English Mentors: Flogging Brideshead dreams to the foreign rich

Channel 4 TV show The Russians Are Coming introduces me to a charming outfit called English Mentors. Imagine you're a mega-rich Russian breeder with a brat to civilise - how could you fast-track it into an English public school such as Eton or Stowe for all the global advantages that money can buy? Simples. You hand it over to English Mentors.

For a fee so substantial it warrants no mention, EM will billet your kid on an English country house and put it through short "modules" in etiquette, clay shooting, polo, English language, deportment, visits to the Palace of Westminster and BBC studios and other delights that spell Brideshead Culture. EM is purposed to create smart little foreign Englishers who can fit into public school castes.

ON EM's website chairman Field Marshall, Lord Bramall describes these modules as "discreet" and likens them to Sandhurst's officer training course. Key kiddie markets would appear to be Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and US. Even the Duchess Fergiana is on hand to sell EM - "I want to give my children a chance, the best possible chance," she says in the backseat of what could be a chauffeur-driven Daimler. "The demand for well paid jobs that are spiritually enriching is far outstripping supply."

Do watch the promo video. It artfully draws in royalty, the military, the English bar, the City... and the better newspapers... as privilege is put up for purchase. And it's all so wonderfully shameless.

Cheryl & Ashley Cole: Come on, sling your marital bling for Haiti

Dear Mr & Mrs Cole,

Look, I'll be honest with you. I couldn't give a fuck about your marriage split. That's your business. You're both very rich, very famous, very spoilt people. You are both decadent. Cheryl, your engagement ring alone cost £100,000 - and bought from the proceeds of a legal settlement with the lying News of the World. Don't deny it: you admitted it to Piers Morgan in GQ.

Brand Cole is worth cumulatively at least (but much more than) £30m. Now you are about to divorce. Here's a piece of advice.

Do something useful for a change and auction off all the bling associated with your union for the benefit of Haiti. Fight fight fight for life. Ashley, forget about your cock for one moment and think outside that sullen, self-absorbed nature of yours. You wanker. Cheryl, forget about your pain, your airport poses, your moody pouts (do you really want to be Posh The Sequel?), your silly planted tabloid tales and all the rest of the tabloid shit.

About 250,000 people lost their lives in the recent Haiti tragedy. About 2 million are homeless. Even your bling won't make much difference. But what an example it would set to the tabloid morons who envy your good fortune. Turn your pain into something useful.

Do it.

(Mega-PR Mark Borkowski's petition seeking to persuade Cheryl and Ashley to sling their bling for Haiti  - click here.)

Madame Arcati

Will Self - a condom slug and a disturbing dildo

Novelist Will Self - who complicates the simplest thoughts with big or obscure words * - writes an entertainingly discursive diary for the London Review of Books (Feb 25 edition). In an appreciation of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on Radio 4, he sidetracks to his walk across London's Clapham Common with his doggy, Maglorian. And what an event it turns out to be.

He notes of the south side of the common: "The area around here is a notorious cruising ground for men in search of casual homosexual encounters, and often when I walk through it in the mornings I will spot a used condom, as if it were some strange kind of latex airborne slug that, having leaped for the skies, has ended up dangling from the brambles." This is a very fine, well described image, and we should be grateful to the cruisers for inspiring Will's natural outburst of creativity, certain to be recycled in one of his novels. A family picnic, with a plaid tablecloth spread of chicken sandwiches and Thermos tea, would perhaps not stir his imagination.

Further along in his peregrination he freezes at the sight of a 10"-long dildo on the path. It's "made of red, slightly translucent plastic, and fashioned artfully in the manner of an engorged penis, right down to its exposed dome and network of veins." He is distrubed by the "juxtaposition between the mechanical and the faked organic." Civic mindedly, he picks it up with the intention of bin disposal, but Maglorian mistakes the dildo for a play stick and begins "yapping frantically". Odd to handle it: I'd wonder where it's been.

Once again I found myself grateful to the shadowy al fresco nymphs and satyrs who gambol about our city parks at night: they can never know of their contribution to literature.

