Angie Bowie: 'I wrote for sex phonelines'

So you're in this movie DeadRockStar?
I was hired as an actor two or three years ago but they didn‘t have a start date. I spoke to Danny Vinik, the author, a couple of weeks ago, and it is supposed to start shooting this summer here in Tucson.
And this is based on your memoir Backstage Passes, as the Daily Express claimed? No, that's another project and I've worked on a number of Backstage Passes screenplays. I'm often asked to consult on David Bowie/glam rock-related movies. I was going to consult for Velvet Goldmine. My daughter, Stacia thought it was about me and nearly had a nervous breakdown. I retained the film rights to Backstage Passes as a project in case I ran out of things to do. Recently, not only have there been scripts about that time period but (and this amazes me) all these David Bowie Tribute bands, who amount to "Elvis/Bowie impersonators". Bowie has become a legend in his own time! I was very impressed with that news which came to me through the website.
Have any big names approached you to do a David/Angie movie?
No. But I can tell you about a 23-year-old, a young gentleman recommended by a mutual friend. He has written a screenplay about David. He'd read Backstage Passes and incorporated some of it. I read it and nearly had a coronary. The kid had me screaming down Beckenham High Street about aliens. That certainly got my attention.
Are you working on a Backstage Passes screenplay?
Yes, I've written three or four versions. I'm playing with it. I wrote a musical called Razor and I think there’s a way to combine fiction and fact to blend into an individual story rooted in the material. My days and nights at the moment are spent working on my book Pop.Sex, Popular Sexuality In The World Today. But there has been so much interest in the '70s time frame and I have seen so many scrappy efforts at recreating the age; I will be forced to add my two cents worth for those who might appreciate something closer to reality. Or farther from reality because it was a special time. Almost Famous came the closest I have seen to that particular time but it did not address the European adventures of rock 'n' roll so to top Almost Famous, I want to take my time and do it well. Next year I’ll write the film of the '70s. Backstage Passes is hard for me to ignore; the book was released for a third time in October 2004; I am asked about it five or six times a week in letters from the internet. I want it to be serious and entertaining. It's got to be right.
Is it about you and David Bowie?
I don't know I haven’t written it yet. It's about me specifically. It would not be right to tell the David Bowie story. He was a part of my life but just a 10-year chunk. That's not much. Backstage Passes the movie is about me: it does not start with David Bowie and end with my leaving him - despite the book version which was heavily influenced by the American publisher. It's about my early life in Cyprus. David Bowie was one project in my life, the next was my horse ranch. These are told in flashbacks. I'm so exhausted talking about the past. Someone from Holland recently sent me a copy of Dutch Penthouse in which David is quoted as saying Backstage Passes is the best book about him - I should write more! I don't speak Dutch so I can't say if this true.
So the film is about you...
By the third version I decided I would revert to my alter ego, Lily Bounty. Backstage Passes is just a starting point for The Adventures of Lily Bounty.
Where does Lily Bounty come from?
Back in 1991 I wrote a sex opera serial for the 900 sex phonelines. Lily was born out of that - an erotic animated film about Lily Bounty. Gorgeous, erotic Lily Bounty represents what I desire.
Some might say there's a movie to be made about you and David. Some people say your career suffered as you helped his take off...
I don't think that's necessarily true - but I wonder why they say that. I did a good job with David Bowie. I'm a great marketer - it was enough for me to promote him. I would never say "He'd be nothing without me..." He's a brilliant writer and entertainer but he needed a marketer - I mean, we were the first music kids to incorporate stage methods to transform musical events into theatrical experiences. I claim responsibility for that. I am a total theatrical experience nut! But I don’t like traditional stuff, once corporate endorses it I am wary of its merit! I like weird, street theatre, slick cabaret, solo satire, stream of consciousness comedians; Robin Williams, Billy Connolly.
You've been much abused by some in the media for writing about Bowie in Free Spirit and Backstage Passes.
Have I? Oh, well.
Tell us of your movie loves.
I admire Ridley Scott - a brilliant cinematographer. I'm crazy about the new breed of sci-fi writing, not crazy about the young/adrenaline violent flick. I have a weak stomach. I can't stand mushiness - I'll rush for the exit. Babe is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Not the second one. I like applications where different types of special effects and animatronics present a different visual world. Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is brilliant - it reminds us of war based on fear, of invasion, it's remembering, placed in a sci-fi context. Bulworth is brilliant: Warren Beatty gets better and better. I think in biographical movies Howard Stern's life story Private Parts was a hit! And Larry Flynt's life story was very well done. It’s all in the writing - no script and it’s rubbish. Howard told me he worked for four and half years with the writers getting that script right.
You've released a music CD album Moon Goddess.
Yes, it is like a musical review of my life. Moon Goddess was written between 1984 and 1993. My first solo recording was in 1976; I wrote a poem called Soul House. Roy Martin wrote the music and it was released through Track Records. Thunderclap Newman was in the studio with us and I asked him to help me with Some Of My Best Friends Are Strangers. I met Chico Rey in New York & wanted to record a track of his called Crying In The Dark which I had heard him perform in a club. We began this album with six tracks recorded in New York. By 1986 we were touring Europe with Crying In The Dark out on Bellaphon and an English band. I produced and directed a video in Vienna for the song and we won an award in Germany for that effort.
So tell us about yourself...
I live with Michael G, he's very cool, in Tucson, where there's more writers per square foot than anywhere else on the planet. It's taken me a while to learn to focus on my career. I guess being raised a Catholic it took me a while to realise it was okay to follow my own dreams and not think I had to hang on the cross to help someone else make their dreams come true. My son Joe/Zowie will be 31 next May 30. Happy Birthday Darling. My daughter Stacia celebrated her 22nd birthday on July 24. and so I have been able to fulfil my desire to have a boy and a girl. I have travelled and written books and poetry and directed short films and video, written and performed music. Films are my next port of call; that’s where I was going when that good-looking young David Bowie said: "Come on over to my house." It just took a while to get out the door. Thank you for a fun interview, Madame Arcati.

