbell! [Aka, Lady Colin Campbell, her publisher at Dynasty Press]

To buy Liz Brewer's Ultimate Party Guide to Party Planning and Etiquette, click here

Laura Van Wormer: Authors' second comings - and a question about Sarah Ferguson

2011-06-20T19:11:00.003+01:00

Laura Van Wormer

The bestselling US novelist who co-wrote a historical epic with the Duchess of York is the new MD of an ePublishing venture dedicated to reissuing the work of established or proven authors.

Laura Van Wormer (a former book editor at Doubleday, author of sixteen books and 'The Official Dallas Historian') has joined forces with a 'rocket scientist' to run Advantage, Author Inc. Its goal 'is to empower authors entering the digital publishing arena in ways that will support and expand their writing careers.'

Laura explains on her website: 'About three and half years ago I walked into a large chain bookstore and couldn’t find any of my books—not even Riverside Drive, which had placed me between Leon Uris and Kurt Vonnegut for twenty years. I panicked—essentially because I am an author and the books are the proof. If my books start disappearing I feel like I’m disappearing—which, as a writer, I was.'

This led her roundabouts to the burgeoning eBook phenomenon. Not only could she resurrect her own titles but help other writers get their books back out there using potentially lucrative ePublishing technology. Laura has already enjoyed substantial eBook success - to read about it and her new venture, click here.

Which leaves me wondering - will the novel she wrote with Sarah Ferguson - called either Hartmoor or Wingfield - be released as an eBook? It would make sense. And a packet.

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, 102: Visit her delightful gardens in August

2011-06-20T10:51:00.000+01:00

I love this spooky pic. We see the driveway to Cruden Farm, the acclaimed garden of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, 102 year-old mother of Rupert. She still lives an active life by all accounts. The trees that invite us into the misty unknown are lemon-scented gum (Corymbia citriodora). To view them in person, fly to Australia and take advantage of an open garden day on August 28, 2011: details here and here. I'm astonished to learn that Dame Elisabeth is a Buddhist, though I don't know why I am astonished.

Hemingway & Gellhorn: Two lives, two movies, one cliche

2011-06-17T10:58:00.001+01:00

Martha & ~~Arthur~~ Ernest

My last post on the late war correspondent Martha Gellhorn has yielded details of two hideous movie biopics of her life with sometime husband Ernest Hemingway. One is being made; the other never will. Thank God.

The first, comically, stars a tached Clive Owen as Martha and untached Nicole Kidman as Arthur in HBO TV flick Hemingway & Gellhorn. Oh, sorry I got that wrong; you make the casting corrections. Owen was a Great British Hollywood Hope for five minutes before he blew it by running around and shouting too much on camera in fulfilment of testicular expectation.

The prospect of him playing a mega-literary scrote with a euncuhy Midwestern accent via Coventry-cum-Essex to a botoxed Aussie fills me with schadenfreude.

The storyline reads: 'A drama centered on the romance between Ernest Hemingway and WWII correspondent Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's inspiration for For Whom the Bell Tolls and the only woman who ever asked for a divorce from the writer.' In other words, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

The other movie is Love Is A Battlefield which fortunately is stuck at website stage. The only thing to be said for it is that it plainly sells the Who's Afraid... line by comparing 'Gutsy Martha' and 'humorous Hemingway' to other warring pairs of movie legend (see video below) - y'know, Mr & Mrs, Ant 'n' Cleo, et al.

Its storyline kicks off: '“Love is a Battlefield” is a truly original screenplay about the tumultuously-entertaining relationship between the charismatic, witty, ruggedly-handsome 38 year-old Ernest Hemingway at the peak of his literary power and his battles with the tall, blonde, beautiful and brave, 28 year-old Martha Gellhorn who would become the most heralded war correspondent of the 20th Century (man or woman).'

Was Martha Gellhorn a man or a woman? Discuss.

Hemingway Gellhorn Script Pitch - click arrow to play

Do you recognise this woman?

2011-06-14T19:15:00.002+01:00

Well, do you? Don't just gawp.

I'm told the photo may be connected in some way to the Man Booker Prize, so she could be an author.

But I have my doubts.

(Answer: Consensus is, she's a young Martha Gellhorn from the 40s - see Duncan Fallowell's recollection of her from the 90s in Russia [comments])

Mark Simpson: 'Pope is the ultimate metrosexual in his Pradas'

2011-06-11T13:49:00.006+01:00

The living, breathing, nose-tufted antitheses of metrosexuality are all (to a man) throwbacks of vileness; legs-apart displays of redundant machismo soaked in the spirit of Old Spice. The very name 'Kelvin MacKenzie' or 'Dominique Strauss-Kahn' or 'Norman Mailer, RIP' conjures up mammoth-like unreconstructs quite unsuited to the dinkiness and gleam of modern bathroom suites or video game consoles.

From any normal, socialised human being of the 21st Century, these names, and others, and their primeval behaviour and appearance, elicit a healthy disgust. Not even a back, sac and crack can save the growly, hairy-inside cock-cunties.