* Some big or obscure words from Will's piece for you to look up
Dehiscent
Therianthropes
Smirr

Mark McGowan survives Wootton Bassett's savage pensioners

He boldly pushed a trolley bearing a "Sorry" cardboard sign through the near-empty streets of Wootton Bassett. The cortege flag-wavers stayed away, not a coffin or a Dimbleby was to be seen. But perhaps curtains twitched. Scenes of mass destruction may upset some Arcatistes.

A 'bullying' Prime Minister, but what of Andy Coulson?

Tory leader David Cameron calls for an inquiry into Gordon Brown's "bullying" conduct towards his staff with the suggestion he's unfit for high office. Quite right. But what a pity Cameron didn't call for an inquiry into - and has not publicly addressed once - the bullying conduct of someone very close to himself, the Tory media boss Andy Coulson. Last year, the former editor's bullying of a sports reporter cost the News of the World £800,000 before costs - a record award for workplace bullying.

Sadly The Times, which laudably publishes a leader today on the bullying claims against the PM - labelling bullies "weak" - was not moved to comment on Coulson's offence at the time.

Come to think of it, why hasn't the National Bullying Helpline - which has confirmed Number 10 staff concerns about the PM - made an issue of Coulson? Questions, questions. Rhetorical.

Rod Liddle to Suzanne Moore: 'Sorry I called you a "fucking hypocrite"... '

Rod and Suzanne make up ...

One would have to have a heart of stone not feel some sympathy for Rod Liddle, what with the vitriolic Facebook campaign against him over the Independent, Madame Arcati's exclusive on his unseemly Facebook row with the darling Suzanne Moore, Roy Greenslade's Guardian vendetta, and, oh, lots of things. How did all this pressure affect Rod - did it get to him?

I've just hacked into Suzanne's email account and among some priceless exchanges between her and Rod is this line from him apropos their Facebook face-off: "But I'm sorry I called you a 'fucking hypocrite'. It's been a rough week. Hypocrite would have done."

Let's send him healing prayers ....

'Rod Liddle won't be editing the Independent' - thanks to Madame Arcati

Alexander Lebedev - a man of incomparable wisdom. He is Madame Arcati's Man of the Year. And it's only February

Rod Liddle will not be the next editor of the Independent, the Guardian reports. The paper claims that Alexander Lebedev had a change of heart.

I have little doubt this was due to Madame Arcati: Mr Lebedev is a follower of Arcati on Twitter and visits this site regularly for about 0.3 seconds per ingress. For a man of his intelligence and scope this would be sufficient time to scan the educated hostility to fag-ash Liddle whose politics, demeanour, temperament and flakiness (and hairstyle) are the subject of much concern.

And it was Madame Arcati that exclusively ran the Facebook row between Liddle and Suzanne Moore: while she was the model of civility, preparing to cook lunch for her little poppets, he ranted and raved like, er, someone who thought he was a national newspaper editor already.

Anyone who writes a column for the hideous and bullying Sunday Times is, as a matter of course, unsuitable for the Independent. Incidentally, does anyone know where the ST's editor now lives?

Rod and Suzanne

Mr Lebedev goes up in my estimation. He is clearly a man of tremendous insight, of wisdom, of worldliness. My God, Geordie Greig was right about Lebby! The Guardian better be fucking right. Meantime, Alexander should consider Suzanne Moore for the Indy editorship - unusually, she combines a left-wing sensibility with haute personal style and grooming: she is well-shod proof that you can make a good living from the politics of selflessness.

And please, Alexander, abandon the idea of Jeremy Paxman. He wouldn't survive five minutes. Plus, he's molto sensitive.

Dan Farson exhibition: The late Soho and its bohemian habitués

Sailors in Fitzroy by Farson

The photographs of Francis Bacon's whipping boy, Dan Farson, can ve viewed and bought at Blacks Club at London's 67 Dean Street, W1, until March 12th. Don't miss the Private View on Feb 23, 6.30-8.30pm: at 7.15pm., there will be a brief talk by the artist, writer and Soho DJ (and my fiancée) Molly Parkin, and Soho based bespoke tailor Mark Powell (both pictured below by Benjamin Maggs, a Pisces), who is currently working on an outfit for the modfather himself, Paul Weller. They will talk about their Soho experiences past and present, and their memories of Dan Farson.