Liberace's ghost

The astonishing news that Nic Cage will play Liberace appears to have upset the spirit of the late piano-plonker. For Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens eaterie in Las Vegas says that Liberace's ghost has suddenly popped up - his face appears in mirrors, bottles fly off shelves and women's loo doors unlock. Nic is notorious for his bizarre movie research, so don't be surprised if he conducts a seance with the great man who sadly died of an Aids-related illness in 1987.

Bye Rav

I hear that the News of the World is looking for a replacement for Rav Singh - the ludicrous showbiz hack whose weekly dps in the paper is a tribute to fiction. This was the man who entirely made up the recent gay football story and who claimed Shayne Ward was the new face of Calvin Klein. The very next day the singer was proclaimed as the new face of ... Woolworth's. There's a number of contenders for his tarnished crown but fiery Kim Dawson of the Star's Hot page appears to be one of the faves.

News on Mrs Smith

Jada Pinkett-Smith - wife of actor Will Smith - has just completed a film script and it's with director Mike Figgis. She is or was in London at the exclusive Baglioni Hotel near Park Lane - just the place for a heavy metal wailer about to assault our lugholes with her music. Intriguingly, she hinted that she found her hubby's sound a tad "middle-of-the-road".
You read it here first, like some other items .....

Robert Maxwell: the premonition

The ever excellent Rob McGibbon interviews self-outed licensed killer (or conspiracy fantasist) Juval Aviv in this week's Press Gazette.
Reputedly once a Mossad assassin (claiming he led Israel's Operation Wrath of God revenge attacks against the PLO terrorists who perpetrated the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre), reportedly a consultant on Steven Spielberg's movie Munich (about the above), and now demonstrably a corporate private investigator for New York firm Interfor Inc, Aviv has written his first novel, Max, whose central character is "loosely based on Robert Maxwell".
Plot sell: billionaire tycoon Max Robertson is bumped off and it falls to Sam Woolfman ("a veteran of the Mossad", goes the blurb) to unravel a global conspiracy.
In the PG interview Aviv says he believes Maxwell was murdered. It's a deductive opinion, no evidence is adduced. Suicide is dismissed.
I have no view on the matter. But I do have a short personal dream to relate - it's probably no more irrational a contribution than anyone else's. Two weeks before Maxwell died in 1991 I had what subsequently appeared to be a cryptic premonition of the old rogue's death. It's ambiguous on the suicide or murder question, it could be interpreted either way. Let me know your take. Here it is without further comment:

I'm on a white yacht somewhere at sea - somewhere quite sultry - and I know Maxwell is on board though I can't see him. There's a sense of danger, I feel Maxwell wants to kill me. My attention is drawn to a black, burned-out aga on the topdeck - I have no idea what it's supposed to signify. Then I see Maxwell who pursues me around the yacht. I jump overboard and swim away. He jumps in after me. I make it to a nearby shore, he doesn't. I know he has drowned.

New Statesman/Tesco party

To the New Statesman summer party at Tate Britain last Thursday. The London mercury's through the roof and not even sepulchral cool stone interiors can entirely lift the heat from Britain's radiant left-ish intelligentsia. So that on entry one is struck immediately by an ambience of herd body odour.