This entirely original aesthetic, of disgust at redundant displays of unreconstructed maleness and cock-cuntery, is the work of one man: Mark Simpson. For it was he (yes!) who dreamt up the neologism 'metrosexual'. How and why - Google him or use the links below. I'm not some Peter York-like social historian, dearies, on £3 a word. I don't have to be.

Mark has now brought out a new book on Kindle called simply, Metrosexy - a collection of his scintillating, insightful essays on the condition of the contemporary male, his beauty (which requires educated, post-post-mod work); his bathroom and wardrobe investment; his flight from MacKenzie and co. David Beckham would now not be the tattooed peacock totem of ad hoarding lore but for Mark Simpson. For a generation of palatable cock-cunters he has invented a new world where men can turn their persons into social, scented art without compromising their straight sexuality. Alas, it's not a contribution likely to earn him recognition in the Queen's birthday honours list.

I shall write again about Metrosexy. Meantime, I asked Mark this question: 'Do you think the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury and other church luminaries are proving to be the most resistant to the metrosexual revolution - if yes, why; and if not, which category of male is, and why?'

Mark Simpson's reply:

'I fear it's too late for the Catholic Church! Look at the homo-erotics of this male stripper troupe, I mean gymnastic display at The Vatican recently, with the nuns cheering and leering outside watching on a big screen! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbxov7CVi8

'Theoretically the Catholic Church should be very resistant to metrosexuality - after all, St Paul raged against "effeminates", and Christianity has that general suspicion of the body - and the desire to pin everything on Eve.

'But in practice the Pope wears red Prada shoes.

'And the Vatican is in Italy, where men have been vain for millennia and all love their mamas.

'American Protestantism is more resistant and is the reason for that country's national nervous breakdown over metrosexuality. Metrosexuality is both very 'American' in the sense of consumerism/individualism/celebrity/self-perfection but also deeply challenging to fond American fantasies about stoic masculinity and 'manly men'. America has been having a panic about its men not being manly enough since the 19th Century, but in the 21st Century that panic isn't entirely misplaced. I suspect that for the US it's tied closely to anxieties about its imperial role - and its decline.'

Thank you Mark, I sooooo agree. To read Mark's website - click http://www.marksimpson.com/. And read a great interview with him on this excellent site: http://www.quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/ . Elly of Quiet Riot Girl has written a great piece on metrosexuality here.

To buy a copy of Metrosexy, click here.

Gay Girl In Damascus, Tewdwr Moss and 'his' Moon Child: A letter from a visitor to Syria

2011-06-09T13:31:00.001+01:00

Dearest Madame,

Your blog on the inequities of reporting between the disappearance of Gay Girl in Damascus and the fate of Robert Tewdwr Moss piqued my interest as always, but for a couple of reasons. [See posting below this to catch up]

Gay Girl in Damascus, as an internet text, is an inspiring document, but also very zeitgeisty. The author, a US-educated woman who made a conscious decision to return to Damascus knowing that she would face oppression, is a middlebrow American movie heroine in the making. In fact I'm waiting for someone to option the blog for a film in which Megan Fox will play said Damascus Gay Girl in a dead-eyed bid for an Oscar.

I rather fear that while Gay Girl from Damascus faces torture and rape at the hands of the Syrian secret police we will be turning what she left behind into the new Kite Runner.

Secondly, I was in Syria for nearly three weeks last year, and spent five days in Hama, where a lot of the political unrest is centred (this is nothing new - it was the stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood many years ago and al-Assad levelled all but a single street of what must have been a beautiful old town to get rid of dissent). We also spent four days in Aleppo, where Tewdwr Moss recounts [in Cleopatra's Wedding Present] meeting a young gay man whom he named "The Moon Child" on account of his wide round face and startling green eyes.

I'm happy to report that Moon Child is very much still with us and working with his brothers in the souks of Aleppo, which have as yet not quite been turned over to the tourists and remain somewhere you can buy the polyester bedspreads, coffee whitener and pleather mules that form the backbone of commerce across the Islamic world. Just don't, if you ever go there, buy the macaroons, as they taste of the diesel on which the baker runs his oven.

Ever yours, C

Robert Tewdwr Moss: A (dead) Gay Guy (once) in Damascus and A (missing) Gay Girl

2011-06-08T23:50:00.005+01:00

Robert Tewdwr Moss and his pussy cat

As the world (ie a few cock-cunting or cunting-cock journalists) wonder about the identity and whereabouts of the A Gay Girl In Damascus blogger - apparently disappeared while the actual proud owner of Gay Girl's faked face came to life boo-hooing on BBC2's Newsnight about internet stolen identities (the perils of) - let us not forget A Gay Guy In Damascus.

He's dead now and he wasn't Syrian. His name was Robert Tewdwr Moss and he wrote a classic travel book called Cleopatra's Wedding Present. For an insight into the repressed cock-cocking realities of Syria, order your copy now. British author Robert lost his life not in some dusty souk but in grimy London. His murder was greeted with near-universal indifference by the British media - because he was a grown-up cock-cocker - and in one instance, with chippy mockery by one of the Duncan Campbells (in the Guardian).

