If massage were a compulsory therapy (for the elderly especially), I'm certain the national prescription drug bill would be halved over night. This was one thought that passed through my mind after my Abianga sesame oil all-over-naked-body libation this morning at the Carmel Forest Spa Hotel.
Massage is, after all, a variation on stranger sex. Someone you don't know at all - or someone with whom you have no emotional connection - is given voluntary access to intimate parts of your body for a brief period. The massage worker's hands, lubricated with exotic oils, gently slide from your neck, down the torso side to your hip before a leisurely slide south on a leg to the destination of your toes - and then there's the anticipation of the return journey north. There are endless variations on touching. The receiver's body wants to respond to these joyful incursions - I reflexively gripped my masseur's hand this morning when he kneaded his into mine (he's used to it, it seems) - but you know that must not happen. Flesh and tissue and muscle are plied and stroked, and what could be sexual in another context is here therapeutic, calming, reassuring, healing.
It is in short a simulation of love. Afterwards, the two people involved go their separate ways. And there's no need to go through the charade of exchanging phone numbers. The massage worker's number is in the phone book.
I should advise that the elderly (especially) be granted a national allowance for one simulation of love at least per week - I shall have a word with Gordon Brown. Not only would creped skin experience those famously reduced signs of ageing, not only would ligaments and other connectors become taut once again and muscle toned, but this act of simulation would release bucket loads of happy-making endorphins. The body, ignored and untouched for years, neglected as its commodity value diminished with age, would once again zing with all the manual attention. The phrase "loved up" would acquire a new meaning. And should the ancient receiver die on the massage worker, well - what a way to go! Responsible sensuality is the thing most required for wellbeing. This I now realise, thanks to Abianga.
I hope that this posting provokes a responsible, grown-up response. I know you won't let me down.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Prince William's Conception: Ogle
The Conception of Prince William, as re-enacted by performance artist Mark McGowan, has occurred, though it maybe too soon to report fertilisation. We are assured that the two actors who wore Charles and Di masks had not had sex for a week and that the womb "was ready". For a glimpse of the event click here. For more about Mark, see his website.
Israel: Bye, Stefano!
Even in the remote Carmel Mountains, swaddled in pine, damp on forest vapour - with the shaky fate of Israeli PM Ehud Olmert in the balance - curious ephemera from the UK reach my ears. Over dinner last night, someone I'd never met but in whom I confided something about Arcati, informed me that Thelondonpaper "is finished". Surely not, I said, Murdoch never gives up on his papers, he's invested millions. "It's over," my companion insisted. "It's just a question of time."
If true, my heart goes out to poor old Stefano Hatfield, the editor of the freebie, the man who openly discriminates against "mature" hacks, the man who traded in his old life for a new one (see previous posts) as his own rollercoaster career reached its apogee. If, instead of maturity, we were talking about colour or sexual orientation, the society nannies would be expectorating with moral outrage at his overt ageism - keenly aware as they are of public appearance (their own). But ageism is not the new black or pink, not yet: the new grey is not sexy as an issue, yet, so the Guardianistas stay quiet, asleep, indifferent.
But the Google bomb on ageism is coming. Don't imagine for one moment that Arcati has been massaged into docility. Rest presages the storm.
If true, my heart goes out to poor old Stefano Hatfield, the editor of the freebie, the man who openly discriminates against "mature" hacks, the man who traded in his old life for a new one (see previous posts) as his own rollercoaster career reached its apogee. If, instead of maturity, we were talking about colour or sexual orientation, the society nannies would be expectorating with moral outrage at his overt ageism - keenly aware as they are of public appearance (their own). But ageism is not the new black or pink, not yet: the new grey is not sexy as an issue, yet, so the Guardianistas stay quiet, asleep, indifferent.
But the Google bomb on ageism is coming. Don't imagine for one moment that Arcati has been massaged into docility. Rest presages the storm.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Israel: Carmel Forest Spa Hotel
People - mature mainly - walk about in white: white towel gowns, white slippers. At first sight I was reminded of a hospital for the sectioned. But this association had to do with my father who suffered dementia towards the end and spent his last months in white robes. The inmates at the Carmel Forest Spa Hotel are only too sane. They have arrived in material comfort, at least. Rational causation is working for them and this place is one reward.
White prompted other, happier, thoughts: when, at 10 this morning, the treatment workers emerged from a short corridor walled in white transparent lace, in their white uniforms, to collect their towelled "patients", I thought of Hollywood's idea of heaven and angels (no wings). The addition of oozy-woozy New Age music, and of a rose undertoned unguent scent that fills the air - and pervades all the public areas in fact via the air-con - only added to the illusion of other-worldliness.
This hotel is said to be the only health and spa resort in all Israel. For years Israelis mainly came to relax in this 5* arcadia, to unwind. Now the spa is changing direction. It wants more foreigners, it is abandoning its policy of charging non-Israelis a higher rate (there was a 20%+ mark-up): it is even constructing a British-style "pub". There is no alcohol bar at the moment, except mini-bars in any of the 126 luxury rooms and suites. The restaurant is licensed, however. The idea is to get healthier, remember. To convalesce from the illness of modern life.
It offers nearly 100 different treatments - I had a facial today. The masseuse played Death In Venice Mahler as she painted on the mask. An ironic joke perhaps. Death In Venice, after all, features a dying man with a painted face - I was amused by the image association. Tomorrow I'll have an Abianga - an oil libation of warm sesame oil over my entire body. The spa receptionist looked at me oddly when I said I didn't mind the sex of the massage worker. My body will be unclothed, and my scalp massaged. What's gender got to do with a pair of warm, oily hands?
Today I walked a few kilometres along tracks in the pine forests encircling the hotel: the resort covers 18.5 acres and the spa complex itself 2,500 square metres. We were accompanied by an armed guard - two guns on his belt. I'm not sure why: the top predator, apart from Man, is the jackel. Wild pigs roam but are rarely seen. I chatted with the guard. He was born in Moscow, emigrated to Israel in his late teens and was conscripted into the Israeli army, and now is employed by the hotel to help oversee the national park in which it is set. The occasional tourist gets lost. No one's been eaten or kidnapped. But you're advised not to sleep with your door open. The fruit bowl could prove alluring to the furries, and here it's finders keepers.
Best of all - and if you read my first report from Israel, you'll know why - the best thing of all is that no kids under 16 are allowed here. No screaming brats. No ghastly parenting. No excuse for anyone to behave like an animal. Bliss. Good King Herod's writ runs through this place.
My only complaint: swimming pool etiquette. Alas, most men do not know how to swim properly. They thrash and roll about about creating a commotion like a sperm whale in the last stages of Parkinson's. Women swimmers cling fearfully to the sides of pools, like little boats moored in the safety of the harbour, as the tsunami of pointless machismo bears down on them - women fearful that the splashing will upset their ... hairdos. Segregation is the only answer.
So, now to dinner ....
White prompted other, happier, thoughts: when, at 10 this morning, the treatment workers emerged from a short corridor walled in white transparent lace, in their white uniforms, to collect their towelled "patients", I thought of Hollywood's idea of heaven and angels (no wings). The addition of oozy-woozy New Age music, and of a rose undertoned unguent scent that fills the air - and pervades all the public areas in fact via the air-con - only added to the illusion of other-worldliness.
This hotel is said to be the only health and spa resort in all Israel. For years Israelis mainly came to relax in this 5* arcadia, to unwind. Now the spa is changing direction. It wants more foreigners, it is abandoning its policy of charging non-Israelis a higher rate (there was a 20%+ mark-up): it is even constructing a British-style "pub". There is no alcohol bar at the moment, except mini-bars in any of the 126 luxury rooms and suites. The restaurant is licensed, however. The idea is to get healthier, remember. To convalesce from the illness of modern life.
It offers nearly 100 different treatments - I had a facial today. The masseuse played Death In Venice Mahler as she painted on the mask. An ironic joke perhaps. Death In Venice, after all, features a dying man with a painted face - I was amused by the image association. Tomorrow I'll have an Abianga - an oil libation of warm sesame oil over my entire body. The spa receptionist looked at me oddly when I said I didn't mind the sex of the massage worker. My body will be unclothed, and my scalp massaged. What's gender got to do with a pair of warm, oily hands?
Today I walked a few kilometres along tracks in the pine forests encircling the hotel: the resort covers 18.5 acres and the spa complex itself 2,500 square metres. We were accompanied by an armed guard - two guns on his belt. I'm not sure why: the top predator, apart from Man, is the jackel. Wild pigs roam but are rarely seen. I chatted with the guard. He was born in Moscow, emigrated to Israel in his late teens and was conscripted into the Israeli army, and now is employed by the hotel to help oversee the national park in which it is set. The occasional tourist gets lost. No one's been eaten or kidnapped. But you're advised not to sleep with your door open. The fruit bowl could prove alluring to the furries, and here it's finders keepers.
Best of all - and if you read my first report from Israel, you'll know why - the best thing of all is that no kids under 16 are allowed here. No screaming brats. No ghastly parenting. No excuse for anyone to behave like an animal. Bliss. Good King Herod's writ runs through this place.
My only complaint: swimming pool etiquette. Alas, most men do not know how to swim properly. They thrash and roll about about creating a commotion like a sperm whale in the last stages of Parkinson's. Women swimmers cling fearfully to the sides of pools, like little boats moored in the safety of the harbour, as the tsunami of pointless machismo bears down on them - women fearful that the splashing will upset their ... hairdos. Segregation is the only answer.
So, now to dinner ....
Israel: Ross Kemp and Mrs Kemp
Book into the Carmel Forest Spa Hotel just south of Haifa, an 80 minute drive north of Tel Aviv. A remote, highish altitude (about 1,000ft up) shangri-la on Mt Carmel, set amid pine, much favoured by jaded celebs. Here, you do not sleep but have a "sleep experience" and this is aided by a selection from a Pillow Menu. My first facial is booked, a cycling trip is on the agenda.
At dinner last night, quite by chance, the subject of Ross Kemp [see earlier posting below] came up. A companion told me how the actor had been enthralled by all the fuss last year when his now estranged wife, Sun editor Rebekah Wade, had been briefly detained over night at a police station after a claim of hubby bashing. My dinner companion said: "Ross, who's a very sweet guy it must be said, marvelled at the media storm over the whole thing and would talk about nothing else. I got the impression that he was very flattered and exhilerated by it all. Of course, the problem in that marriage is that she's vastly more successful and driven than he is."