The elderly magazine has recently enjoyed the benefits of editorial HRT with the appointment of editor John Kampfner. One of the results is a new, lovely silky complexion, replacing the rough old paper stock, and a blooming of colour as fresh blood courses everywhere.
You know the weekly must be doing well because Tesco has provided the free champagne. The NS has finally caught up with Tony Blair.
As Kampfner addresses the sweaty throng – “We’re selling 30,000 copies a week, subscriptions are at record levels!” – an odd little man in Seventies’ denim sidles up. “I’m back,” he says conspiratorially, crystal ear studs sparkling. “I was out in the wilderness but I’m back in again.” It’s one-time NME hero Charles Shaar Murray: he’s humblingly grateful for this happy turn in his fortunes. “They’ve given me some work again,” he adds when I appear uncomprehending.
Then he darts over to the Independent’s literary ed Boyd Tonkin with a book in hand to reassure him he’ll be getting the review shortly. Well, when you’re a freelance you’ve got to work the party.
Then I bump into a radio producer. “Oh God,” he says. “Charlie Whelan should be coming but he’s dead drunk. He collapsed on the floor at Westminster, I don’t know if he’s coming.” Yet half-an-hour later Gordon Brown’s former press rottweiler turns up looking sober so I don’t know what to believe.
Neil and Christine Hamilton present an incongruous sight given his Thatcherite past, twinned at the hip as ever: she's clad in a shocking red frock, perhaps in homage to the NS's political past. A pinkish hue might be more appropriate de nos jours. Julian Clary is advised to lose a little weight.
As I talk with the mag’s excellent new arts diarist Ben Dowell, I spot Clare Short passing by. “Darling,” I scream, “I just love you!” We’ve never met before yet she reciprocates my affectionate greeting with a joyous hug – “I love you too!” she shouts.
But I soon turn serious. “Now Clare,” I say, “what’s with you and kittens? On a Radio 4 show sometime ago, on cruelty to animals and vivisection, you said something like if a child is a cruel to a kitten, it’s not the kitten you worry about, it’s the child who’s capable of being cruel to the kitten, that’s my concern. Clare how could you say such a thing? What about the kitty?”
Clare looks utterly bemused. “I don’t remember saying that. When did I say that?” So we argue amiably until I’m dragged away by a friend. We observe John Kamfner who keeps lifting his legs up for some reason as he anecdotalises: I notice he has those hooded sort of eyes that I always associate with ruthlessness: Margaret Thatcher has them, too. Madame Arcati says he will be very successful.
Michael Buerk is holding court, very animated now in a crumpled white jacket. I spot ex-Times ed and columnist Simon Jenkins, on a recce for copy maybe: I've never quite worked out his politics, but he writes great sentences. The Observer/Mail writer Mary Riddell snakes about the party inscrutably. “I wonder if they’ve put up their rates,” she says. Now she’s blonded up she looks years younger. At the People in the late ‘80s she sported a hideous Bowie-esque hairdo.
I need air. My companion and I escape into London’s allergen-heavy ozone. I want to say something to Will Self but my companion drags me away to another party.