So let us celebrate the British media's sudden interest in Syria's Gay Girl. Whoever she/he/it is.

Cleopatra's Wedding Present, buy here.
Excerpts can be read here (click cover image)

Guardian subs do it again with 'Blight of literacy' howler

2011-06-06T18:59:00.000+01:00

The London Evening Standard launches a campaign to tackle illiteracy. The Guardian's pompous blogger Roy Greenslade has something to say about this, and the headline to his burble? 'Standard launches campaign to overcome "blight of literacy"'. It has now been corrected.

Kim Howells: 'Molly an authentic to Tracey Emin's phoniness'

2011-06-01T09:53:00.004+01:00

Molly Parkin. Photo:
BBC Cymru Wales/Anthony Lycett

Poor Kim Howells! Who is he? Oh yes, he's the former culture minister turned TV presenter. It fell to him to interview Molly Parkin for the Great Lives series show on BBC Wales (see blog below) broadcast on May 30. But the experience has left him a shadow of his former self - '[It] has shredded my nerves,' he reports on his BBC blog. He writes further: 'She may be in her 80th year but being close to her when she's recounting details of her turbulent life or expounding upon her philosophy is like trying to live with a machine-gun emplacement in the heat of battle.'

He didn't look too comfortable during filming it must be said. As I gazed on his slightly pained on-camera countenance I wondered momentarily whether he had perchance sat on an unlubricated dildo (not to be recommended, people) and was too polite to complain.

Still, he is impressed by her Performance Art (ie, usual behaviour), especially at an exhibition of her sexually explicit paintings - 'Being used only to the phoney, manufactured outrageousness of artists like Tracey Emin and her showbiz ilk' he is dazzled by her authenticity. Tracey Emin phoney? Whatever next.

To read Mr Howells' dispatch click here.

Molly Parkin: Orgies, Nefertiti, Blahnik - all on BBC Wales

2011-05-31T13:12:00.003+01:00

You have six days left to watch BBC Wales' Great Lives on Molly Parkin, directed sublimely by Robert Chilcott - click here, iPlayer. (Because of 'adult' themes you have to assure the web site you're over 16)

Molly recollects the orgies she choreographed at New York's Chelsea Hotel (I think) - most self-empowering. Great archive TV footage moments to savour - don't miss daughter Sophie ordering the groceries as a young thing or Moll sparring with some old TV goat who suggests her novels are porn. Steve Strange looks fiercely quaint in what looks like a gorgeously chintzy-tinkly hotel tea room in Wales; and I had no idea Manolo Blahnik owes his career to Moll. Where would the shoe be now without him and her?

I can be spotted as the astrologer at some point likening her to Nefertiti, but don't blink.

Watchers of exotics can wallow in her variously outlandish get-ups over the years, all the more striking set against the timeless male interviewer suits: visual code for TV's essential conservatism. Did you see Ant and Dec in their dark suits on Britain's Got Talent last night? They could be hosting Pebble Mill At One with Moll pissed back in the 70s - that's in the doc, too (minus Ant and Dec).

Great Lives is a wonderful snapshot reprise of an extraordinary life; and I look forward to a longer edit so I can see more of me and Moll (sorry, Moll and me).

Astrologer Henri Llewelyn Davies: Telegraph kids of the enlightenment dance on her grave

2011-05-26T20:05:00.007+01:00

Henrietta Llewelyn Davies: 1954-2011

In March I reported the untimely death of the astrologer Henrietta Llewelyn Davies. I now see that earlier this month the Telegraph ran an obit of her - the writer thankfully has avoided the compulsory scepticism about astrology that's usually affected in the 'rational' British media.

Which is more than can be said of the preposterous, idiotic scum who have left abusive comments on the obit web page: a parade of numbskull prejudice all the more emboldened by anonymity. There's even a 'Didn't she see it coming' remark of her death at 56.

If you imagine the abandonment of any spiritual interest necessarily spawns greater, finer, more discriminating intelligence in the secular Arcadia then think again. Pig-ignorance thrives whatever the intellectual fashion, wherever there's a well to spit down.

I'm also astonished that hardly any of the notable writers who plagued Henri's life morning, noon and night for psychic guidance have responded publicly to her death. It's no exaggeration to say that Henri gave moral and psychic support to a great many highly educated, highly regarded individuals. More often than not her counsel was spot on.

Sceptics of her work can only dream up reductive dismissals as they sleepwalk their way to the reassuring antiseptic of the Dignitas death camp in Switzerland.

The Telegraph obit is of course remarkably thin on biographical detail and makes too much of the Daphne du Maurier connection. Aside from her consultancy work she also wrote star sign columns for Cosmo, Woman's Own and TV Times, and a celebrity-astrological series for The Times and Teletext ITV/C4. Still, it's not every day that a broadsheet marks the passing of an astrologer. We should be grateful for that I suppose.

(And Henri, if you're reading this, sorry about Madame Arcati. I'm not responsible for the internet)

To read the obit click here

Molly Parkin - Great Lives show scheduled on BBC One Wales

2011-05-26T10:37:00.003+01:00

Followers of my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin should know that BBC One Wales broadcasts a bio of her next Monday, May 30.