I'm not sure how one measures such matters: he is a household name, I'm not persuaded she is. Only a fellow journalist might try to measure their respective standing in the world. I think their marriage failure is due to much more interesting personal dynamics, but I'm not one to gossip.
Anyhow, I must go now for a Turkish steam experience prior to work on the wizened exterior (or not, as the case maybe).
At dinner last night, quite by chance, the subject of Ross Kemp [see earlier posting below] came up. A companion told me how the actor had been enthralled by all the fuss last year when his now estranged wife, Sun editor Rebekah Wade, had been briefly detained over night at a police station after a claim of hubby bashing. My dinner companion said: "Ross, who's a very sweet guy it must be said, marvelled at the media storm over the whole thing and would talk about nothing else. I got the impression that he was very flattered and exhilerated by it all. Of course, the problem in that marriage is that she's vastly more successful and driven than he is."
I'm not sure how one measures such matters: he is a household name, I'm not persuaded she is. Only a fellow journalist might try to measure their respective standing in the world. I think their marriage failure is due to much more interesting personal dynamics, but I'm not one to gossip.
Anyhow, I must go now for a Turkish steam experience prior to work on the wizened exterior (or not, as the case maybe).
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Israel: The Wishing Bridge
The sun's gone in - it must be global warming - so here I am again, writing at speed as muzak tinkles in the background. My young artist friend Fish asked about Bauhaus in Tel Aviv: some very fine limestone buildings have been restored but too many left to flake away, resembling the surface of a pale, barnacled groyne. I hadn't realised that the state contributes nothing to save these '20s gems: it's all down to private investment.
Meanwhile, parts of the original city are being bulldozed and replaced by gleaming tower blocks that will rapidly tarnish in the hot salty air. My favourite quarter, Florentine, still draws the artists and bohemians - spiritually twinned with Goa perhaps - but what a wreck. In any other place decrepitude would signify urban decay and crime. Here, it is a victory against development.
While I think of it, I can highly recommend Tel Aviv as a holiday destination for all-girl getaways. You can walk about all hours unmolested. No drunken yobs with their hairy stinking cracks, their tabloid-shaped psyches, their criminal tattooes.
Went to the old city of Jaffa, largely Arab, to its leisure park overlooking the Tel Aviv shoreline curvature below and its Wishing Bridge marked all the way across with the 12 signs of the zodiac. You place your hand on your sunsign, look out to sea and make a wish. It doesn't work. So this time I made a demand as I gazed seaward, hand on Gemini, and introduced a penalty clause. Next time a wish is not fulfilled I am returning with dynamite.
Off to Haifa later today and a spa hotel.
Meanwhile, parts of the original city are being bulldozed and replaced by gleaming tower blocks that will rapidly tarnish in the hot salty air. My favourite quarter, Florentine, still draws the artists and bohemians - spiritually twinned with Goa perhaps - but what a wreck. In any other place decrepitude would signify urban decay and crime. Here, it is a victory against development.
While I think of it, I can highly recommend Tel Aviv as a holiday destination for all-girl getaways. You can walk about all hours unmolested. No drunken yobs with their hairy stinking cracks, their tabloid-shaped psyches, their criminal tattooes.
Went to the old city of Jaffa, largely Arab, to its leisure park overlooking the Tel Aviv shoreline curvature below and its Wishing Bridge marked all the way across with the 12 signs of the zodiac. You place your hand on your sunsign, look out to sea and make a wish. It doesn't work. So this time I made a demand as I gazed seaward, hand on Gemini, and introduced a penalty clause. Next time a wish is not fulfilled I am returning with dynamite.
Off to Haifa later today and a spa hotel.
Israel: Nancy, Madonna and Jewish Princesses
So as Israel prepares for Syrian attack on the Golan Heights and more kidnappings in Gaza, I arrive in Tel Aviv after a 4 hour-plus in-flight altercation with a 3 year-old tot. El Al had foolishly seated me in the dollies' galley area adjacent to two loos: this was an irksome experience. Queues formed either for relief or replenishment, sometimes both. The brat delighted in stamping on my feet each time she passed and then attempted to open the exit door at 35,000ft. I was tempted to let her get on with it: strapped in I would have survived and she would have been sucked out into oblivion. True, the plane's safety integrity might have been imperilled, but thanks to Reader's Digest, one knows that pilots are capable of heroic ingenuity. What I won't do for infanticide ... Instead I gave the little bitch's father one of my specialised Medusa psyches until he was driven away with the fruit of his loins in his arms.
Seated in this hellish place gave me time to reflect on modern superstition, one being that you must drink copious amounts of water - 8 pints a day! Total nonsense. It is this that accounted for the endless stream of demands for bottled aqua minerale and the consequent need to piss. Why can't people just sit quiet and meditate as I would have given half the chance?
Tel Aviv: the Jerusalem Post tells me that London's warmer by 3 degrees C. But I'm not here for the weather. Frankly you do not come all this way to get skin cancer. My reasons for this trip must necessarily remain a secret. What I can report is that I booked into the Isrotel Tower Hotel and immediately flew to its open pool hundreds of feet up on the roof from which to gaze at the cityscape, via a glass lift. Not for the phobic it must be said. The sheen and glitz of the Isrotel is more aberration than not: for the most part Tel Aviv is ramshackle, dusty: Middle Eastern. The Med tries its best but gives up just past the line of the coast road: infrastructure is not what it could be. Yet it scarcely matters.
Later, as I get pissed on the Isrotel beach prior to night-time adventures, a friend tells me how Tel Aviv has turned into a gay mecca. I learn that Sven's ex-tart Nancy Of The Oil hosted a show here recently called I'm A Jewish Princess, Get Me Out of Here - in which spoilt rich women of Israel were set domestic tasks in hotels and hospitals - a turkey that ended up on cable. Madonna was here last year for some kabbalistic reason.
Have to go, will update soon if I can.
Seated in this hellish place gave me time to reflect on modern superstition, one being that you must drink copious amounts of water - 8 pints a day! Total nonsense. It is this that accounted for the endless stream of demands for bottled aqua minerale and the consequent need to piss. Why can't people just sit quiet and meditate as I would have given half the chance?
Tel Aviv: the Jerusalem Post tells me that London's warmer by 3 degrees C. But I'm not here for the weather. Frankly you do not come all this way to get skin cancer. My reasons for this trip must necessarily remain a secret. What I can report is that I booked into the Isrotel Tower Hotel and immediately flew to its open pool hundreds of feet up on the roof from which to gaze at the cityscape, via a glass lift. Not for the phobic it must be said. The sheen and glitz of the Isrotel is more aberration than not: for the most part Tel Aviv is ramshackle, dusty: Middle Eastern. The Med tries its best but gives up just past the line of the coast road: infrastructure is not what it could be. Yet it scarcely matters.
Later, as I get pissed on the Isrotel beach prior to night-time adventures, a friend tells me how Tel Aviv has turned into a gay mecca. I learn that Sven's ex-tart Nancy Of The Oil hosted a show here recently called I'm A Jewish Princess, Get Me Out of Here - in which spoilt rich women of Israel were set domestic tasks in hotels and hospitals - a turkey that ended up on cable. Madonna was here last year for some kabbalistic reason.
Have to go, will update soon if I can.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Sunday Times: Redundancies to come
Yet I cannot leave these shores before announcing sad news. When The Sunday Times editor John Witherow takes off on his hols in about a fortnight's time, redundancies will be announced at the newspaper. Its declining fortunes cause me no joy and it is with a heavy heart that I broadcast this. However, Madame Arcati has peered into her crystal ball and sees the following: Nick Hellen, AA Gill and John Witherow will remain in what some might think are jobs for life. Robin Morgan, editor of the Magazine, will never so much as retire as simply remain in post, dead, a la El Cid (if we are to believe the Charlton Heston movie).
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Is Israel ready for Arcati?
Yes, I am off to the Middle East on Friday for a few days. Tel Aviv and then Haifa with quite a few clubs in between. I may post per day, or I may not: depends. Unlike Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish I can't call on Clive Davis to run things in my absence though I like to think that my lively international audience of anons will continue to thrust and parry in comments prior to defeat at my hands. How pathetically these anons try to outwit me before running out of steam ... Dinu, Duralex, Lorenzo, Daughter of a Bitch (the sad tart should confine herself to youf sites) and other presumptuous fools ... and not forgetting old Walter Ellis and his intact prostate. I have ordered a book of his and will take an especial interest in his dubious friends of yesteryear. My mind turns to Airey Neave, RIP, for some reason ...
Israeli security always give me a hard time at the airport, I can't think why. It must be something in my aura. Incidentally, the Stephanie Mastini Exhibition will happen either just before I leave or just after; I am still trying to decide whether to create an external gallery linked to this site or post her images on the site itelf. Do feel free to advise.
Finally, which member of the royal family used to cruise the South Bank area? (no, NOT Prince Edward, try to behave).
Israeli security always give me a hard time at the airport, I can't think why. It must be something in my aura. Incidentally, the Stephanie Mastini Exhibition will happen either just before I leave or just after; I am still trying to decide whether to create an external gallery linked to this site or post her images on the site itelf. Do feel free to advise.
Finally, which member of the royal family used to cruise the South Bank area? (no, NOT Prince Edward, try to behave).
Of course Ted Heath was an old queen
It's hardly news that former PM Ted Heath was gay. But the papers have put on their mock horror masks at Brian Coleman's piece in The New Statesman in which he "reveals" that Ted cruised for sex with other men - I should be sorry to hear that he did not. Who would wish a celibate, emotionally arid life on anyone? Coleman, the chairman of the London Assembly, writes: "It was certainly not a secret that he was an old queen. I have been told he was warned about his behaviour [in the '50s] and then stopped."
Readers of Arcati will doubtless recall my story of Oct 31 2006 - click here.
Readers of Arcati will doubtless recall my story of Oct 31 2006 - click here.
Duncan Fallowell's New Zealand sex book sold
One of my many, many spies - yes, walls have ears - tells me that Profile has bought Duncan Fallowell's next travel book about looking for sex in New Zealand. It will be published early next year. I can't wait to read it. Fans of his To Noto know what to expect ...
Monday, April 23, 2007
The London Paper: See the dumping
TheLondonpaper is accused of dumping thousands of copies as part of an alleged scam to bump up its audience figure claims - see the movie here via You Tube.