Robert Tewdwr Moss (2)

I said I'd post some more thoughts on Robert Tewdwr Moss - see entry below - as the 10th anniversary of his murder approaches.
I heard of his death from a friend. She phoned to say had I heard about Robert? From the tone of her voice I sensed the news was terrible. He had been found dead in his flat in Paddington, near St Mary's Church (where he would be later remembered). My cousin shortly afterwards phoned to say he had seen a report about his death on a London TV news show. Robert had been bound and gagged and he bore the signs of a beating. We learned in the subsequent weeks that he had suffocated from the gag or drowned in his own blood, I'm still uncertain. Whichever way he had put up a struggle.
Because he was a gay "promiscuous" man, a lot of people (journalists especially) assumed he was the victim of an S&M bondage session gone wrong, though he had no interest in violent sex so far as I knew; and I would have known.
In fact two homophobic opportunists - one of whom privately called Robert "Mr Pink" - thought he had money, probably because of his baroque clothes, and decided to rob him. Their murder convictions followed in 1997 and I think both were jailed for life. So perhaps they are due for release as I write.
There's much more I could say but the point of this posting is twofold - both about fatalism.
The first is that in the year prior to his passing Robert and I saw each other maybe only once - though we talked on the phone almost every week. Three weeks before he died I got it into my head that he should come with me as my guest to my cousin's summer party in Essex: it was a completely out of character thing for me to do as I hardly ever mix friends and family. And I thought Robert would never accept because he was about as non-suburbanite as you could imagine. Yet he was a huge success at the do and he loved it.
At the party he suddenly said something to me that changed my whole view of a life situation. I can't talk about it, it doesn't matter here in any case. He said it out of the blue, it just erupted from him with an amazing and uncharacteristic conviction, about something we'd never talked about before. It was a piece of instant good sense I lacked.
Retrospectively I am inclined to see this as his unconscious parting gift to me. In hindsight one can't help but see or imagine significances in all this.
The second thing - a morbid conversation. I had this with one of his very close friends before the trial of the two killers. Afseneh, a Persian woman he'd lived with for years and had met at university, told me that about a year before his death, he had visited a medium in New York: she had told him he would be murdered. Robert knew of my interests in the afterlife, but he had never confided this horror story.
The immoral irresponsibility of the psychic shocked me; the fact of the prophecy hardly registered at the time. I think about it a lot but still can make no sense of it. I wonder to what extent it played on his mind in the last year, and the most successful part, of his life.

Dermot O'Leary: zeitgeist says...

Someone asked me today what I think of Dermot O'Leary, the host of Big Brother's Little Brother and I had to admit that I've given him no thought at all. However it is a feature of my work that I can tune into a zeitgeist perception at the drop of a hat so that in an instant I found myself saying:

"O'Leary - he's perfectly functional, an auto-bloke who never does anything wrong, a TV-created idea of customised masculinity for a mass chippy audience. Not really witty, just fast. Attention span of a bluebottle. Stings like a hover fly. There's a factory somewhere churning out these "classless" content providers - he is the male noughties but not very nice. Russell Brand is certainly a very different sort, will rise higher but burn brighter on descent."