Great Lives: Molly Parkin is presented by former Minister of Culture, Kim Howells, and includes contributions from many other living legends such as Steve Strange (running a B&B in Wales I believe), Andrew Logan, Madame Arcati (minus her normal costume) and others.

I'm hoping they run the show on iPlayer; and if you have Sky, look out for it there. More details here.

I believe a longer version of the show is being prepared. And I've advised the director of the above, Robert Chilcott, to put out a nine hour DVD of Moll's peregrinations, including our visit to Croatia in 2009.

Robert must have 100 miles of footage. Think The Only Way is Essex, Roberto!

PS - Robert has sent me the complete list of contributors to the show:

Victor Olliver
Irma Kurtz
Barbara Hulanicki
Ian Shaw
Darren Coffield
Malcolm Hart
Judy Strafford (art school friend)
Manolo Blahnik
Michael Horowitz
Steve Strange
Stuart Lyon (Mollys former agent)

Duncan Fallowell: How To Disappear memoir out end of June 2011

2011-05-23T19:51:00.001+01:00

DF at home

To mark my birthday - May 23 - Ditto Press has released details of Duncan Fallowell's 'five part memoir' How To Disappear (see cover in right-hand menu: think void with words).

It 'follows Fallowell to some of the world’s strangest corners, as he pursues his cast of characters, some accidentally absent and others wilfully trying to be so,' Ditto reveals unrevealingly but tantalisingly. The title is advertised as due out at the end of June. More details here.

The full title of the book on Amazon is How To Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits, which is even catchier and gives the release date as June 15. Order here.

One assumes it is autobiographical and yet I remain unsure. It's as likely to be part-travel book as a bit novelish, a mongrel genre all of DF's making. The physical book itself is of course an artwork: we expect nothing less from Ditto.

Astrologically, June 15 is not the best date for publication: the lunar eclipse and Full Moon on that day in Sagittarius can be botoxy on life's facial expressiveness - think Katie Price and you'll know what I mean. Any later than June 15 and the Moon is in wane mode - ungood for new ventures. I would suggest a release date just before June 15 or early July when the Moon strengthens once again.

Just trying to be helpful, bitches.

A Madame Arcati birthday: Here it comes ....

2011-05-23T07:07:00.003+01:00

Thank, you poppets, for your best wishes. The birthday of the person who imagines he (or she) runs this site is upon us (along with Joan Collins'). And an esteemed stage critic of one of our better newspapers sent this link by way of celebration of the nativity. It's to Leonard Cohen's Always.

The opening lines:

(Oh friends, ... don't matter if you're a man or a woman.
If you're in love with somebody,
these are the words that you got to learn to say.
Now listen carefully. Here it comes...)

Prof Brian Cox and the 'dogmatic mindset alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry'

2011-05-21T14:33:00.000+01:00

Prof Brian Cox, preacher

Ever smiling pop particle physicist Prof Brian Cox writes a crisp piece in The Sun about baseless doomsday prophecies. He sweetly masks his guesswork with a certainty that the world won't end this weekend despite the claims of an idiotic American 'Christian' radio broadcaster. He then moves onto rubbish the silly Mayan doomsday 'prediction' that the world is to expire in December 2012. No such prophecy exists in the source material but it suits him to use this to pursue his atheistic agenda by dwelling on obvious absurdities.

He quotes an unnamed 'leading authority' that the 2012 myth is a 'complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.' Foxy Coxy then asks: 'I wonder where we've seen that before?'

He may very well ask. Some might argue that the $4.4bn Large Hadron Collider - $500m from the UK alone - has something of the ker-ching jamboree about it. This wildly expensive experiment is the largest part of a massive funding international extravaganza to prove the big bang theory and find the creation 'God particle' - though to Cox, big bang is already fact if his BBC shows are anything to go by.

This reminds me of the open letter, signed by 33 leading scientists and more than 450 since, that was published in the New Scientist in 2004. It questioned the big bang and the reliance on 'fudge factors' to build up a theory - '[It] can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation,' they wrote.

They point out that other credible creation theories are 'severely hampered by a complete lack of funding' as big bang zealots grab the research cash and ostracise those scientists who challenge the theory. The scientists write: 'In cosmology today, doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.'

They conclude: 'This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.'

The jury's still out on big bang. But I see in Brian Cox something of the dogmatism complained of in the 2004 open letter. He routinely describes as 'rubbish' and 'drivel' whatever falls outside his knowledge (such as astrology), and betrays an unfortunate tendency to pass off his opinions and interpretations as fact. For all his scientific knowledge he is at heart a preacher of opinions.

Foxy Coxy is cashing in rather nicely on the cosmic theory du jour with his TV shows, books, Sun articles and science tours. He sets a splendid example in peer group conformism. And he has such a lovely smile.

Read the open letter

Jonathan King: Me Me Me - the movie non-review!

2011-05-19T20:03:00.002+01:00

Dahlings, dahlings. Please, I don't do reviews any more. Shuuuu up!