Meanwhile, two mysteries:
1. Not one newspaper followed up my report on thelondonpaper editor Stefano Hatfield's policy of not hiring "mature" journalists - in breach of new anti-ageist laws brought in last year. This is probably because every national newspaper is essentially ageist itself. I wonder when the UK government proposes to enforce its legislation as opposed to ticking off the boxes of political correctness?
2. Not one newspaper dared to repeat my authenticated story of Hatfield's affair with Freud's MD Fiona Noble - she being London major Ken Livingstone's PR. While no suggestion was made of any wrong-doing between Livingstone, Hatfield and Noble because of the affair, it is peculiar but predictable that newspapers decide what the public should know as part of the ongoing "oath" of omerta between editors and proprietors. Even mortal enemies dare not squeal.
Meanwhile, two mysteries:
1. Not one newspaper followed up my report on thelondonpaper editor Stefano Hatfield's policy of not hiring "mature" journalists - in breach of new anti-ageist laws brought in last year. This is probably because every national newspaper is essentially ageist itself. I wonder when the UK government proposes to enforce its legislation as opposed to ticking off the boxes of political correctness?
2. Not one newspaper dared to repeat my authenticated story of Hatfield's affair with Freud's MD Fiona Noble - she being London major Ken Livingstone's PR. While no suggestion was made of any wrong-doing between Livingstone, Hatfield and Noble because of the affair, it is peculiar but predictable that newspapers decide what the public should know as part of the ongoing "oath" of omerta between editors and proprietors. Even mortal enemies dare not squeal.
Maxwell: What you won't be seeing
David Suchet incarnates the old bastard Robert Maxwell any minute now on BBC2 – he thinks the old bastard had a softer side. Yes, well, Hitler loved his German Shepherd Blondi and Maxwell loved ducks. He would grow quite daft at the sight of them waddling about. What won’t be shown in the drama is the Maxwell helicopter that regularly took off and landed on the roof of the Mirror Group's old building in Holborn Circus. Hacks on the phone would have to hang up as his rotored taxi aloft drowned out all other noise – summertime was especial fun.
I am particularly amused that Suchet didn't want to take on the role if it offended Maxwell's handsomely monied widow, Betty. Couldn't the Beeb have found an actor with a more robust approach to his art as well as the body to match? Cap'n Bob was about 6ft 3 tall and wide to Suchet's 5ft 8in. Who wants to watch Poirot impersonate the fat fraudster who loved ducks?
For my premonition of Maxwell’s death click here.
I am particularly amused that Suchet didn't want to take on the role if it offended Maxwell's handsomely monied widow, Betty. Couldn't the Beeb have found an actor with a more robust approach to his art as well as the body to match? Cap'n Bob was about 6ft 3 tall and wide to Suchet's 5ft 8in. Who wants to watch Poirot impersonate the fat fraudster who loved ducks?
For my premonition of Maxwell’s death click here.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Molly Parkin: What my father actually did
A reader asked Molly Parkin how she could say she had remained a virgin to the age of 22 if she was sexually abused by her father in childhood. This is Moll's reply:
DEAR READER!
HAD MY FATHER RAPED ME, DURING MY INFANCY, WITH HIS LARGE PENIS, I WOULD HAVE BEEN TORN IN TWO. MY WORST MEMORIES END BY THE AGE OF 7, AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR, WHEN I LEFT LONDON AS AN EVACUEE.
HIS ATTENTIONS CEASED NOT LONG AFTER MY RETURN TO LONDON, WHEN, AT 11, I BEGAN MENSTRUATING. PAEDOPHILES HAVE SCANT INTEREST IN POST-PUBERTY.
THE SEXUAL ABUSE CONSISTED OF BEATINGS IN BED FOLLOWED ALWAYS BY STROKING, FINGERING, AND LICKING BETWEEN MY LEGS WITH FORCED MASTURBATION OF HIS PENIS WITH MY SMALL HANDS BENEATH HIS OWN.
ALL THIS, BAR THE BEATINGS, TOOK PLACE IN THE EMPTY PARK AS WELL AS THE BEDROOM.
SO TECHNICALLY I REMAINED A VIRGIN UNTIL THE AGE OF 17 WHEN I WAS DEFLOWERED, MEANING MY MAIDENHEAD WAS PIERCED WITH MIDDLE FINGER AND FORE, BY A FELLOW-ART STUDENT AFTER FEROCIOUS STRUGGLES. A RAPE SITUATION.
AT THE AGE OF 22 I WILLINGLY GAVE MYSELF AS A VIRGIN TO FULL PENETRATION WITH MY OLDER LOVER, TO MUTUAL SATISFACTION.
DEAR READER!
HAD MY FATHER RAPED ME, DURING MY INFANCY, WITH HIS LARGE PENIS, I WOULD HAVE BEEN TORN IN TWO. MY WORST MEMORIES END BY THE AGE OF 7, AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR, WHEN I LEFT LONDON AS AN EVACUEE.
HIS ATTENTIONS CEASED NOT LONG AFTER MY RETURN TO LONDON, WHEN, AT 11, I BEGAN MENSTRUATING. PAEDOPHILES HAVE SCANT INTEREST IN POST-PUBERTY.
THE SEXUAL ABUSE CONSISTED OF BEATINGS IN BED FOLLOWED ALWAYS BY STROKING, FINGERING, AND LICKING BETWEEN MY LEGS WITH FORCED MASTURBATION OF HIS PENIS WITH MY SMALL HANDS BENEATH HIS OWN.
ALL THIS, BAR THE BEATINGS, TOOK PLACE IN THE EMPTY PARK AS WELL AS THE BEDROOM.
SO TECHNICALLY I REMAINED A VIRGIN UNTIL THE AGE OF 17 WHEN I WAS DEFLOWERED, MEANING MY MAIDENHEAD WAS PIERCED WITH MIDDLE FINGER AND FORE, BY A FELLOW-ART STUDENT AFTER FEROCIOUS STRUGGLES. A RAPE SITUATION.
AT THE AGE OF 22 I WILLINGLY GAVE MYSELF AS A VIRGIN TO FULL PENETRATION WITH MY OLDER LOVER, TO MUTUAL SATISFACTION.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Rod Liddle: A droopy jest
Is there a mischievous sub on the Sunday Times books pages? I only ask because directly underneath a glowing review of Angus McLaren’s book Impotence: A Cultural History at the weekend, the mag ran Rod Liddle’s own review of an entirely different book (about racism in the Deep South). Liddle, you may remember, was subjected to much humiliation in 2005 during his highly public marriage break up when his estranged wife told any newspaper that would listen that the star hack often took receipt of packets of what this elderly lady will only politely refer to as, ahem, the little blue pills……
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Molly Parkin: Sex abuse, and smarmy Cameron
Molly next to her own painting of the sexual encounter she had with a 23-year-old surfer boy two years ago at age 73. All photos by Tommy Candler
Part 2 of my interview with Molly Parkin - in which she reflects lyrically on her childhood sexual abuse, smarmy David Cameron and why girls should be encouraged to have babies young. Scroll down for part 1 ...
Hi Moll again, on dark matters, the sexual abuse you suffered as a child from your father – I guess silence is the twin evil of the offence?
My reply is a poem ....
PROSE POEM BY MOLLY PARKIN. ESPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR MADAME ARCATI. APRIL 2007
THE PAEDOPHILE'S DAUGHTER
THE WORST THING ABOUT CHILDHOOD SEX WITH MY FATHER
WAS THAT I COULDN'T TELL MY MOTHER OR ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD
WITH THE THREAT OF MORE BEATINGS IF I EVER OPENED MY MOUTH
ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN MY BEDROOM WHEN I WAS IN MY PYJAMAS
OR IN THE SWIMMING POOL WHEN I WAS IN MY SWIMSUIT
OR ON MY BYCYCLE WHEN I WAS IN MY COTTON SHORTS
OR RIDING HIGH ON HIS SHOULDERS IN MY SUMMER FROCK
SKINNY LEGS DANGLING EACH SIDE OF HIS NECK
AS HE NUZZLED MY INNER THIGHS HIGHER AND HIGHER
THERE IN THE EMPTY PARK.
I KEPT THE PROMISE I'D MADE ON HIS LEATHER BIBLE
NOT OPENING MY MOUTH UNTIL LONG AFTER HIS DEATH
WHEN MY OLDER SISTER ASKED WHY I WAS ALWAYS
SO HOSTILE TO OUR HANDSOME FATHER
"YOU LOOKED AT HIM WITH SUCH CONTEMPT".
SO I TOLD HER THE SECRET I HAD KEPT FOR 65 YEARS.
SHE REMEMBERED SOBBING WITH OUR MOTHER
OUTSIDE THE LOCKED BEDROOM, HEARING MY SCREAMS
AS I WAS FIRST BEATEN THEN FONDLED IN THE FOLLOWING SILENCE.
BUT NEITHER WAS THERE IN THE EMPTY PARK
OF MY CHILDHOOD. NOBODY WAS EVER THERE.
END
Part of your legend are the nine fiancés! Some might say that’s greedy!
Nine fiances, that now seems a ridiculously conservative estimate. I certainly received many, many more proposals of marriage than that, especially when I appeared on television so often, entertaining the nation, publishing my comic-erotic tomes back in my youth, tantalising cleavage on show after the moral watershed, of course.
For many programmes I was over-zealously X-rated, so not always "suitable".
But I eventually learned to clean up my act (Anglo-Saxon vocab), enough to do plenty of daytime telly (hungover!) ie Richard and Judy, atc. But blotted that copybook when I appeared drunk as a glamorous skunk on a family viewing programme, Pebble Mill, spouting sexual exploits!!!! Caused a big hoo-ha in the press.
Then the daytime work dried up, but the night-time stuff for adult viewing doubled ... backed up by a sex diary for the raunchy mag Forum. And regular, bloatedly renumerative, scribblings for the likes of Men Only.
It has always puzzled me, that anyone would consider me as wife material. My basic urge has always been to evade marriage, rather than pursue it. I value my independence as a free spirit, an artist, and an educated member of society, but I emerged in an age where women were pressured to become wives rather than decay in the then despised state of spinsterhood. I come from a Welsh Valley, puritanical background of teachers, preachers and miners. I was the first in my family to divorce. Some aunts refused to speak to me until they died. Others kept their distance when I became an art student and "drew naked men and women".