Broomfield's Iraq movie

On the Southern train home last night, the carriage I'm swaying about in is suddenly filled with a whiny voice that's familiar to me. I think of fetishistic things, Heidi Fleiss, Margaret Thatcher and other implements of bondage .. ah yes, it's the director Nick Broomfield in his past-it Timberland boots, on his mobile, telling someone his good news.
"I'm on a train, I'm on my way to Emsworth [in Hampshire]. Well, I'm about to make a film. I'm off to Jordan next week, the film's about Iraq, it's with Beyond, and Channel 4 has just picked it up, just now, they just took it up. The film'll need a lot of military hardware and I've got to blow up part of a town, so it could be fun, or maybe not. The film will be a bit like Ghost ...."
Ghost? And he rattles on as we pass Worthing.
Why he didn't hook up his phone to the PA system and let the entire 12 carriages know of his new film is beyond me.

Drudge fudge

"It's War, Says Israel" screams right-wing Drudgereport of the latest Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
Go to the story it's screaming about and you read: "We are not at war, but we are in a very high volume crisis, and we have an intention to put an end to the situation here along the northern border," [said] Brig Gen Dan Halutz said in Jerusalem.

Superman cock too manly

In its perennial innocence the Daily Mail illustrates Martin Newland's piece on the rise of manliness - or the "Menaissance sweeping America" - with a massive pic of actor Brandon Routh in his superman kit. On the grounds of taste Mr Routh's reportedly massive lunchbox convexity has been digitally ironed down just in case he looks a little too manly. So much for the novelty of the menaissance.
The Mail seems unaware that Superman is now a pixellated member of American gay iconography: the queens just love a superhero! Just google "gay superman" if you're sceptical. Of course, many a Mary is manly but I doubt that the Mail could bring itself to admit that. Thank God newspapers are edited by drunks and workaholics: they just simply can't think things through.
Incidentally, Mr Newland thinks that manliness is "stoicism, self-respect, decisiveness, assertiveness". These sound like the attributes of my old grandmother, but what do I know?

Ebert should get an Oscar

The Chicago-Sun Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert is recovering from post-cancer emergency surgery - long may he reign yet. His ill-health re-ignites a preoccupation of mine - why doesn't the Academy Awards introduce a Film Critic of the Year category? It's odd that reviewers - on whom the entire movie industry depends for free publicity and creative interpretation - are not lauded by the Oscars, or even by the Baftas, or by any film festival that I know of.
I propose that The Pauline Kael Award (For Film Reviewing) be created by some awards or festival committee - named after the legendary, tough old trout who, as movie critic of the droopy but literary The New Yorker magazine, venerated the taboo-breakers over the crowd-pleasers in masterclasses of pith. She noticed telling things that passed others by and was ruthlessly independent: like any great critic she could dramatically shape or re-shape audience perpective and in the process become part of the making of a movie ex post facto. Ebert is a great critic though of a different order from Kael.
A win for any British or British-based film reviewer would be most improbable. Jonathan Ross may as well be a celebrity chef for all his movie insight, broiling his tired adjectives for the movie ad credits. But pub movie quizzes - Jonathan would be a winner.
The late and sometimes fabulous Alexander Walker wrote like an angel yet read like a man who talks to himself in the bath - his trashing of The Lord Of The Rings in the London Evening Standard was froth-mouthed lunacy, and readers rightly skewered him. Even so, he'd make a credible posthumous nomination from outside the US. He, like Ebert and Kael, was a great movie noticer: he saw things that others missed.
Peter Bradshaw on The Guardian writes elegantly but tends to yawnsomeness: I mean, who cares what he thinks? Best if he returns to parody. The Times' former film critic Barbara Ellen affected an almost autobiographical approach to her task, giving movies a walk-on part in the fascinating drama that was and is her busy life.
The Mail's Christopher Tookey simply appliques his paper's moral line on whatever he sees and he even supports censorship: a professionally useful stance with moral vigilance hovering over you. Certainly the antithesis of Kael. Ryan Gilbey - who gets about but presently can be read in the revamped New Statesman - is plainly knowledgeable but a prose-droner: perhaps exposure to Ken Tynan's journalism might introduce him to sizzle. I can't think of anyone else right now. Empire mag is a slave to movie PR: Sight & Sound, despite a relaunch of sorts, still grouts its nouns and adjectives into a wall of largely impenetrable prose.
Roger Ebert would probably be favourite to win the first "Kael": his lucid, insightful copy contrasts violently with the picky, neurotic, dull and often inaccurate musings of our UK critics.
This proposed award has at least one thing going for it: Dame Judi Dench couldn't possibly win it.