What I do is this. I celebrate the arrival, the delivery, of a creative project. The miracle of doing. Who gives a toss whether a movie or novel is any good? You want a review of Jonathan King's latest musical flick, Me Me Me? Then ask the likes of that nice Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian to give Lars von Trier a rest and apply his testing template to the work. And he will tell us the distance between his idea of celluloid perfection and film-in-hand. That's all a review is really. A measurement of failure for gobbly fat arse atheist consumers by someone who never made a movie in his life. Fin.

Which brings me back to Me Me Me. It's here! And you can watch it for free (link below) or buy the DVD (a marvellous piece of work, two discs; one with just the soundtrack, and a booklet with the song lyrics for a g 'n' t karaoke over your keyboard) or buy whatever on iTunes; you know the drill. It's the 'best movie of the year by a thousands miles,' declares Ben T Voxpops. Ben's such a sexy name doncha think? All the Bens I know are sexy. So, take it from a Ben. Me Me Me is worth it.

The brothers Stansall: Henry (left) and Rupert

I've watched Me Me Me of course and I can say this. It's far better than Baz Luhrmann's Australia, far superior to Starship Troopers' first and second sequels; and in a realm of total bliss set against Shekhar Kapur's frightful Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange or Jarman's Jubilee, there's not much to liken Me Me Me to (at time of release), though JK has cleverly digested the great lesson of The Only Way Is Essex that acting soooooo gets in the way.

Who needs the sad artifices of cinéma vérité when you can cast anyone shaggable to emit a noise on camera?

What I love about JK is that he's a relentless hater, and Me Me Me picks up where his glorious first film Vile Pervert: The Musical left off, blasting tabloid culture and his old nemesis Max Clifford once again. Indeed, the movie's newspaper editor, one Marshall Artes (Daniel Jefferson) of The Moon shit daily, adopts the measured, soft and creepy tread of Waxy Maxy as he lures a pretty female intern to out a Banksy-style street artist with a talent for graffiti of sweet lickle innocent babies.

I'm sure we'll hear a lot more from the two spunk avatars of the piece, Henry and Rupert Stansall (who play the street artist Johnny Bambino and his brother Jay Fratello); and I'm more than happy to commend the Aladdin song Rub It Hard sung by a cop who raps as biggYbiggy. Perhaps Take That could sing it at Eurovision 2012 after Gary Barlow's sunk The X Factor.

Is Me Me Me any good? Oh do fuck off you Which?-crazed swine.

To read more about Me Me Me and watch the movie for free, click here.

Controversy after Davros announces: There is no Doctor Who and I've got a book to flog

2011-05-17T20:07:00.005+01:00

The Dalek creator Davros has declared that there is no Doctor Who and that heaven is about as likely as time travel.

'Neither as head of the Kaled Scientific Elite on my home world of Skaro nor as Emperor of the Imperial Dalek Faction did I ever see anything to contradict my view that Doctor Who is nothing more than a figment of a writer's over-active imagination,' he said in his characteristic staccatissimo style of speech.

'Even with the aid of my one and only 20-20 vision-plus cybernetic blue eye, mounted on my forehead, I saw nothing but Daleks, luvvies and dead Thal prosthetics. Believe me, my eye is the acme of cutting edge technology and misses nothing! As for heaven, when you're exterminated you're exterminated - as they say at Dignitas in Switzerland.'

Attempting a smile for his many fans on the Guardian, he added: 'Stephen Hawking is a valued friend.'

Eurovision: Fancy Jedward not winning. Disgraceful.

2011-05-14T23:43:00.000+01:00

They referenced Gilbert & George: high concept pop or what, you Euro-cunts? The gayest duo currently warbling. I wonder if they are practising. Yet. Dare they? Long live Ireland!

Nesta Wyn Ellis completes memoirs: Will she name all the names?

2011-05-11T10:06:00.002+01:00

Nesta Wyn Ellis

I learn that Nesta Wyn Ellis, the exotic biographer of former PM John Major, has just completed her memoirs. The worlds of politics, pop music, journalism and even national security may shudder at the news.

And nude and semi-nude photos of the author are likely to be included for rest periods between revelations.

Paris-based Nesta has lived - and still lives - a life of fantastic variety. Her foray into Westminster life as a one-time Liberal Party candidate brought her into close cross-party contact with many a political luminary and she made one or two enemies along the way. Edwina Currie appears not to be a fan and I'm sure can look forward to the kind of warts 'n' all treatment she subjected her former lover Major to in her memoirs.

And speaking of Major, I believe Nesta will shed more light on his past marital difficulties. It was once rumoured, back in the early 90s, that the then PM and she became emotionally entangled while holed up together at Number 10 in long, exploratory interviews. And so I shall be most intrigued to discover the truth.

Nesta's last book, Lord of Love, the biography of Lord Bath, created quite a stir in 2010, not least among his fractious wifelets at Longleat. In earlier years, her infamous novel, The Banker's Daughter - retitled 'The Bonker's Daughter' by wits at Westminster - seemed to borrow considerably from life.

I understand Nesta won't be naming all the names in her new book so I guess a national guessing game may commence. Prepare for lots of blacked out silhouette photos in the tabloids.

The Major book, which revealed that wife Norma sometimes threw crockery at him, brought Nesta national fame. She appeared on Wogan, where she described Major as a 'flake', and was a fixture on newspaper front pages - usually in buxom poses. Her Mayfair home became a welcome posting for journalists seeking great value quotes.

In recent years Nesta has entertained Paris as a nightclub singer of chansons - indeed, for a flavour of her lilting voice go to her delightful website, click here.

Madeleine: Do your bit for the McCanns and buy this book for, er, £18 or £9

2011-05-09T20:38:00.003+01:00

The Sun has extracted so much from Kate McCann's Madeleine for its massive serialisation it's a wonder there's anything left worth reading. However, I do applaud the paper's championing of the book - I guess they must have parted with more than £500k for the rights, perhaps more given the advertising campaign behind it.

The case of missing Maddie has, like many other crime mysteries, drawn out the conspiracy theory trolls and armchair Rumpoles who imagine a question amounts to evidence. They were at it on Twitter last night, repeating baseless claims against the McCanns. Fantasists of this sort are not interested in forensic investigation or even the truth: they have a variety of agendas, and clinical personal issues, none of them much to do with Madeleine.

As for the book, out May 12, it is a highly emotional chronicle which I don't think breaks any major new ground. It is amazing to read nonetheless that the incompetent Portuguese cops imputed guilt to Kate because she'd consulted a priest just after her daughter went missing. A sign of guilt, apparently. So what's a practising Catholic supposed to do? She seems to have attracted vitriol over her failure to run around screaming and wailing like some soap opera banshee, disappointing the thirsty, tit-hardened sadists who live to slurp up other people's tears.

The Sun is advertising the book at a 'special' price of £18 from its RRP of £20. Yet on Amazon you can get it for £9. The book's earnings will be poured into the McCanns' not-for-profit Fund - details here on their Find Madeleine site.

To buy a copy click here.

Molly Parkin on Desert Island Discs

2011-05-08T13:21:00.002+01:00

Portrait by Darren Coffield

If you missed Molly Parkin on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs this morning, here's a chance to catch up. She's described as the 'grande dame of Bohemian living' and talks vividly of her life.

Click here.

PS Following the show, her memoir Welcome To Mollywood rocketed up the Amazon Biography sales chart. Even Madame experienced a surge with over 4000 extra visitors to the various posts on Moll (see labels).

Hugo Vickers: Wallis' tragic tale, Higham and the 'Howling Cunt'

2011-05-07T10:17:00.002+01:00

Hugo Vickers: Wally?

Most Esteemed Madame,

So happy to see your blog has returned.

I write to ask: have you perchance had an opportunity to peruse Mr Hugo Vickers' new work Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic Untold Story Of The Duchess Of Windsor? I'm half-way through and it is a most seriously curious work: more the tragic untold story of its author, who stalked his subject but was never fortunate enough to be granted an audience, and uses the book for a great deal of score-settling.

Author Michael Bloch gets it seriously in the neck, but I for one am left wondering why there is also no mention of Charles Higham whose Wallis bio contained equally racy allegations and was far more successful. Was it because that one was all true? Vickers doesn't say. It's the most puzzling book I've read in ages in terms of begging the question of what is going on in the mind of its author, so I wonder if you are able to shed any light on the matter.

I'm afraid, as per Mr Vickers' other works, it's crafted in an arid manner with reams of useless trivia crying out for an editor's blue pencil. (And for all that, there's still lots that remains unpublished about the Duke: eg that he used to go cruising for sailors in the company of the automobile heir Walter Chrysler Jnr., etc.). One also senses that the author may have come to loathe the late HM the Queen Mother, but is too polite to employ the term 'Howling Cunt'.

Yours,

A Most Puzzled Reader.

P.S. Recently visited NZ. Going As Far was deliciously accurate, and could have Gone Further!

Dear Puzzled Reader

I'm afraid Madame Arcati has read her last book in her present incarnation and, alas, it wasn't a book by Hugo Vickers. I am therefore unable to offer an explanation for his workmanlike foibles or attachment to royal trivia. However, it should not surprise one that the febrile world of royal biography is a carbonated stew of bitterness and revenge: worthy of its own history I'm sure. This, too, shall be a book I avoid.

Ever

Madame Arcati x

Vogue listens to Madame Arcati and removes Asma al-Assad interview

2011-05-06T10:34:00.004+01:00

US Vogue has removed its shameful interview with Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad from its website after my April 26 post drawing attention to its continued online presence. Since the indentured guttersnipes of the press had forgotten all about this I thought I should say something. Why the piece remained up as the Syrian government kills and tortures its restive people is a complete mystery.

Somebody's finger is not on the global pulse at Conde Nast. The magazine should now remind itself who thought it was good idea to run the fawning piece of tripe on the glamorous Eva Braun of Syria.

First look at Duncan Fallowell's How To Disappear memoir cover. Excellent

2011-05-04T16:21:00.001+01:00

Love the book look of Duncan Fallowell's memoir How To Disappear due out at the end of June from Ditto Press. Or whenever! Was there ever a greater marriage of title and design? Of course, one cannot imagine Duncan disappearing (unlike Madame Arcati) and that's the intriguing lure. What can he mean? He loves the cryptic does Duncan Fallowell. I shall be reviewing it, natch.

Madame Arcati is back (again). Don't know why

2011-05-04T14:54:00.001+01:00

Some of you may have noticed that I was disappeared by Blogger for a few days. No explanation was given. No warning. Friends spoke of a 'purge' of sites with adult content warnings. I know a few out there think Madame Arcati is a porn site that threatens civilisation as we know it, but I always imagined - being an optimist - that others actually read me and understood that this blog actually has a satirical intent; and if satire requires a PhotoShopped celebrity cock, so be it. I had fully intended to accept fate's hand and not bother to blog anymore. But since I'm back, hello. Nice to see you. Come in to my...

While I knew oblivion and rather liked it, the person who thinks he runs the shop set up his own astrology site. If you fancy a horoscopic analysis, click here.

Vogue keeps up Asma al-Assad interview as Syria burns

2011-04-26T20:27:00.001+01:00

While the Syrian government massacres its revolting peasants, I see that US Vogue has still yet to take down its recent ghastly and fawning interview with Asma al-Assad, Syria's 'dynamic first lady' who is on a 'mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism.' She should import the BBC's resident proselytising atheist Prof Brian Cox to help her out.

'Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East,' writes the unpsychic author Joan Juliet Buck. It is 'a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings.' Joanie makes a big thing of the secularism as if it's some sort of bar to state persecution and murder. I assume she never majored in history.

It seems odd that a magazine so supposedly in touch with the zeitgeist is deaf to Obama's condemnation of Syria. To read the shameful piece click here.

Welcome To Mollywood: The Parkin Lot returns, new paintings, a BBC documentary

2011-04-21T18:37:00.002+01:00

The Parkin Lot 'multi-generational disco' is making a one-off comeback on April 27 (8pm to midnight) at London's RED Gallery.

Molly Parkin, daughter Sophie and her daughter Carson host the event, a hark back to their weekly stints at Soho's Green Carnation in the Noughties. Then, Madame Arcati would pull faces at the hideous 60s music before bullying Welsh Spaniard Roberto on the decks to play current remixes off YouTube (history is how you re-write it....).

But that's not all. Kicking off the Welcome To Mollywood event, Molly unveils her new paintings from 6.30pm and then later will give a talk about her peculiarly erratic and erotic life, 7.30-8pm.

The whole evening is being filmed as part of a BBC documentary on Molly.

For venue details http://www.redgallerylondon.com/. RSVP: hello@redgallerylondon.com

PS Molly is stranded on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in late April/early May.

Prison union leader Colin Moses tells Farah Damji: 'New Labour sold me out'

2011-04-19T15:51:00.004+01:00

Colin Moses

The New Statesman's guest-hiring of (not quite) socialite-socialist Jemima Khan has sparked quite a fashion in serious periodical-land.

Tribune - the leftie mag I thought had expired yonks ago - has importuned another (not quite) socialite-socialist (ret'd) to take over where the marketing budget left off. Step forward Farah Damji whose work occupies the centre pages of the latest issue - an interview with the outgoing National Chairman of the Prison Officers' Association (POA), Colin Moses; described as the 'only the second black UK Trade Union leader.'

Moses is a vitriolic critic of the government's plan to turn our jails into privately run cash cows. But it is New Labour that comes in for his most caustic criticism: he blames the party for birthing the 'punishment for profit' policy. And in opposition, Labour still shows no interest in listening to the little people of the prison service, he claims.

'Sadiq Khan, [Labour's] Shadow Justice Minister, does not take on board the views of the working man on the front line,' Damji paraphrases. '[Moses] voted for Ed Miliband but dismisses his New Labour inner circle; and says the party in opposition is suffering from an identity crisis.'

Moses feels 'sold out by New Labour, who fully supported every court action against the POA regarding the lawfulness of their members to strike.' Ironically, 'he enjoys a better relationship with the ConDems - “They are good to me," he says. "I have set out my stall and we know where we stand.” John McDonald is cited as an example of an honest player.'

Farah Damji

Damji continues: 'It’s not only Tony Blair and John Reid who come under fire for selling out the public sector, [Moses] similarly storms at Jack Straw and John Prescott for opening 11 private prisons and reneging on election promises to the POA, a naturally conservative union, of allowing free strikes whilst wooing them for the Labour vote in 1997.'

Still, it's not all good news for the Tories. David Cameron is dismissed for lacking 'gravitas'.

From May, Moses will have more time to spend on his memoirs. And I understand Farah Damji, whose own prison experiences could be invaluable as a form of method-writing, will be his co-author.

Sadly, Moses' interview is not online. But here's Tribune's link anyway.

Jonathan King: Second movie Me Me Me out in May

2011-04-16T12:53:00.005+01:00

Me himself

The ever-productive Jonathan King (yes, him; get over it) releases his second movie on May 5.