Unlike David Cameron, I do not honour the antediluvian institution of marriage, nor the demeaning limitations it places on womanhood. Monogamy is not a natural state for homo sapiens, hence the escalating divorce rate.
Cameron will certainly have forfeited female votes in his smarmy quest for political leadership with his ill-considered blatherings. We women need to forge forward, not slip back into the dark ages.
Single motherhood should be supported with adequate funding from the State, instead of being vilified as the cause of juvenile disillusion and disintegrating social values. The births of every and any baby, future citizens, should be celebrated as miracles. Their teenage mothers, the younger and healthier the more magnificent (as Mother Nature intended) deserve to be treated as the heroines of a burgeoning society.
For once the Royals are more in tune with their subjects than the politican. We would welcome the views of our divorced future king, Prince Charles, alongside his similarly divorced brother and sister.
In hindsight, I consider that both my marriages would have been better as glorious, tumultuous affairs conducted outside the four walls of home. And indeed on both occasions, on the eve of my weddings, I did try to wriggle out of it.
I would always choose to earn my own income and live on my own, rather than with a partner. I value the solitude and am devoted to my own company, and Art is a demanding mistress. Which is not to say that I didn't hugely relish running my households full of my children, step-children, friends and visiting family. I am a natural organiser of massive gatherings and am unstinting in my hospitality. My personal charisma has always stood me in good stead, as a catalyst, and have never, nor will ever know what it is to be lonely. Other humans have always been drawn to me as if by a magnet. But I would be just as content as a hermit, a recluse on top of my Welsh mountain back home.
My reputation is that of a femme fatale, enslaving with a sideways glance of green eyes, tossing raven locks, quick with a ready quip and a swift kick in the balls, reducing the opposite sex to whimpering wrecks.
I was an art student from the ages of 17 to 22, remaining a virgin throughout, despite my 3 engagements to fellow students, the final being the most serious. But I was a pious, chapel girl, passionate about my painting, sensitive to poetry and comfortable as such beneath the sultry facade.
I was a faithful wife for over 20 years, with my first husband and second, both sensitive, highly intelligent intellectuals. And this was what I was drawn to then rather than brawny sex-symbols. I juggled 3 constant lovers for the 5 years between my marriages and sampled anything else that was passing my way. Well, it was the 60s and everyone was at it, rampant sex was thrumming in the ether around Soho and Chelsea, my two stamping grounds. But when I ceased to be a wife anymore after the second time, I developed an appetite as a voracious man-eater and enjoyed every possible permutation of age, race, and creed.
I became a hugely successful writer of comic erotica, claiming my exploits as a source of literary research. I'm a roving Celt with Romany blood. Romantic curiosity goes with the territory.
Sadly, I have already buried the very, very, best of my friends, that I had been so close to for over 50 years.
That is one of the drawback of lengthy survival, the outliving of others so close to you. But BARBARA HULANICKI has survived her husband Fitz, and she and I have been the closest of chums for over 40 years.
I supplied her with hats for the hallowed emporium, BIBA, before becoming celebrated as a fashion icon, myself.
We have weathered many storms together. Like the closure of BIBA on Kensington High Street, though I was based in Manhattan at the time so not on hand to lend a shoulder to cry on. And when Fitz died, also my close friend, they were living in Florida, but I had visited just a few months before.
They had both borne the worst of my drinking, yet now, as others do too, Barbara claims that those decades were the greatest fun and that we were all at it. Certainly my parties were memorable events, held in the house of The Rolling Stones, on Cheyne Walk. But Barbara and Fitz's were too, at the height of BIBA chic, up on the theatrical Roof Garden, with Flamingo Sculptures by my other close pal, Andrew Logan. And the original NEW YORK DOLLS onstage.
London will never see the like again!
Many thanks, Moll. You have been incredibly generous.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Angie Bowie's pussy
Meet one of Angie Bowie's pussy cats, Pooh Kitty. She'd make a perfectly lovely consort for Prince William. She doesn't have a mum who chews gum or uses words like "toilet" when "litter tray" would be the preferred option. The Queen's corgis might be a problem.
Royal romance! "Pass the sick-bag, Alice"
One of my more astute and discerning readers draws my attention to two divergent newspaper think pieces, arising from the ongoing tedious narrative of where Prince William should settle his cock for matrimonial purposes.
On the 14th, Penny Junor wrote a piece in The Sunday Telegraph [click here] on the perils of a public romance now that Kate Middleton has been seen off. Written with all the sensitivity and concern of an eleventh hour turnaround, she concluded, wisely: "Perhaps the only option is for him [Prince William] to marry someone from a royal family, as they are the only people equipped to cope with the life that follows." It might also be clarified that another royal would understand the Prince's atavistic impulse to insert his cock in another person after a courtesy period of fidelity.
But, that's beside the point. Following this piece, yesterday Sam Leith penned an item for the Daily Telegraph [click here] in which he mocked those sad journalists who have provided a running commentary on the royal romance and its crack up. Might Sam have been thinking of his mother - Penny Junor?
My hawk-eyed correspondent invites me to solve this mystery by the ancient practice of scrying, but alas even the mystical and immemorial cannot penetrate this one. Clairaudiently, however, I do hear the faint music of laughter emanating from the Junor/Leith direction, as money for old rope gets banked and a cake is had and eaten. And I'd swear I heard Penny's editor dad, the late Sir John Junor, mutter: "Pass the sick-bag, Alice" - his famous disapproving catchphrase.
On the 14th, Penny Junor wrote a piece in The Sunday Telegraph [click here] on the perils of a public romance now that Kate Middleton has been seen off. Written with all the sensitivity and concern of an eleventh hour turnaround, she concluded, wisely: "Perhaps the only option is for him [Prince William] to marry someone from a royal family, as they are the only people equipped to cope with the life that follows." It might also be clarified that another royal would understand the Prince's atavistic impulse to insert his cock in another person after a courtesy period of fidelity.
But, that's beside the point. Following this piece, yesterday Sam Leith penned an item for the Daily Telegraph [click here] in which he mocked those sad journalists who have provided a running commentary on the royal romance and its crack up. Might Sam have been thinking of his mother - Penny Junor?
My hawk-eyed correspondent invites me to solve this mystery by the ancient practice of scrying, but alas even the mystical and immemorial cannot penetrate this one. Clairaudiently, however, I do hear the faint music of laughter emanating from the Junor/Leith direction, as money for old rope gets banked and a cake is had and eaten. And I'd swear I heard Penny's editor dad, the late Sir John Junor, mutter: "Pass the sick-bag, Alice" - his famous disapproving catchphrase.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Molly leads the Express
I am delighted to see that the Daily Express' always excellent diary page Day & Night has given a wider audience to Molly Parkin and made her their lead story this morning. Her poem Las Vegas Lay - see below - and her interview have aroused their curiosity, suitably. And, unusually, for a newspaper, it has credited Arcati. My blessings to the four beauties who run the goss section.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Daniel Craig: The penis
For reasons I don't understand, the Daniel Radcliffe nude photos [click here for an example] on my site still draw masses of visitors after all these weeks, from medical websites in particularly, peculiarly. So, I'll see what happens with Daniel Craig ....
Friday, April 13, 2007
Molly Parkin: Lovers, loves, cocks and spirituality
Part One of an interview with Molly Parkin - editor, poet, journalist, writer and artist: fashion editor of Nova magazine in the 1960s, she moved onto the Sunday Times in the 1970s and became a trend-setting celebrity; her autobiography, Moll was published in 1993.
Hello Moll! Your libido was once a thing of wonder and you’ve said that its abatement is "Like being unchained from a lunatic". Is this still true, or has there been a resurgence? I only ask because a friend recently attended your poetry reading and marvelled at one of your celebrations of sex with a man of 23 at the age of 73.
Last month, March 23, 2007, I celebrated my 21st birthday in sobriety. Over two decades without a drink, drug, or cigarette, of which I smoked 100 a day by the end.
My life altered radically when I gave up all these pastimes. I actually became addicted to celibacy, to relationships without any sexual connotations. This brought astounding and profound platonic friendships into my life, which continue to this day.
I no longer regarded myself merely as a sexual object, which adjusted my judgement of others, meaning men. I felt that I was being loved for myself and treated them with a new respect, in the same way.
It allowed my spirituality to develop and on the extremely rare occasions when sex occurred it was either spontaneous, such as the literally sublime non-stop Karma Sutra marathon with an Indian masseur, over a 12 hour period. Or it was friendly and relaxed, like the sweet, sweet, sex and succulent room service with a grey-eyed Greek god, a six-footer at the ritzy Inn On The Park Hotel, whenever he was in London.
I would have been in my 50s then, and both these men were 30 years younger. Both proposed marriage which I gently declined.
The recent sexual encounter in Las Vegas between me and the bronzed surfer boy-beauty was a sexual explosion of such spontaneity that I still haven't fully recovered. Nor shall I, ever! But I choose to regard that as the closure of a passionate love affair which had taken place in the previous lives of us both. It was suffused with such mutual warmth and humorous bonding, despite the gap of fifty years between us. I view it a a blessing from one being to another.
The quote "like being unchained from a lunatic" was not originally mine. Though the press claim it to be so. It was actually my former lover, Georgie Melly, who introduced me to it, as a phrase coined by one of the French Surrealists. But I actually did think that my libido had withered on the bough, when I gave up the booze. The two so seemed to be inextricably linked. Obviously, and rather excitingly, this is far from the truth.
I trudged around to the Sexual Health Clinic in Chelsea on my return from Las Vegas, having indulged in UNPROTECTED sex with that stranger, the young surfer. I was the only female, certainly in their 70s, in the waiting room, the rest were beautiful teenage youths, terrified of AIDS. Bless!
Anyway, the doctor was charming to me. He said, "To what do we owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from Molly Parkin?"(recognising me from those far off telly days). After I'd explained the circumstances, I asked if the behaviour was too utterly depraved for a woman of my advanced years. I hasten to add that I actually didn't think so, myself. But it was the old puritanical, chapel thing from my youth raising its kill-joy head.
He laughed, so did the nurse. "We encourage our senior citizens to enjoy sex until the very end of their days," he said. "It not only lengthens their lives, but it makes them a bloody-sight more cheerful."
On my way out he presented me with a carrier-bagful of condoms, "In support of my spontaneity!"