The flyer reads: "Through the lens of Dan Farson, Soho scenes and its bohemian habitués of the 1950's come to life. Several of the photographs are featured in the remarkable book by Farson Soho in the Fifties, with an introduction by jazz legend and author the late George Melly."

Apparently Farson was also a gifted writer and broadcaster. The first I heard of him was from the late Robert Tewdwr Moss who met him in a Syrian hotel in the mid-90s. Robert describes the encounters in his travel book Cleopatra's Wedding Present. From memory, Farson - drunken and shambolic by this time - took against him, launching into ferocious, froth-flecked tirades. Robert's crimes appeared to be that he was handsome, gay and sexually active. I can't recall if Robert actually names Farson in the book.

As I write I can't find my copy to check. Perhaps Farson's ghost has hidden it.

Farson's autobiography Never a Normal Man

Access Interviews - new improved (and free!) archive of celebrity chat

Do take a look at Access Interviews which has celebrated its 3rd birthday with a facelift. The site aggregates a vast number of celebrity interviews - including Madame Arcati's - from the world's media. And a new search box at the top allows you to hunt down your sleb quarry, accessing in effect a unique sprawling archive. Tap in Kevin Spacey and 8 items spring up - so much for Mr Elusive! Tap in Katie Price and 44 audiences with Her Brightonage instantly appear for hackish research purposes. Meryl Streep scores a modest 16 articles. Molly Parkin 4 (two of them mine). It's an invaluable, free resource. And how the fuck it's very smart creator Rob McGibbon makes any money from it is anyone's guess.

Interviewers (including blogs and other sites) should link their work on Access Interviews - it's a simple thing to do and opens up your profiles to a wider audience.

Access Interviews 10 most read star subjects of 2009 were:

1. Katie Price
2. Alistair Darling
3. Natascha Kampusch
4. Georgi Dochev
5. Ricky Gervais
6. Simon Cowell
7. Leonardo DiCaprio
8. Rupert Penry-Jones
9. Chesley Sullenberger
10. Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean

Ray Gosling - of course he must be tried and jailed

Ray Gosling

I hadn't thought of broadcaster Ray Gosling for about 20 years until he confessed on BBC's Inside Out that he had mercy killed his dying young lover. From the jumble of reports, I think Gosling has admitted to honouring a pact with his hospitalised unnamed partner and smothering him with a pillow to end his "terrible, terrible pain" from an Aids-related illness.

Nottinghamshire Police are investigating the matter. But since Gosling has announced he will not cooperate with the inquiry, I am pretty certain he won't be prosecuted. I can well imagine a disinclination to follow the trail that may implicate others in what will be framed in the media as an assisted suicide.

Well, you know my views on the matter. Even my fiancee Molly Parkin is appalled by my hostility to the death camp Dignitas in Switzerland. Gosling wanted to end his lover's pain. In truth he also wanted to end his own. Dignity in Dying is already using this story to push its soap operatic, death camp agenda. I already see the TV show: Live or Die: You Decide. The decider won't be the life in question, but the emoting of loved ones - anxious to end their own misery.

As I write, aiding or abetting another person's death is illegal in England and Wales under the 1961 Suicide Act, and is punishable by up to 14 years in jail. Gosling has freely made his confession. He should be arrested, tried amd jailed for murder or manslaughter. He'll have ample opportunity to emote in the dock and on the TV breakfast shows for a public sympathy reactively honed by the talent shows. And the atheistic libertarians who now write national newspaper editorials will have acres of space to call for the right to exterminate someone whose health condition is a thundering and expensive nuisance.

Prepare for a whole new area of litigation: Assisted Suicide - Or Convenience Killing?

Astrologers foresee a Tory victory - well, many of them do

Russell Grant: Tory win slim, Parliament well hung possibly

Diddums! The media Tory Boys are all depressed!

This loose amalgam of early middleaged, Oxbridge, cock-cunting, right-wing cat lovers - mainly subsidised by the Telegraph/Spectator club, with a blog thrown in to cover the winter gas bills - despairs at Gordon Brown's apparent resurgence in the polls and David Cameron's failure to impress. Why did anyone think that Old Etonian Cameron would ever mean much to scatterbrain Generation Google? His narrow aristocratic face alone looks bereft of 18th Century wig and gilded carved pine portrait frame - I hear a strain of Bach on harpsichord as I write - not a happy thought when there's news of National Health cuts to impart to porno'd-out plebs.