The Guido blog roll

Interesting to see how many times certain media and political organisations have revisited the audacious Guido Fawkes blog. This is one of the sites giving John Prescott hell at the moment with exclusive stories on his mistresses and cowboy interests - the sort of stuff our lazy, arrogant, besuited hacks can't be bothered with till it's spoonfed them.

Houses Of Parliament 18147 returning visits
In.parliament.uk 25787 returning visits
Associated Newspapers Ltd 1934 returning visits
Bloomberg Financial Markets 391 returning visits
British Broadcasting Corporation 2921 returning visits
Conservative Central Office 7659 returning visits
Expressnewspapers 303 returning visits

For the full list go to http://order-order.com/

Pray for loser Victor

These are unhappy times for the dreadlocked critic Victor Lewis-Smith. At present the subject of a libel suit for calling hypnotist Paul McKenna a "fraud" in his recycled columns for the London Evening Standard and the Daily Mirror, we learn from today's news reports that he is unable to attend legal proceedings because two members of his family are ill. Our prayers go out to them.
Only a few weeks ago he cost Associated Newspapers well in excess of £75,000 for accusing TV chef Gordon Ramsay and the makers of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares of faking scenes to make other restaurants look like public health hazards. Or put another way, Mr Lewis-Smith faked a story to make himself look clever. Whether he has faked a tale about McKenna remains to be seen - sadly, my money's on McKenna.
Yet for his nickname for the thatched Terry Wogan ("Wigon") and his loathing of the hypocrite Esther Rantzen, he is to be treasured. Here he is on the dreadful latter:

"WHAT an extraordinary human paradox is Esther Rantzen. For decades she hosted That's Life, which positively revelled in jokes about the inherent risibility of fat women, while simultaneously professing a mawkish concern about the way overweight girls are teased and bullied at school.
"For years she preached morality for a living, yet conducted an affair with a married man, continuing it until she had worked her way into the luxurious family home and forced the wife out into a tiny flat. Her stepdaughter, Cassandra Wilcox, has denounced the apparently saintly Esther in print as a "heartless and calculating" woman who delighted in the destruction of Desi Wilcox's first wife, and has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality."

Robert Tewdwr Moss (1)

The 10th anniversary of the death of Robert Tewdwr Moss fast approaches: his life was taken on Aug 26 1996. If you've never heard of him then you're in the most people club. He was murdered just as he finished his one and only work that would be sufficient to make his name: a travel book called Cleopatra's Wedding Present. It's a transgressive, beautifully written, often funny account of his few months in Syria in 1995 - it is, among other things, a gay love story in an Islamic mystery-land. His very sexual nature was an affront to the moral establishment of this country, a spiritual and emotional desert to him you might think, yet here he found riches of many different kinds - the comic and common humanity beneath the distracting illusions of religion and tradition (he was, after all, a quality secular gossip). Here he found the romantic love of his life in a life teeming with lovers. And, just as importantly, he found a subject to showcase all his great qualities, literary and personal, in one stunning final blast.
I am not the first to note the irony that it was in anything-goes London and not Syria - where he courted death by being who he was - that he lost his life. The second version of the book that he'd just completed was not found at the crime scene: it was the first draft - which had been rejected by his editor as not salacious enough - that got printed. God knows what the missing second draft contained. Yet despite or because of that, the book has enjoyed international critical success and been reprinted a number of times here and abroad.
Like many other people I loved Robert very much and was not always a very good friend to him. Over the next few weeks I shall write more about him. And if you want to read a travel book like no other, and make you a new friend in the author (albeit posthumously), find a copy of Cleopatra's Wedding Present.