I understand you spanked Sir John Mortimer’s bottom for up to two hours during a liaison with that naughty masochistic QC. Tell me it’s not true … I mean he’s no oil painting … didn’t you get you arm ache?
It most certainly is true, and I would gladly perform the same service again, if asked. I adored and still do adore John Mortimer. It is a pleasure to respond to men with brilliant minds, with a saucy side to them. The humour was in the right place between us from the start. And though you may say he is no oil painting, along with the most beautiful females in London, I could never refuse him. He talks you into bed, with a twinkle in the eyes. He was certainly one of my most charismatic and sexually attractive lovers. We had a lot of fun together.
Conventional good looks and a great body alone, isn't everything, when it comes to pulling partners. The prettiest boys and girls, too often rest on their laurels and don't bother with developing conversational skills and humorous response, because they have from childhood been so admired and congratulated on their looks. It can make for a boring passivity. They can't interact, in the way that less obvious beauties do, who have been forced by nature to project personality.
There is some truth in the saying, "The Curse Of Beauty." I witnessed it again and again when working as Fashion Editor, through the entire 60s, with the most sublimely beautiful models from the entire planet. They were almost inevitably nursing broken hearts.
After our fashon photography sessions they would be picked up from the locations or studios, by short men in the sleekest sports cars who would whisk them off to the swishest night clubs. The very top models of the season being the most vulnerable, because the next season the men would drop them and move onto the next "new face". These lovely girls were all merely reduced by their beauty to being these bastards' latest trophy girls, there to match their latest car models.
I come from a family of beauties, brains and wits, and have been generously awarded all the genes, including the history of rampant alcoholism.. So I was always able to accept illustrious men as lovers. They were all on offer, men of every type. I had my pick, all I had to do was choose.
When I met John Mortimer I had just opened my own restaurant round the corner from Sloane Square, it was between magazine jobs, and I was doing a lot of TV appearences. I was as slim as a pencil but still with a famously great pair of tits and a pert arse, asking to be smacked. I was black and blue on my return from Rome as a very young art student, so keen are they on the practice of bum-pinching. So I was already familiar with posterior pain and refused to allow John to spank me.
That's how I assumed the role of sadist. And it suited me much better. More my style, I found it hilarious, hugely enjoyable as he yelped and wriggled in pleasure. But I did eventually get knackered, and was due to present myself on Breakfast TV in the morning.
"'Nuff's enough, my darling," I whispered. He wasn't best pleased because he hadn't even orgasmed then. So I yanked him over and fucked him from the front. That got the job done in seconds.
Best lover ever (and why)? Best love? Best friend?
Both husbands were amongst my very best lovers, for the size of their cocks, the smoothness of their skins, the loucheness of their lower lips, and the fact that both could enjoy a bloody good laugh in bed with me. And I did love the cosiness of post-coitals, when sardines on toast and hot cocoa came up on a tray, whatever time of day or night. And screwing halfway up the stairs, or in the bath, when the kids were in bed. And the husbands not minding me getting their cocks out on top of the bus, or in the cinema, as if their bits were my bits. Or shagging in the lavvy on the train, after the ticket inspector had punched our tickets.
Extra-marital, I would have to say the legendary Bo Diddley, following his sell-out concert at The Brixton Academy, for the strength of that musician's tongue, stiff and strong in my twatty, as a super-erect penis. Then the penis itself, like being rodgered by a horse. And the heady fragrance and taste of a black man's sweat, which is like no other, or the depth of the singer's lungs lending laughter a new meaning. And just the gargantuan appetite, matching my own. And the sheer physical endurence, hours and hours and hours without sleep. If we could have eaten each other we would have, and we did of course. But I have never before or since had such a sensation of actually being so deliciously DEVOURED.
The love of my life remains, the famed actor, James Robertson Justice. I gave him my virginity on a plate, like a bowl of cherries, when I was 22 and he was 52. I was thrilled to do so, I really thought that I'd landed in heaven. So in love were we.
There was 30 years between us, but he had mischief oozing from every pore.
It was a combination, with his erudite knowlege and inner wisdom, that I'd always been drawn to, but with him it came in concentrated form. His massive popularity then as an actor remains to this day, long after his death. And I miss him still, always will.
When he entered a room, a pub, a club, a restaurant, a theatre, people would turn around to search for the source of this unexpected burst of energy. He brought the sunshine with him, wherever he went. I learned how to live my life, from then on. He taught me everything about what it is to become utterly yourself, and be true to your own heart.
Part Two of my interview with Molly will follow in the next week or so.
Hello Moll! Your libido was once a thing of wonder and you’ve said that its abatement is "Like being unchained from a lunatic". Is this still true, or has there been a resurgence? I only ask because a friend recently attended your poetry reading and marvelled at one of your celebrations of sex with a man of 23 at the age of 73.
Last month, March 23, 2007, I celebrated my 21st birthday in sobriety. Over two decades without a drink, drug, or cigarette, of which I smoked 100 a day by the end.
My life altered radically when I gave up all these pastimes. I actually became addicted to celibacy, to relationships without any sexual connotations. This brought astounding and profound platonic friendships into my life, which continue to this day.
I no longer regarded myself merely as a sexual object, which adjusted my judgement of others, meaning men. I felt that I was being loved for myself and treated them with a new respect, in the same way.
It allowed my spirituality to develop and on the extremely rare occasions when sex occurred it was either spontaneous, such as the literally sublime non-stop Karma Sutra marathon with an Indian masseur, over a 12 hour period. Or it was friendly and relaxed, like the sweet, sweet, sex and succulent room service with a grey-eyed Greek god, a six-footer at the ritzy Inn On The Park Hotel, whenever he was in London.
I would have been in my 50s then, and both these men were 30 years younger. Both proposed marriage which I gently declined.
The recent sexual encounter in Las Vegas between me and the bronzed surfer boy-beauty was a sexual explosion of such spontaneity that I still haven't fully recovered. Nor shall I, ever! But I choose to regard that as the closure of a passionate love affair which had taken place in the previous lives of us both. It was suffused with such mutual warmth and humorous bonding, despite the gap of fifty years between us. I view it a a blessing from one being to another.
The quote "like being unchained from a lunatic" was not originally mine. Though the press claim it to be so. It was actually my former lover, Georgie Melly, who introduced me to it, as a phrase coined by one of the French Surrealists. But I actually did think that my libido had withered on the bough, when I gave up the booze. The two so seemed to be inextricably linked. Obviously, and rather excitingly, this is far from the truth.
I trudged around to the Sexual Health Clinic in Chelsea on my return from Las Vegas, having indulged in UNPROTECTED sex with that stranger, the young surfer. I was the only female, certainly in their 70s, in the waiting room, the rest were beautiful teenage youths, terrified of AIDS. Bless!
Anyway, the doctor was charming to me. He said, "To what do we owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from Molly Parkin?"(recognising me from those far off telly days). After I'd explained the circumstances, I asked if the behaviour was too utterly depraved for a woman of my advanced years. I hasten to add that I actually didn't think so, myself. But it was the old puritanical, chapel thing from my youth raising its kill-joy head.
He laughed, so did the nurse. "We encourage our senior citizens to enjoy sex until the very end of their days," he said. "It not only lengthens their lives, but it makes them a bloody-sight more cheerful."
On my way out he presented me with a carrier-bagful of condoms, "In support of my spontaneity!"
I understand you spanked Sir John Mortimer’s bottom for up to two hours during a liaison with that naughty masochistic QC. Tell me it’s not true … I mean he’s no oil painting … didn’t you get you arm ache?
It most certainly is true, and I would gladly perform the same service again, if asked. I adored and still do adore John Mortimer. It is a pleasure to respond to men with brilliant minds, with a saucy side to them. The humour was in the right place between us from the start. And though you may say he is no oil painting, along with the most beautiful females in London, I could never refuse him. He talks you into bed, with a twinkle in the eyes. He was certainly one of my most charismatic and sexually attractive lovers. We had a lot of fun together.
Conventional good looks and a great body alone, isn't everything, when it comes to pulling partners. The prettiest boys and girls, too often rest on their laurels and don't bother with developing conversational skills and humorous response, because they have from childhood been so admired and congratulated on their looks. It can make for a boring passivity. They can't interact, in the way that less obvious beauties do, who have been forced by nature to project personality.
There is some truth in the saying, "The Curse Of Beauty." I witnessed it again and again when working as Fashion Editor, through the entire 60s, with the most sublimely beautiful models from the entire planet. They were almost inevitably nursing broken hearts.
After our fashon photography sessions they would be picked up from the locations or studios, by short men in the sleekest sports cars who would whisk them off to the swishest night clubs. The very top models of the season being the most vulnerable, because the next season the men would drop them and move onto the next "new face". These lovely girls were all merely reduced by their beauty to being these bastards' latest trophy girls, there to match their latest car models.
I come from a family of beauties, brains and wits, and have been generously awarded all the genes, including the history of rampant alcoholism.. So I was always able to accept illustrious men as lovers. They were all on offer, men of every type. I had my pick, all I had to do was choose.
When I met John Mortimer I had just opened my own restaurant round the corner from Sloane Square, it was between magazine jobs, and I was doing a lot of TV appearences. I was as slim as a pencil but still with a famously great pair of tits and a pert arse, asking to be smacked. I was black and blue on my return from Rome as a very young art student, so keen are they on the practice of bum-pinching. So I was already familiar with posterior pain and refused to allow John to spank me.
That's how I assumed the role of sadist. And it suited me much better. More my style, I found it hilarious, hugely enjoyable as he yelped and wriggled in pleasure. But I did eventually get knackered, and was due to present myself on Breakfast TV in the morning.
"'Nuff's enough, my darling," I whispered. He wasn't best pleased because he hadn't even orgasmed then. So I yanked him over and fucked him from the front. That got the job done in seconds.
Best lover ever (and why)? Best love? Best friend?
Both husbands were amongst my very best lovers, for the size of their cocks, the smoothness of their skins, the loucheness of their lower lips, and the fact that both could enjoy a bloody good laugh in bed with me. And I did love the cosiness of post-coitals, when sardines on toast and hot cocoa came up on a tray, whatever time of day or night. And screwing halfway up the stairs, or in the bath, when the kids were in bed. And the husbands not minding me getting their cocks out on top of the bus, or in the cinema, as if their bits were my bits. Or shagging in the lavvy on the train, after the ticket inspector had punched our tickets.
Extra-marital, I would have to say the legendary Bo Diddley, following his sell-out concert at The Brixton Academy, for the strength of that musician's tongue, stiff and strong in my twatty, as a super-erect penis. Then the penis itself, like being rodgered by a horse. And the heady fragrance and taste of a black man's sweat, which is like no other, or the depth of the singer's lungs lending laughter a new meaning. And just the gargantuan appetite, matching my own. And the sheer physical endurence, hours and hours and hours without sleep. If we could have eaten each other we would have, and we did of course. But I have never before or since had such a sensation of actually being so deliciously DEVOURED.
The love of my life remains, the famed actor, James Robertson Justice. I gave him my virginity on a plate, like a bowl of cherries, when I was 22 and he was 52. I was thrilled to do so, I really thought that I'd landed in heaven. So in love were we.
There was 30 years between us, but he had mischief oozing from every pore.
It was a combination, with his erudite knowlege and inner wisdom, that I'd always been drawn to, but with him it came in concentrated form. His massive popularity then as an actor remains to this day, long after his death. And I miss him still, always will.
When he entered a room, a pub, a club, a restaurant, a theatre, people would turn around to search for the source of this unexpected burst of energy. He brought the sunshine with him, wherever he went. I learned how to live my life, from then on. He taught me everything about what it is to become utterly yourself, and be true to your own heart.
Part Two of my interview with Molly will follow in the next week or so.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Lord Browne of BP: Everything but Bosie
A profile in the Evening Standard of Lord Browne of Madingley, battered departing chief exec of BP, employs all the usual gay cliches about him - "confirmed bachelor", "devoted to opera and ballet" and "fellow aesthetes": the only thing missing is a Bosie for that latterday Oscary touch. The pity is that a mighty business baron cannot simply be called gay, especially when he's riding high and not just on his way down: the media have become very interested in his private life since his stock fell over the Texan and Alaskan scandals, among other things.
A few years ago an ex-boyfriend of Browne's took his own life - nothing to do with Browne I should add, but what a pity he couldn't freely talk about it in the media even as his company ravaged the global environment.
A few years ago an ex-boyfriend of Browne's took his own life - nothing to do with Browne I should add, but what a pity he couldn't freely talk about it in the media even as his company ravaged the global environment.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Julie Burchill writes ....
Julie Burchill emails me: "Just read your piece about me ... to be fair it was I, not little Helen from the Telegraph, who did the drugs during our spree. She did vomit though! x"
Dawn French - £2m worth of life
£2m for Dawn French’s memoirs? I suppose someone took a look at The Vicar of Dibley Christmas Special ratings and thought ker-ching! What has Dawn promised to reveal that could possibly have generated such an amount? That husband Lenny Henry’s a shag-about (well, we know that!)? That someone sniffed – not snorted! - powders off her naked rump? Century published Peter Kay’s amazing bestseller The Sound of Laughter which played to the look-back audience and its waiting-room love of chucklesome anecdote. Plainly, Century thinks she has the Kay slipper-dipper magic, that heart-warming genius that brings so much joy to the tiresome process of defecation. Now, where did I put my gun? ....
The Guardian's dire Arts Diary
You don't expect the Guardian to fall for the "Celia Walden" trick of winning yourself a news diary column in a national newspaper just because you look good. But that is exactly what the paper appears to have done with gorgeous pouting etc Francesca Martin who pens the paper's Arts Diary every Wednesday.
She has been doing it for months now - and even though she is granted a page in the G2 section she has singularly failed to produce a single story that is not some kind of crappy, cosy advance on a press release. Look at today's column for example. The lead on Simon Bainbridge’s Holocaust-inspired Music Space Reflection is (almost) as old as the hills – the quotes lifted from an April 1 news announcement at http://www.schirmer.com/.
Her ICA celebrity Pecha Kucha (“chit chat”) event story was flagged up ages ago by the theatre gallery; and her item on Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch popping off to the Scottish island of Jura for a month this August, to celebrate George Orwell, was plainly inspired by the Scottish Book Trust’s news release of April 4.
The staggering news that artist Marc Quinn has designed a strawberry pendant for Louise Guinness better belongs to Harper’s Bazaar where I believe Ms Martin is arts editor. Does she know anybody in the arts world that may actually enlighten her with some information that is not sanctioned by a bovine press officer?
Her recruitment by the paper is further evidence of the Hello!-isation of this once serious paper. Or that she was got on the cheap.
She has been doing it for months now - and even though she is granted a page in the G2 section she has singularly failed to produce a single story that is not some kind of crappy, cosy advance on a press release. Look at today's column for example. The lead on Simon Bainbridge’s Holocaust-inspired Music Space Reflection is (almost) as old as the hills – the quotes lifted from an April 1 news announcement at http://www.schirmer.com/.
Her ICA celebrity Pecha Kucha (“chit chat”) event story was flagged up ages ago by the theatre gallery; and her item on Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch popping off to the Scottish island of Jura for a month this August, to celebrate George Orwell, was plainly inspired by the Scottish Book Trust’s news release of April 4.
The staggering news that artist Marc Quinn has designed a strawberry pendant for Louise Guinness better belongs to Harper’s Bazaar where I believe Ms Martin is arts editor. Does she know anybody in the arts world that may actually enlighten her with some information that is not sanctioned by a bovine press officer?
Her recruitment by the paper is further evidence of the Hello!-isation of this once serious paper. Or that she was got on the cheap.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Dr John Reid's stepson ... and tax avoidance?
Last Thursday's Londoner's Diary in the Evening Standard led with an intriguing tale about Home Secretary Dr John Reid's stepson Hal Vogel - a noted TV political satirist - and his mystery sale of a two-bedroom flat in a Victorian house in Notting Hill's Leamington Road Villas to his mother, Carine Adler (ie Reid's wife), for £300,000. However, a Land Registry search reveals that the said property is now owned by something called Sterlinvestments Ltd. There's the suggestion here of offshore ownership and tax avoidance - but no one's sure. Who really owns the flat? Does Dr Reid know?
Today, Madame Arcati receives a fascinating communication from a Notting Hill "perplexed resident". The person concerned writes of Vogel's former property: "It's a share-of-freehold set-up. The tenants in Vogel's old flat say they can't find out who owns it either, but that rent paid to an offshore company is tax-free."
I hope there's nothing going on here that could bruise Dr Reid's Prime Ministerial fantasies (by association).
Today, Madame Arcati receives a fascinating communication from a Notting Hill "perplexed resident". The person concerned writes of Vogel's former property: "It's a share-of-freehold set-up. The tenants in Vogel's old flat say they can't find out who owns it either, but that rent paid to an offshore company is tax-free."
I hope there's nothing going on here that could bruise Dr Reid's Prime Ministerial fantasies (by association).
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Hei! to my Finnish friends - you size queens!
I had expected Easter Sunday to be quiet yet I am confounded again by the internet and its erratic ebb and flow. This afternoon, in one hour alone, over 500 visitors from Finland to Arcati - most, natch, came to see this [click here]
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Molly Parkin: I Reside In The Tower Of Babel
POEM BY MOLLY PARKIN, COMPLETED FEB 5, 2007.
I RESIDE IN THE TOWER OF BABEL
I RESIDE IN THE TOWER OF BABEL AT THE CHELSEA AREA, WORLD'S END.
THE COUNCIL DUMPED ME ON THIS ONCE-SAVAGE ESTATE
AS THEY HAVE CHRISTINE KEELER, WHEN SHE WAS AT A LOW EBB.
MEANT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR TWO GOOD-TIME GIRLS.
SHE FOR BRINGING DOWN THE TORY GOVERNMENT IN THE 60S
BY SHAGGING PROFUMO, THE FOREIGN SECRETARY,
AND A RUSSIAN SPY, BOTH AT THE SAME TIME
DURING THE COLD WAR.
AND ME, FOR BEING BANKRUPT, NOT PAYING MY TAXES
CHOOSING TO SPEND THE CASH, BOOZING ALL DAY, EVERY DAY
WITH FRANCIS BACON AND THE LIKE AT THE COLONY, INSTEAD.
WHICH I WOULD DO ALL OVER AGAIN, GIVEN THE CHOICE,
SEEING IT AS THE ESSENCE OF MY CREATIVE EDUCATION.
FOR THE CONVERSATION ALONE, CELT TO CELT WITH FRANCIS.
AND BEING CUDDLED AND CALLED 'CUNTY',
SO TENDERLY BY MURIEL, MY MENTOR.
AS FOR THE PUNISHMENT, I'VE BEEN WHIPPED WITH A STRING OF PEARLS
AND AM UTTERLY IN MY ELEMENT, HERE IN WHAT'S TERMED
SHELTERED ACCOMMODATION FOR THE ELDERLY AND INFIRM,
WITH MY VERY OWN GARDEN,
WHERE I'VE PLANTED PALM TREES AND BAMBOOS
AND FRAGRANT BUSHES OF LAVENDER,
AND BEE-SEDUCING HONEYSUCKLE, AND CRIMSON ROSES
CRYING TO BE PLUCKED, HEAVY UNDER THEIR OWN WEIGHT,
LIKE YOUNG WOMEN WITH CHILD.
I HAVE SHY, GLOBAL REFUGEES AS NEIGHBOURS,
NONE OF US KNOWING WHAT THE OTHER IS SAYING,
PASSING IN IN CORRIDORS, SPILLING FROM ELEVATORS,
SO SMILING INSTEAD AND SAYING IT ALL
WITH A GENTLE LOOK IN OUR EYES
OF FUCKING CARING ABOUT EACH OTHER.
MEN AND WOMEN AND CHILDREN,
INFANTS AND ANCIENTS MOURNING FAMILIES BACK HOME
AND THOSE LEFT FOR DEAD IN POLITICAL STRIFE.
THE DISPLACED GOING THROUGH IT,
SHARING LIFE ON AN INNER LONDON COUNCIL ESTATE,
WHICH IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT
YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW IT.
EVERY BLOODY POLITICIAN SHOULD BE FORCED TO TRY IT
LIKE TAKING A PLEASURE CRUISE ON THE TITANIC,
IT UNEXPECTEDLY BRINGS HUMAN BEINGS, HOMO SAPIENS
CLOSER TOGETHER, WHETHER THEY SHARE THE SAME LANGUAGE OR NOT.
LIKE THE HUDDLING OF PENGUINS IN ARCTIC BLIZZARDS.
AND I'M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT'S HOW IT WAS
IN THE LONDON BLITZ WITH ENEMY BOMBERS OVERHEAD.
SO WE EXCHANGE A BRIEF EMBRACE, A TWINKLE IN THE EYE,
OR A FLEETING BRUSHING OF FINGERS
FEELING COMFORTED AND UNDERSTOOD
USING THIS KIND OF LANGUAGE
WITH SENTENCES LEFT UNSAID.
THE END
Copyright by Molly Parkin 2007
I RESIDE IN THE TOWER OF BABEL
I RESIDE IN THE TOWER OF BABEL AT THE CHELSEA AREA, WORLD'S END.
THE COUNCIL DUMPED ME ON THIS ONCE-SAVAGE ESTATE
AS THEY HAVE CHRISTINE KEELER, WHEN SHE WAS AT A LOW EBB.
MEANT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR TWO GOOD-TIME GIRLS.
SHE FOR BRINGING DOWN THE TORY GOVERNMENT IN THE 60S
BY SHAGGING PROFUMO, THE FOREIGN SECRETARY,
AND A RUSSIAN SPY, BOTH AT THE SAME TIME
DURING THE COLD WAR.
AND ME, FOR BEING BANKRUPT, NOT PAYING MY TAXES
CHOOSING TO SPEND THE CASH, BOOZING ALL DAY, EVERY DAY
WITH FRANCIS BACON AND THE LIKE AT THE COLONY, INSTEAD.
WHICH I WOULD DO ALL OVER AGAIN, GIVEN THE CHOICE,
SEEING IT AS THE ESSENCE OF MY CREATIVE EDUCATION.
FOR THE CONVERSATION ALONE, CELT TO CELT WITH FRANCIS.
AND BEING CUDDLED AND CALLED 'CUNTY',
SO TENDERLY BY MURIEL, MY MENTOR.
AS FOR THE PUNISHMENT, I'VE BEEN WHIPPED WITH A STRING OF PEARLS
AND AM UTTERLY IN MY ELEMENT, HERE IN WHAT'S TERMED
SHELTERED ACCOMMODATION FOR THE ELDERLY AND INFIRM,
WITH MY VERY OWN GARDEN,
WHERE I'VE PLANTED PALM TREES AND BAMBOOS
AND FRAGRANT BUSHES OF LAVENDER,
AND BEE-SEDUCING HONEYSUCKLE, AND CRIMSON ROSES
CRYING TO BE PLUCKED, HEAVY UNDER THEIR OWN WEIGHT,
LIKE YOUNG WOMEN WITH CHILD.
I HAVE SHY, GLOBAL REFUGEES AS NEIGHBOURS,
NONE OF US KNOWING WHAT THE OTHER IS SAYING,
PASSING IN IN CORRIDORS, SPILLING FROM ELEVATORS,
SO SMILING INSTEAD AND SAYING IT ALL
WITH A GENTLE LOOK IN OUR EYES
OF FUCKING CARING ABOUT EACH OTHER.
MEN AND WOMEN AND CHILDREN,
INFANTS AND ANCIENTS MOURNING FAMILIES BACK HOME
AND THOSE LEFT FOR DEAD IN POLITICAL STRIFE.
THE DISPLACED GOING THROUGH IT,
SHARING LIFE ON AN INNER LONDON COUNCIL ESTATE,
WHICH IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT
YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW IT.
EVERY BLOODY POLITICIAN SHOULD BE FORCED TO TRY IT
LIKE TAKING A PLEASURE CRUISE ON THE TITANIC,
IT UNEXPECTEDLY BRINGS HUMAN BEINGS, HOMO SAPIENS
CLOSER TOGETHER, WHETHER THEY SHARE THE SAME LANGUAGE OR NOT.
LIKE THE HUDDLING OF PENGUINS IN ARCTIC BLIZZARDS.
AND I'M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT'S HOW IT WAS
IN THE LONDON BLITZ WITH ENEMY BOMBERS OVERHEAD.
SO WE EXCHANGE A BRIEF EMBRACE, A TWINKLE IN THE EYE,
OR A FLEETING BRUSHING OF FINGERS
FEELING COMFORTED AND UNDERSTOOD
USING THIS KIND OF LANGUAGE
WITH SENTENCES LEFT UNSAID.
THE END
Copyright by Molly Parkin 2007
Molly Parkin: Jazz Lovers
POEM BY MOLLY PARKIN, WRITTEN ON MY 75TH BIRTHDAY, FEB 3, 2007.
JAZZ LOVERS
I SEE THE PEARLY GATES AS THE NEXT PORT OF CALL
AND PART OF ME CAN'T WAIT.
ON MY 75TH BIRTHDAY, TODAY, I SAID TO MYSELF.
YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO DIE NOW, THAT'S IF YOU WANT TO.
NOBODY COULD ACCUSE YOU OF LEAVING BEFORE YOUR TIME.
JUST ABOUT ALL MY OLD JAZZ-LOVERS,
THOSE JOY-BOYS, ARE ANGELS NOW
SWELLING THE HEAVENLY CHOIR.
SLIM GAILLARD AND ADRIAN HENRY
WHO SAT IT OUT, GLARING, PAST MIDNIGHT
EACH WAITING FOR THE OTHER TO LEAVE
MY BEDROOM IN THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB.
SLIM WON AND STAYED THE REST OF THE NIGHT.
I MADE IT UP TO ADRIAN LATER, OF COURSE.
THE BED WAS JUST TOO NARROW
TO MAKE MUSIC WITH BOTH THOSE BIG BOYS
OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE CERTAINLY BEEN UP FOR IT.
LATER THAT MONTH I SHARED CARNAL PLEASURES
WITH ONE THIRD OF THE CUBAN BAND, PLAYING AT RONNIE'S.
IT WAS A SHORT ENGAGEMENT OTHERWISE
I WOULD HAVE SKIMMED THROUGH THE LOT.
MY JAZZ LOVE-LIFE BEGAN IN THE BLACK ARMS OF SATCHMO.
OVER 30 YEARS MY SENIOR, BUT JUST TO SWOON
TO HIS TUNES AND BE SMOOCHED BY THAT MOUTH,
GAVE ME A DIFFERENT SLANT ON THINGS,
SOMERSAULTED MY EXPECTATIONS AS A WOMAN.
WHAT OTHER 22 YEAR-OLD, LILY-WHITE, WELSH VALLEY,
CHAPEL VIRGIN COULD TRUTHFULLY CONFESS TO THAT.
NOW ALL THOSE SAUCY LADS ARE SINGING
THEIR GUTS OUT AT CLOSING TIME. JEFF NUTTALL ON CORNET
WITH THOSE HEART-STOPPING SONGBIRDS
THAT I MET AT RONNIE'S, LIKE ELLA FITZGERALD
AND NINA SIMONE, WHO NAGGED ME TO GHOST HER MEMOIRS.
BUT I WAS TOO PISSED TO PUT PEN TO PAPER BY THEN.
AND CARMEN McCRAE, WHO BOUGHT ME AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF BRANDY
NOT MERELY ONE SHOT. HOW I ADMIRED HER STYLE.
NONE OF US TOOK KINDLY TO THAT COURSE REFRAIN,
HERE ON THIS MORTAL COIL. 'LAST ORDERS , PLEASE!'
HAPPILY, THERE IS NO SUCH ODIOUS PHRASE IN HEAVEN.
JAZZ PARTIES IN PARADISE GO ON FOREVER.
THE END
Copyright by Molly Parkin 2007
JAZZ LOVERS
I SEE THE PEARLY GATES AS THE NEXT PORT OF CALL
AND PART OF ME CAN'T WAIT.
ON MY 75TH BIRTHDAY, TODAY, I SAID TO MYSELF.
YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO DIE NOW, THAT'S IF YOU WANT TO.
NOBODY COULD ACCUSE YOU OF LEAVING BEFORE YOUR TIME.
JUST ABOUT ALL MY OLD JAZZ-LOVERS,
THOSE JOY-BOYS, ARE ANGELS NOW
SWELLING THE HEAVENLY CHOIR.
SLIM GAILLARD AND ADRIAN HENRY
WHO SAT IT OUT, GLARING, PAST MIDNIGHT
EACH WAITING FOR THE OTHER TO LEAVE
MY BEDROOM IN THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB.
SLIM WON AND STAYED THE REST OF THE NIGHT.
I MADE IT UP TO ADRIAN LATER, OF COURSE.
THE BED WAS JUST TOO NARROW
TO MAKE MUSIC WITH BOTH THOSE BIG BOYS
OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE CERTAINLY BEEN UP FOR IT.
LATER THAT MONTH I SHARED CARNAL PLEASURES
WITH ONE THIRD OF THE CUBAN BAND, PLAYING AT RONNIE'S.
IT WAS A SHORT ENGAGEMENT OTHERWISE
I WOULD HAVE SKIMMED THROUGH THE LOT.
MY JAZZ LOVE-LIFE BEGAN IN THE BLACK ARMS OF SATCHMO.
OVER 30 YEARS MY SENIOR, BUT JUST TO SWOON
TO HIS TUNES AND BE SMOOCHED BY THAT MOUTH,
GAVE ME A DIFFERENT SLANT ON THINGS,
SOMERSAULTED MY EXPECTATIONS AS A WOMAN.
WHAT OTHER 22 YEAR-OLD, LILY-WHITE, WELSH VALLEY,
CHAPEL VIRGIN COULD TRUTHFULLY CONFESS TO THAT.
NOW ALL THOSE SAUCY LADS ARE SINGING
THEIR GUTS OUT AT CLOSING TIME. JEFF NUTTALL ON CORNET
WITH THOSE HEART-STOPPING SONGBIRDS
THAT I MET AT RONNIE'S, LIKE ELLA FITZGERALD
AND NINA SIMONE, WHO NAGGED ME TO GHOST HER MEMOIRS.
BUT I WAS TOO PISSED TO PUT PEN TO PAPER BY THEN.
AND CARMEN McCRAE, WHO BOUGHT ME AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF BRANDY
NOT MERELY ONE SHOT. HOW I ADMIRED HER STYLE.
NONE OF US TOOK KINDLY TO THAT COURSE REFRAIN,
HERE ON THIS MORTAL COIL. 'LAST ORDERS , PLEASE!'
HAPPILY, THERE IS NO SUCH ODIOUS PHRASE IN HEAVEN.
JAZZ PARTIES IN PARADISE GO ON FOREVER.
THE END
Copyright by Molly Parkin 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
The Diana Circle
The Daily Express’ gossip column ran a story this week on my interview with performance artist Mark McGowan and his plan to put on a live sex representation of the conception of Prince William. The paper spoke to something called the Diana Circle. "I sincerely hope he does not harm her memory in any way - she is not here to defend herself," said member Margaret Funnell. "Diana was one of the most beautiful women to walk this planet and if he distorts her in any way, he can be sure we will be down on him like a ton of bricks." The Circle's last big campaign was to prevent the marriage of Charles and Camilla, so Mark has nothing to worry about ...
Julie Burchill - Big Sis for Big Bro?
I hear that Julie Burchill is in talks with Grazia magazine to become its Big Brother correspondent. An excellent development if the right money can be found. She's the true champ of chav-dom - I'm only surprised Heat hasn't snapped her up.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Has anyone seen Tony Slattery?
The press party for ITV1's Kingdom - about a country solicitor (played by Stephen fry) and due to start later this month - was a bit too interesting. Manic-depressive Tony Slattery, who plays a cantankerous villager, was expected but didn't turn up. At some point during the do, he phoned a PR to say he was at King's Cross and would be there "soon". And that was the last we heard from him. Apparently he didn't sound very well. Of the other manic-depressive, Fry, another cast member told me he was "low" during the filming of Kingdom and hardly spoke to anyone off-set. But he was back to his scintillant (other) self at the party.
Comedy star. Buggery. Toilet.
Which famous and dashing comedy star of our island race - who's definitely no laydee! - was very recently to be seen performing the act of buggery on another male in a gentlemen's rest room?
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
'Web torture' public school named
"One of Britain's top independent schools is under police investigation over allegations of pupil bullying [ie pupils bullying other pupils] involving the use of images of torture, murder and child pornography," reported The Sunday Times last weekend. "The 'cyber-bullying' is alleged to have happened on numerous occasions over a period of about a year ... any intended victim ... would be restrained in a chair and forced to watch ... websites featuring material such as sexual abuse of children, sexual torture of adults and explicit scenes of bestiality."
For reasons best known to the paper - which itself is not unacquainted with bullying practices - it failed to name the school. The school in question is Westminster.
For reasons best known to the paper - which itself is not unacquainted with bullying practices - it failed to name the school. The school in question is Westminster.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Julie Burchill: Doing lines with the Telegraph
Among the few accomplished people I venerate is Julie Burchill and I shall be reviewing her latest work Made In Brighton very shortly. On this occasion I shall pay her the compliment of reading it cover-to-cover, but I don’t always recommend over-familiarity with a work under review. Too often I have found that an intuitive response based on prejudice or just a gut feeling to the book cover is superior to the actual dispiriting grunt work of grazing one’s way through the chaos of other people’s prose styles. The true import of a book maybe obscured by micro-involvement when what’s required is a nice big macro sweep of inspired clairvoyance. Not so with The Burch. She’s the p(r)ose poet of journalism and I shall repeat this phrase during my review (or “review” ), depending on whether she’s maintained her usual supra-standards now that she’s found herself a co-writer (her husband Daniel Raven). (I suspect she has).
Julie gave a great interview yesterday to the Evening Standard. I didn’t know she has gout. But the portrait suggests she has recovered her natal pulchritude and perhaps this is attributable either to the elixir of persistent Class A drugs consumption and/or the adoption of God. She relates that another journo interviewed her recently and they started out OK on Diet Coke but ended up taking some powder and puking in the street. My spies tell me that the hack in question was from the Telegraph, so that should be a most amusing piece. I must say the Telegraph is looking up these days since it dumped almost everyone.
Madame Arcati had asked Julie for an interview but made the error of using the word “séance” instead; as in, “Would you like to have a séance with me?” It was meant in the French sense of a “session”, but I think perhaps Julie interpreted the word in its British sense and thought I intended to go into a trance state and bring forth dead aunts and the late Tony Parsons with whom to communicate. “Séance” in this context was intended as a play on words, given the Spiritualist provenance of my name. So she declined, having said she would do it last year! I am assuming that her revived Protestantism shook at such a prospect, the Witch of Endor having set a contra-precedent. I can live with that. I’m not bitter.
I look forward to the Diana musical she’s planning, this could be the immortalising of her. I only ask that she resists the talents of Andrew Lloyd Webber or his sidekick Ben Elton. And I like her quote in the interview: “Maybe I’ve been too smug to do anything great, but I wouldn’t swap my life and my low level of achievement, if that’s what it is, for a life lived in misery and self-contemplation. I’d end up lonely with a great novel. I’d rather be a game old bird on a spree.”
Julie gave a great interview yesterday to the Evening Standard. I didn’t know she has gout. But the portrait suggests she has recovered her natal pulchritude and perhaps this is attributable either to the elixir of persistent Class A drugs consumption and/or the adoption of God. She relates that another journo interviewed her recently and they started out OK on Diet Coke but ended up taking some powder and puking in the street. My spies tell me that the hack in question was from the Telegraph, so that should be a most amusing piece. I must say the Telegraph is looking up these days since it dumped almost everyone.
Madame Arcati had asked Julie for an interview but made the error of using the word “séance” instead; as in, “Would you like to have a séance with me?” It was meant in the French sense of a “session”, but I think perhaps Julie interpreted the word in its British sense and thought I intended to go into a trance state and bring forth dead aunts and the late Tony Parsons with whom to communicate. “Séance” in this context was intended as a play on words, given the Spiritualist provenance of my name. So she declined, having said she would do it last year! I am assuming that her revived Protestantism shook at such a prospect, the Witch of Endor having set a contra-precedent. I can live with that. I’m not bitter.
I look forward to the Diana musical she’s planning, this could be the immortalising of her. I only ask that she resists the talents of Andrew Lloyd Webber or his sidekick Ben Elton. And I like her quote in the interview: “Maybe I’ve been too smug to do anything great, but I wouldn’t swap my life and my low level of achievement, if that’s what it is, for a life lived in misery and self-contemplation. I’d end up lonely with a great novel. I’d rather be a game old bird on a spree.”
Monday, April 02, 2007
Mark McGowan: 'Penetrative sex for Prince William'
I just love the idea of Mark McGowan, don't ask me why: my critical faculties are totally suspended in the face of performance stunt art and its naked ambition. His latest venture is the live representation of Prince William's conception on stage (details in previous post). Will it feature actual sex? I asked him ....
Mark McGowan! You're planning an art performance about the conception of Prince William - why? Was there something special about it?
I think it was quite special and very emotive. He held Diana in an embrace and she gave herself to him.
What do you hope the audience will get from the performance? Or, what will the performance be for?
The audience will be able for the very first time to witness one of the most important moments in the recent history of Britain. The building of a nation. The future king of England.
Be honest, how was it for Diana?
Oh Diana, the queen of hearts. So many men wanted her. Adored by millions. She always was unselfish. She I believe loved every minute of the conception.
I understand the players will wear Charles and Di masks - who will you play and could you tell us how you prepared for the representation?
They will be wearing cardboard boxes on their head with pictures of Di and Charles on the front for aesthetic purposes. We are currently auditioning for the parts as the last pair of actors pulled out due to their involvement in an upcoming Steven Seagal movie.
Will there be simulated sex and a climactic moment in the history of the UK and its Commonwealth?
There is to be no simulation. It is a live penetrative sex performance.
William and Harry have turned out OK, haven't they, standard issue males, like from a sausage factory. What's there to be said about them?
Not too sure about Harry, he's ginger. But William is magnificent.
Would you accept any comparison with Banksy?
Only comparison is that we both make enormous amounts of money out of our art.
Do you get fan mail and/or any unwanted attention from the authorities? How are the media with you?
Only this week the police and fire brigade shut down an attempted effigy burning, lots of fan mail and angry mail. The media are lovely.
You're quite famous for a number of public performances. I didn't quite understand the pro-Jade Goody thing, enjoyed the bean journey by nose ... which is the one you're most proud of to date?
Turning on a tap and leaving it running for one month and scratching 47 cars with my keys were two good projects. But I also liked "artist eats a swan".
Could you tell us a bit about yourself. You're still at the Camberwell College of Arts? Is your family OK about your work? And what is your career ambition?
Still doing a little bit of teaching at Camberwell. Family is mixed - a little bit proud and a little bit embarrassed. My career ambtion is to be a success.
Could you tell us of any other art performances under plan or being pondered.
I am being buried underneath a metre of mashed potato for one week in Dublin, Ireland. Burning some more effigies in Basle, Switzerland in June, and I am doing a self-immolation in November in Chelsea.
For more on Mark's work, see his website [click here].
Meerkat Manor - a question
Meerkat Manor – best thing by far on TV right now. What I don’t understand is how the meerkats communicate decisions. For instance, when boss bitch Flower decides to lead her gang against the Lazuli for the umpteenth time, how does she tell hopeless Youssarian that he's "it" to guard her pups that day? Does she point her nose at him or something? Telepathy? Everyone knows their duty, but how? I find it irritating that the Cambridge University meerkat spies don’t fill in these essential causal links.
The Guardian's Dr Who "scoop"
The Guardian's media Monkey column asks itself excitedly today whether Dr Who star David Tennant has signed up for another series. "The question is put to him at every press conference, and every time he declines to answer," it writes. "But Monkey can reveal that it's not because he hasn't made his mind up. He has. Fans will be pleased to learn that a third series with Tennant in the lead role is guaranteed."
Really! In fact this can only be news to writers who don't bother to read the tabloids or any of the showbiz internet sites (try a Google search). On September 9, 2006, The Sun reported: "David Tennant has signed for his third Dr Who series in a £1million deal, we can reveal."
And it was Madame Arcati who revealed many moons ago that Tennant will depart his Tardis mid-fourth series, most probably early next year.
Try to keep up, chaps.
Really! In fact this can only be news to writers who don't bother to read the tabloids or any of the showbiz internet sites (try a Google search). On September 9, 2006, The Sun reported: "David Tennant has signed for his third Dr Who series in a £1million deal, we can reveal."
And it was Madame Arcati who revealed many moons ago that Tennant will depart his Tardis mid-fourth series, most probably early next year.
Try to keep up, chaps.
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