While the secular political pundits nonetheless expect Tory Boy to squeak into Number 10 in May, hobbled by a hung Parliament, what do the astrologers foresee? Your intrepid Madame - a trainee astrologer herself - had a perusal. To preserve your interest I have minimised the astro-jargon: just know there's a Saturn+Pluto (boo!)-Uranus+Jupiter (hooray!) tussle going on in the heavens.

Let's start with Russell Grant -"Will Labour retain power?" he asked himself at the Telegraph last year. "It is more likely to be a very narrow Conservative majority or a hung parliament."

"Quite definitively ... Labour will not win the next election," concludes the Brown-supporting Astrotabletalk. The site's astrologer Dharmaruci predicts in par 1 "it may be a hung Parliament." By par 11 however he's foreseeing "the Tories will probably win outright, rather than there being a hung Parliament." Ah, yes.

The august Marjorie Orr wrote of Gordon Brown in 2008: "He looks unlikely to emulate Tony Blair's three terms since his career and home life will go into major transformation gear in 2010. He's likely then or the following year to change career direction totally." So that's a Tory victory.

The Sun's Mystic Meg foresees a narrow Tory win - neatly echoing the current view of its owner Rupert Murdoch.

It's not all bad news for Gord. The unfortunately named The Daze thinks: "In 2010 Pluto starts to make a conjunction with Brown's natal MC, his progressed Moon is full in 2011 and in 2012 Neptune is conjunct his natal Sun. I wonder if these powerful astrological aspects do indeed suggest that Gordon Brown is with us in his high office for quite a few years to come." NB: for 2008, The Daze has Gordon misnamed George.

Astrology for the 21st Century foresees a likely Tory victory despite an astrologically low opinion of Cameron: "Leo-Libra mix is inclined to the self-satisfied, smug, and saccharine," it writes. "I don't see much good coming of him attaining power."

The Mail's Jonathan Cainer - rumoured to make over £1m pa from his phonelines - wrote of Brown in June last year, "Right now, his luck is on the wane, but while he won't bounce back to full popularity, his luck may just help him cling to office a bit longer, if he weathers these next few days." However, it was Cainer that predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the US election and that the global economic situation wouldn't be as bad as people expected.

New York's Caroline Simon (who predicted the economic crisis) of astrology website Blue Moon is doubtful of a Cameron premiership: "He can be too dependent on others’ approval and opinions to make his own decisions,” she adjudges. What else might Dave do in the event of a thrashing at the polls? "[He] could become adept at sculpture, pottery, carpentry or stained glass."

Even so, the majority view among astrologers is that Cameron will be the next PM by a slim margin. But the heavens do not exult.

Mark McGowan to risk death in Wootton Bassett

Will these Wootton Bassett burghers turn savage and rip poor lickle Mark to pieces in a zombie-like fit of frothing, tabloid-driven rage?

My dear remote friend Mark McGowan (how's sexy Bryn?) plans to crawl on his hands and knees through the touchy town of Wootton Bassett with a sign on his back which simply says, "SORRY". The event is planned for Sunday 21st February 2010 at 2pm.

The artist has previously completed many famous crawls including London to Canterbury. He also pushed a monkey nut with his nose for 7 miles to Downing Street.

He says, "This performance/art event is an attempt to say sorry for all the civillians that have been and that are being killed due to this country's foreign policy. Also, 'this is not a protest'."

I do hope Mark is not kicked to death by the flag-waving burghers of Wootton Bassett, egged on by circulation-chasing tabloids or the giggly presenters of the Today programme. That would be too distressing.

AA Gill: If a rat's worth £2000, what's the value of a shot baboon?

Silly cunt AA Gill strikes a pose

A rat's life has been valued at £2,000. This is ITV's fine for the killing and eating of the rodent on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! by famished contestants. The Australian RSPCA explained that the creature suffered unnecessarily for 90 seconds before death. "The animal was killed for a TV show, that's not appropriate," it added. Report.