Parlez-vous plagiarism?

Suddenly the Daily Mail and Daily Express unite in near-identical displays of Francophilia - both offering "free" French language CDs today. "No books, no writing" promises the Mail of its Linguaphone course while the Express assures its readers of its Michel Thomas lessons ... "No books, no writing."
Alas and for once the Mail has done a deal with an inferior copycat. It was the heroic Mr Thomas who pioneered the no-books no-writing approach to language learning over the past few decades: indeed many Hollywood stars such as Woody Allen, Mel Gibson (pre his Aramaic period) and Emma Thompson credit him with their speedily acquired gift of tongues. This at a time when Linguaphone, which lost its royal warrant in the '80s, still ladened its customers with tons of books and writing exercises that probably put off generations from linguistic adventure.
Still, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Spelling's Bish Bosh Dosh

Queen of the cuts Alison Boshoff of the Daily Mail - a "leggy blonde" with the lucrative cystitis personality - drives her prose tanks onto the paper's centre pages to turf up a lot of muck on Candy Spelling, widow of Aaron - producer of Dynasty, Starsky & Hutch and other glossy TV trash. Yesterday's media reported that Candy had put the family 123-room mansion up for sale for £82m as a prelude to WW3 over the dead man's estate - even that she had moved out already. And Aaron only a fortnight with his maker!
The small problem here is that California's largest home is not up for sale at all - or at least so says Candy, 62. She's still clip-clopping over its six acres and has no immediate plans to sell up. But let not this little detail stop any old excuse to list the glitzy possessions and blitzy feuds of the super rich - a staple of lazy Middle Englanders.

Push Hoff, bitch

Some sad New Age bitch recently asked your media clairvoyante why I'm so mean. Couldn't I do or say something positive and infuse Mummy Gaia with a karma-breaking vibe? Well, I am happy to oblige.
I have just signed up to the campaign to get David Hasselhoff to No 1 - single tbc. Just go to http://www.gethasselhofftonumber1.com/ and leave them your email address. Then that's one more vote on their Hoff-o-meter. 75,000 sign-ups is the target - easy to achieve now it has my backing.
"Think what he's given to the world," the site reminds us. "Knight Rider. Baywatch. The reunification of East and West Germany. Untold laughter from forwarded e-mails of him in hotpants. He's given a lot. It's time we gave something back."
So true.
Is this positive enough for you, New Age bitch?

Cute Israeli security

Hello Dearies, yes I'm back after a little rest in Tel Aviv. The charming security people at Ben Gurion airport were most troubled that a lone travelling clairvoyante should fly to Israel for something as decadent as a holiday. "It's not an obvious tourist destination is it?" said one of the cute uniforms, his scrotal sac straining against fabric. "Really?" I replied drily. "Is that why the Israeli Tourist Board is advertising Tel Aviv as a cool place to visit on the London Tube?" For this impertinence six security officers, some post-pubertal, went through my cases (doubtless looking for a stash of gianluca, or charlie if you're Jodie Marsh) and after 40 minutes decided that my Oral B power charger should be detained for further examination. Goodness knows how much sextex can be stuffed into an Oral B power charger, but rest assured, that's one challenge I'll pass on. The Oral B power charger was flown back to my seaside residence two days later in a big box, should you want to know.
This little tale has nothing to do with the media, and quite frankly, I'm not much interested in just writing about ghastly boring journalists. But from time to time I shall mix personal anecdote with some embarrassing information about a writerly drudge or disturbed editor - I shall measure my success by the number of angina attacks I precipitate. Which leads me to ....