It's called Me Me Me and is not ostensibly a sequel to his glorious Vile Pervert: The Musical - my movie of the year 2008. A video from the slick new flick featuring a female trio fast approaches 100,000 hits in one week on YouTube - I do like their catchy song Don't Let Him Touch You, which I take to be a welcome homily to save one's cherry for the right bastard.

You can buy it on iTunes now. Details of where you can view the film for zilch in its entirety will be given in May.

Meantime, view the video below. Click screen once.

Molly Parkin: The portrait by the artist Trademark

2011-04-14T15:32:00.002+01:00

Molly Parkin by Trademark

I love this new hyper-glam portrait of my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin, due to be unveiled at La Galleria, 30 Royal Opera Arcade, Pall Mall, London SW1Y 4UY on 26 April, 2011.

It's the work of artist Trademark aka Mark Wardel. His other celebrity subjects include Kylie Minogue (who commissioned a series of portraits for her Showgirl Homecoming Tour), Divine, Grace Jones, David Bowie and Boy George (who describes Trademark as a modern-day Warhol).

And Kanye West and Naomi Campbell are among star collectors of his artwork.

Of the Moll unveiling, Trademark tells me: 'The event is being filmed as part of the BBC4 profile which has followed the process of myself painting this portrait of your fiancee.'

I would affectionately title her Nefertiti-like portrait: Moll: Murder By Maquillage. The purple lips are sealed - for today she will spare you a sharp retort - while the black eye greasepaint is a promise of risky drama, lovingly applied. This face is trouble.

To view more of Trademark's work, click here. For a critique, go to this.

PS to Trademark: Think about Judge Judy. Turn this hideous virago and persecutor of the fat, blue-collared litigant into a drag queen. She is the most dangerous woman in America. She is also thin. And cruel.

Celebrity power: Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan save the New Statesman

2011-04-13T12:28:00.005+01:00

Jemima and Hugh save mag

Even the ancient legend that is Madame Arcati finds herself astonished. I thought I'd heard and seen it all. Hugh Grant - yes, the man who is the current incarnation of British movie upper class cock-cunter - has saved the New Statesman. His naughty article on how he stitched up a former News of the World hack (see previous post) on illegal phone hacking in the Murdoch empire is now trending on Twitter. This is thanks to the feature going online (not from purchase!) - drawing in tens of thousands of new readers and reinventing the magazine in the process.

The mag now understands that celebrity power is its future, particularly since it is Stephen Fry who's leading the battle tweet (with a link to the mag that doesn't work). I tweeted first, natch. Also, countless people now know of the skulduggery at the Screws even though much of Hugh's nuggets are not new.

And all this occurred on guest editor and socialite Jemima Khan's watch. Frankly, if you haven't done a Hello! spread, just fuck off. Celebrities' low carbon spotlights make a spectacle of everything adjacent. NS ed Jason Cowley must stand down in favour of Jemima. Now. She can make him travel or beauty ed or whatever. Keep him 'appy, as they mispronounce in northern soaps.

BJ (Before Jemima), the NS squeaked. AJ, it roars. I do not recommend a BJ situation.

Now, it is true I ran a very rude piece about Jemima only the other day. But part of my function is to fill the sails of the zeitgeist so that we may journey forth. Suzanne Moore was right to highlight the total neglect of editorial low-class urchins without a job or famous parent. Jason was right to bring in Jemima. This paradox must not cause us sleepless nights. Jemima can be installed and she will hire more under-privileged urchins.

Problem solved.

PS My thanks to the New Statesman's Helen Lewis and Duncan Robinson for giving me the precise figure of Hugh Grant hits on the NS website: 'A lot'.

Hugh Grant, the former Screws hack and the haunted pub in Dover

2011-04-12T20:07:00.005+01:00

The Castle Inn, Dover

It's certainly the most delicious media story of the year (to date). A major British actor bugs the hack who once bugged him. Their topic of conversation: illegal phone hacking. Part of the transcript of Hugh Grant's highly revealing taped conversation with former News of the World whistle-blower Paul McMullan is now online at the New Statesman website: click here.

Priceless nuggets include Andy Coulson's alleged complicity in phone hacking, the PM's unhealthy proximity to Rupert Murdoch moll Rebekah Brooks (who, as one witty Arcatiste has pointed out to me, looks more like Robert Plant every day) and how Murdoch wickedly plays his multi-media games with celebrity pawns - the Nicole Kidman/Moulin Rouge! tale is a thing of beauty.

Grant travelled to the Dover pub/hotel McMullan runs, The Castle Inn, where all was revealed; and he generously encourages readers to pay the establishment a visit. It sits on the corner of Dolphin Lane and Russell Street. Click here to read about the colourful history of the 18th century coaching inn: it is of course haunted, and the medium Derek Acorah will want to know about the 'creaks, icy blasts and apparitions' should he ever be called in for a spot of exorcism.

I only mention all this because I want to see Mr McMullan safe and secure in his new business, out of harm's way and solvent. He is a very important source for future scholars of the worst scandal ever to hit British newspapers. Long may he thrive.