Quite so. I wonder then how much the Sunday Times TV and food critic AA Gill would have been fined by the Australian RSPCA in similar circumstances. Last year he admitted in one of his wittering restaurant reviews to the killing of a baboon on a Tanzanian jaunt. He shot the beast just to see what it was like to kill a primate. He wrote: "A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out. We paced the ground. The air was filled with a furious keening of his tribe. Two hundred and fifty yards. Not a bad shot." Baboons live in troops not tribes.

Plainly, the baboon was shot for copy. To write a few entertaining paragraphs for his paper. Whether it died instantly we cannot know, but certainly its "tribe" was distressed. Given that baboons are highly intelligent with a likely sentience similar to our own, what do you think? £50,000? Perhaps his paper would like to make a donation to a charity.

National newspaper editor has a touch of the John Terrys

While footie star John Terry is crucifed in the media for cock-cunting around - his sin being to have cock-cunted around with a fellow player's gf - news reaches me that a certain British national newspaper editor may be experiencing similar problems of the extra-marital kind, though not with a fellow player's gf. The third party is described by staff as "some woman who works in PR," though that may not be entirely accurate.

Don't even ask.

And of course the national newspaper editors' omertà will ensure a media silence Terry could never expect.

Duncan Fallowell and The Pedro Friedeberg Rainbow Party

I hardly ever see Molly Parkin in the flesh yet we are successfully and happily affianced. Duncan Fallowell goes one better: Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg is one of his oldest friends - and they've never met.

Sergey Stefanovich has made a short movie of this remote friendship, showcasing a selection of Friedeberg's beautifully artworked letters to Duncan. The Pedro Friedeberg Rainbow Party is set to Rainbow Party sung by Claudia Visca (from the opera Gormenghast, music by Irmin Schmidt, libretto by Duncan Fallowell).

The letters are worthy of their own exhibition.

This new portrait of Duncan was taken by Stefanovich.

The Pedro Friedeberg Rainbow Party

Dapper Dicks: The penis gets the Barbie treatment

The first thing I heard today was the president of Mattel telling me that Barbie was aspirational and about to embark on her 125th career. Then this afternoon I popped over to the site of the world's handsomest novelist, Gavin James Bower. His latest post is about Dapper Dicks, a company that designs clothes for the penis. Barbie and Dapper Dicks made for a nice synchronicity. Let's dress up our playthings.

Dapper Dicks have all sorts of looks for the phallus: the piratical, the dandiacal. The fireman. And others. I quite like the pinstripe suit. Jackets can accommodate a 7" girth. Hats are available. "Dapper wear must be removed prior to intercourse," we are warned. I suppose some people need to be told this.

I utterly applaud this sartorial initiative. For too long the penis has been a synonym for stupidity: we speak of dickheads and people talking cock. So-'n'-so is such a knob. Now's the chance to rebrand a much maligned tool and give it a good styling, like popping Vinnie Jones into a Brooks Brothers. In time we may see Anna Wintour in the front row at Dapper Dicks runway shows. Anything's possible.

Happy birthday Molly Parkin!

It's my fiancée Molly Parkin's birthday today - many happy returns, sweetheart! She's holding a party tonight at London's Chelsea Arts Club for fellow Aquarians. Non-Aquarians such as Zandra Rhodes will be welcome as "mascots" - in her case, because of her pink hair. Aquarians are of course the rebels and eccentrics of the Zodiac and so mascots will be encouraged to express these attributes of the water-carriers.

Sadly, I won't be at the party, I shall be deprived of the sight of Molly in her new cosmic blue costume and hat. Other commitments will keep me away. But if you're in the neighbourhood and are an Aquarian or mascot, pop in.

Photo by Darren Coffield

Sir Christopher Lee serenades you ...

Elvis Presley - he didn't die soon enough

A JPmortician@gmail.com has just emailed me: "You are a hideous, stupid fucking bitch ! Elvis Is The Best. Fuck You !" As punishment I am reposting my anti-Elvis tirade of 2007.

If I see another Elvis Presley item on the TV or in any media – including this blog – marking the 30th anniversary of his welcome death on a toilet - I will definitely run one of my cars into a huge puddle and saturate some old ladies huddled together in a bus shelter feeling sorry for themselves, the stupid tarts. You have been warned.

Only the other day I was looking at Priscilla Presley and mourning the loss of her beauty to vanity. The upper lip looks kinked to me, which could be the result of going down on the ugly swine TV producer Nigel Lythgoe, or the work of an over-ambitious cosmetic surgeon who should be using his medical skills to save the sick and injured instead of trussing up old birds to look like refrigerated Bell’s Palsy victims. Her face can’t have seen the sun since Elvis’ ’68 comeback or whatever and is so luminous that one could read a book by its light as the stars twinkle and prostitutes prepare to help keep a large number of potential rapists off the streets.

That’s the effect Elvis has on me – the man who slept with his mother – though I’m not sure that means he was a motherfucker – but he did have a lovely boyfriend for a while, the actor Nick Adams who died young of the chemicals. I sometimes wonder what Elvis did with Nick in bed – perhaps he crooned “Are you lonesome tonight” before joy-riding his tongue on Nick's perineum – yes, I could imagine that happening. The perineum is very sensitive.

Naturally one must feel compassion for the Elvis tribute artistes – as I write some disgusting looking little man on Sky News is showing us his Elvis clock and some ancient crow in a white suit is Are You Lonesoming (she looks nothing like Elvis – he never grew to be that old) – in fact I pity all tribute artistes who tragically consecrate their lives to people who earned more money than they do or ever will – nonetheless if an Elvis impersonator ever comes near me they will get the road water treatment, oh yes.

I prefer Elvis where he is now, in the ghost world, and still talking judging by the number of spirit communications claimed for him. Even he doesn’t much care for aping fans as evinced by this psychic monologue snatch dated year 2000 on a site called Spirit Communicator:

“This is I, -- the king of love and exaggeration. I started to sing again after such long leg-breaking hospital work in rehabs for the folks in the same condition I was in. Now I have freedom to sing, but instead I have to wipe away all those terrible images of my imitators that pop up around me as some Halloween monsters. I have to deal with it. I am looking for someone who can help me to stop that swamping flow of cheap and horrible images, caricatures of me. They want to get in touch with fame through imitating me. What a lack of taste! What frustration…"

“Cheap and horrible images” … it makes me want to love Elvis but then I’ll hear him Are You Lonesoming and I think of drenching old ladies in bus shelters. It’s Pavlovian. Dead Elvis also gossips – he tells us that the murdered Italian movie director Pasolini (a distant relative of mine) will reincarnate in America and do some movie work there. How wonderful that Elvis is talking to a man like Pasolini – I wonder whether Elvis has seen Pasolini’s Salo which features shit eating. It’s symbolic. Elvis himself will reincarnate in Italy so perhaps all his fans will move there in readiness.

Any way click here for more from Elvis

Pratchett and Amis unite against the 'silver tsunami'

A "gentle tribunal" for death cravers? A scene from Logan's Run

Why on earth would BBC News lead with a report on Discworld author Sir Terry Pratchett's support for assisted suicide? Easy. To promote its Panorama show tonight whose theme is the public's warming to the idea of exterminating people past their economic usefulness, as affirmed by a "poll".

Supporters of this might want first to look into the topic of elder abuse before they get excited about Sir T's naive suggestion of "gentle tribunals" to decide who qualifies to be put out of their misery. One study suggests that 64% of elder abuse takes place in the family home - perpetrated by so-called loved ones unable or unwilling to deal with aged relatives.

I can well imagine a bunch of tearful adult kids, going on about the "loss of dignity" of a sickly aged mum or dad supposedly in their care, queuing up for a judicial release from responsibility. The scarcely researched and resourced problem of elder abuse is part of this debate.

Another atheist author who appears to support corpse tips for the clapped-out is my darling Martin Amis. I fully intend to read his new novel The Pregnant Widow. He created a stir last week with his cry against the "silver tsunami" (he means people, with grey hair, who no longer can fuck or read his books, in effect) and his call for a euthanasia "booth on every street corner where you could get a Martini and a medal."

Now he tells the Guardian he was just being "satirical". I believe him. But the damage is done. As Amis' interviewer Stephen Moss points out, on Google you'll find "137,000 items referencing Amis + euthanasia."

So please correct: Amis + euthanasia + joke. (Nonetheless Amis adds: "I stick to my basic point: you need to have a means to end your life.")