I am distressed to see that the bloated, homophobic, racist, bullying, misogynistic Kelvin Mackenzie is not exactly setting the publishing world alight with his John Prescott Kama Sutra guide. It stands at about 20,000 in the Amazon sales charts after about a fortnight out - perhaps because the Prescott shenanigans were a great deal more comic than his cock-obsessed puerility.
I have often wondered about Kelvin. For it was during his editorship of the Sun that the paper came up with the "lunchbox" appellation for male athletes' genital bulges. What tickled him especially was the puppet show of jockstrap-free cocks and balls jiggling against Lycra shorts on the racetrack. I recall pictures of athletic lunchboxes everywhere in the paper at one point - black athletic lunchboxes especially
You could well imagine his ghastly porcine flushed face sweating profusely over slow-mo re-run footage on his box - his TV box I mean. What was it that fascinated him so much? I wonder if one of his favourite films is Deliverance.
But back to publishing. His Kama Sutra book is published by the one-time cocaine hoovering ex-People editor John Blake - his face a Mount Rushmore testament to a life spent sleepless. He's not at all a bad booksman - it was he who spotted the kerching factor in Jordan's memoirs (itself a celebrity cock size guide) and he has done much to awaken UK publishing to the tabloid trough.
The only problem with Blake is that he's not always the most enthusiatic marketing man in the world. It was a running joke for years that once he'd flogged a book extract to one of the tabs he was thereafter scarcely interested in book sales. In Kelvin's case I don't sense any Blake interest at all. For instance, go to any of the internet bookshops - Amazon, StudyNet, Tesco etc - and you won't find a single cover illustration anywhere - "No image available" is the explanation.
Tsk. Anyone might think that he'd only published Mackenzie's book as a favour to a media big-mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment