Madame Arcati takes extended leave: Bye for now, poppets

Madamearcati69@aol.com

Molly Parkin erotic novels reissued as ebooks - no need for blushes then

All ten of Molly Parkin's erotic novels will be republished first and exclusively as ebooks by Beautiful Books - starting February 3 with three titles:  Full Up, Love All and Up Tight.

This will please those who would otherwise conceal a titillating Parkin print version behind a copy of The God Delusion or some other comforting work of the dead.

For a flavour of Moll's life research, read a Daily Mail extract from her memoirs Welcome to Mollywood.

Daily Mail's Mac and the curious case of the gay swastika

"Isn’t that romantic, George, dear? Mr and Mr Smith would like the bridal suite"

The Daily Mail's cartoonist Mac turns his attention to the story of the Christian hoteliers fined for discriminating against a gay couple refused a bed because of some nonsense in their Bible. It may be my eyes but is that a swastika on the right forearm of the man on the left? Since the actual gay pair were not Nazi clones it's hard to see the relevance unless of course Mac is trying to make a point about the nature of anti-discrimination laws. What's missing from the cartoon is a pink triangle. But then Mac doesn't do colour.

Click the pic once for a larger version - the swastika is plain to see.

London Evening Standard's Sarah Sands: 'We need to watch unthinking age bias'

Sarah Sands

The age activist and film critic Joyce Glasser wrote to the dep ed Sarah Sands of the London Evening Standard just recently. Congratulating the paper on being the first to splash on Miriam O’Reilly's ageism victory against the anti-wrinkly BBC, and on its various laudable campaigns against discrimination of any sort, Ms Glasser nonetheless drew attention to the Standard's own form of ageism - ignoring people in their 50s and 60s for their opinion poll pieces and interviews.

She wrote: "I always wonder why, in 85% of cases where there is a ‘person on the street’ poll or interview over issues (with photos) the people are in their 20s and 30s."

Much to my surprise, I can report that Ms Glasser received an intelligent and sympathetic response. Sarah Sands accepted that bias may be "unthinking". She explained that many powerful people and City movers and shakers - the major focus of newspaper coverage - are getting on a bit so "it is always nice to see some balancing young faces."

But she added: "Unthinking 'screening' in news needs to be watched and I have forwarded your email to the relevant parts of the newspaper so that everyone is more aware of their choices. I hope you see an improvement."

This is very good news indeed and I shall look forward to a greater diversity of age in the ES. Isn't it refreshing to report something positive about our newspapers for a change.

David Montgomery - the Mecom finally zap him out into space

Was it only three years ago that Madame Arcati - your free online seer - foresaw with excruciating exactitude the manner of the decline and fall of David Montgomery? This lunatic Scorpio has been in effect booted out of his alien-sounding Mecom media group: read here how I forecast his route map to the exit door at the hands of disconcerted colleagues. Even I shiver at my staggering psychic powers.

In all my years in the wretched trade called journalism I have never met a more miserable, mean and ghastly person than Mr Montgomery. I recall his second wife Heidi Kingstone lunching him and me at the Howard Hotel near the Temple tube many years ago, and all I can recall is his boast that he could calculate in an instant the required wordage for a given space in a newspaper layout.

I felt he'd missed his vocation as a Star Trek holographic interface in the form of a human male onboard the lost USS Voyager.

Richard Dennen: Crotch-gawping in the company of Prince William

Richard Dennen

"Please can we have more aristos in Tatler and stately homes," writes in Alastair, an Arcatiste with a strange fetish for Old Etonian upperclass males. "Anyone know anything about Richard Dennen who writes for Tatler and has a column in the Evening Standard X."

What is there not to know about Richard Dennen? The twerpy poppet is quotidian tour guide to his own private Norfolk. Though he admits to 28 he is probably north of 30 and his journalistic achievements can be attributed only to a preponderance of homophobes in the British media (or merde as the French and English aristos call it). Let's just say Dennen is his cock-cunting editors' revenge on their readers.

I fancy he is the spawn of an unlikely knee-trembler between Nicky Haslam and Liz Jones at a Bessborough House shindig: if he put on 50 years and 50 pounds he'd make the perfect mongrel mini-me. His grail is a juicy boyfriend (forever elusive) sought within the crotch-gawping party environs of Prince William or the PM's father-in-law: take away the last two and all you've got left is a desperate tart divining solace in the smartest urinals.

One piece of advice to Dennen on his hopeless love life arrives from Josh Hunt who wrote a much more interesting gay column for the late freebie thelondonpaper. On the So So Gay blog he writes: "To be honest, spilling your guts about your personal life in the paper can make said life pretty hard to manage. My love life has improved greatly since the demise of the London paper, so I'd be loath to go back to writing in a freebie again (and I'm getting on a bit). I do however continue the column as a smaller scale blog - check it out at gayabouttown.com."

So there you are, Richard. Your SatNav to a happier life (and ours) awaits unwrapping. Meantime, Dennen's literary style critiqued. And if that sounds irksome then catch up with the weirdo Tatlersnob.

Octogenarian sex and a vintage vamp employment application

Sheila Vogel-Coupe, 82, at work

A curious feature of blogging is how old flatlining posts periodically jolt back to life due to zeitgeist catch-up.

My story on Hugh Hefner and what it's like to endure sex with him lay dormant for three years until he announced his recent engagement. As a result, tens of thousands of Americans, hungry for salacious geriatric detail, flocked to Madame Arcati via links on the Huffington Post, Jezebel, Drudge and Gawker.

Another example is Sheila Vogel-Coupe. Yesterday the net went mad for her because of her claim in an interview that she's not a prostitute but an escort. This time thousands of Brits flocked here to read much, much more and found moral sanctuary in my bosom: welcome. Plainly sex and octogenarians is a topic of fascination.

Which brings me to a letter I received this weekend from someone keen to explore employment opportunities at Madame Arcati Inc as a vintage vamp. She (let's call her Yvonne lest she used her real name) is a relatively youthful 58 and must think that I am a madam of another sort and I am deeply flattered. I thought I'd share it with you.

Hello,

I am Yvonne, 58 years old, interested to work as Mature Escort. Originated from Latin America, my skin has a natural tan, healthy, spicy personality, open-minded, no smoker and enjoy socialising. 

I have travelled several countries, able to Translate & Interpret in 5 European languages.

I am looking forward to receiving your reply.

With my kindest regards,

Yvonne

Andy Coulson and a 'noxious odour' from Number 10

Andy Coulson

The Daily Telegraph's inestimable chief political commentator Peter Oborne turns his attention once again to the matter of Andy Coulson.

Oborne identifies the former News of the World editor, and now the Prime Minister's head of communications, as one of the sources of a "noxious odour" emanating from Number 10 - a stench renewed by a claim that a senior Screws' editor appointed by Coulson is allegedly implicated in the illegal phone tapping of actors Sienna Miller, Jude Law and others.

Against experience and logic, Coulson maintains he had no personal knowledge of phone hacking at his paper, a claim which as Oborne puts it, "makes no sense to anybody with experience of how newspapers work." He adds: "This situation is very serious because it has the potential to do grave damage to the Prime Minister’s reputation not just for sound judgment, but also for probity."

An excellent commentary. Read here.

The Independent - still obsessed with feasting on bunnies!

"How'd you like me cooked, doc?"

Four years ago Madame Arcati drew attention to a disturbing foodie trend at the UK Independent. It has a morbid passion to gorge on bunnies. You'd think a liberal leftish newspaper would make a virtue of tofu and sprouts. But instead it stews, boils, fries, bakes, sauces (etc) flopsies even though hardly anyone else eats them.

After my first report in 2006, the paper's chefs gave bunnies a rest (I like to think). But in the past year or so its pages have once again hosted an appalling glut of bunny recipes - more so than in any other British newspaper.

Please remember a bunny is basically a vegetarian cat. Its fur is soft and silky, its ears velvety strokable. It's super-cute - ask any child actor seeking a huge fan base.

Here's the selected Indy indictment:

Rabbit with new-season garlic, artichokes and white beans (Mar 14, 2010): Something called Skye Gyngell loves farmed flopsies for their mild flavour and suggests you feast on them just because artichokes are in season. He advises that you get your butcher to cut the corpse into sixths - or 666s as I prefer.

Wild rabbit in green sauce (April 3, 2010): Unlike Skye, Mark Hix hates farmed bunnies and prefers 'em wild and tangy: "Wild rabbits have such a good flavour but they rarely get used today, which is a great shame, because there are so many of them and they need to be culled." The green sauce looks like Shrek after a blender accident.

Fried duck egg with rabbit offal and spring leeks (Apr 3, 2010): Hix suggests celebrating Christ's crucifixion by adding the entrails and internal organs of a bunny to a sunny side up egg. He also wants you to "toss the leeks" - a practice Madame Arcati cannot condone. 

Minor British Institutions: The British Giant rabbit (June 26, 2010): No recipe, but the author exemplifies the Indy's attitude to all things bunny. We are told satirically that "The British Rabbit Council ... is not made up of buck-toothed rodents." Lamentable. In any case, the rabbit is not a rodent but a lagomorph.

Whipped potato with rabbit and wild mushrooms (Nov 27, 2010):  Hix again, who mentions a Moscow visit as an excuse to moan about a lack of mushrooms there. The idea is to balance bunny fillets on a mash potato mountain, which reminds me of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind whose disturbed character also builds mash potato mountains. His excuse is extra-terrestrial suggestion.

Wild and wonderful: Isn't it time to stop being squeamish and tuck into rabbit? (Dec 9, 2010): The Indy now tries to desensitise its readers to the horrible biz of murdering Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail. Sabre-toothed Clare Hargreaves is unleashed on Britain's bunny warrens for a spot of mass slaughter just before Christmas. "Lack of demand for rabbit meat has meant it attracts a pitiful price," she moans against trend. She then interviews a man draped with bunny corpses who "supplied 100 rabbits for a 'wild' wedding reception." I expect to see Mr & Mrs Leatherface in the divorce court soon enough.

Memories of rabbit dinners (Dec 20, 2010): A reader called Sara Neill of Tunbridge Wells confirms my impression that the Indy is a bubbling cauldron of bunny fat. She rhapsodises on rabbit meat and affectionately recalls, of her childhood in the 40s, "the sight of the poor bloodied furry corpses hanging in bundles in every butcher’s shop." Even her cat "had a fresh rabbit’s 'scut' to play with every few days." Presumably not called scutnip.

Wild things: Why foodies are hunting for game (Jan 6, 2011): Big cats are rumoured to roam the British countryside and are not to be confused with Clare Hargreaves. There's nothing with a wild pulse she won't stalk and eat: lock up your pet chinchillas! Rabbits are "tasty and economical" she drools. And squirrel "tastes a bit like rabbit.". It makes you want to believe in reincarnation.

My first piece on the Indy and bunnies, click here.

Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street: The song with a high suicide quotient

63 is still a bit too young to die but not young enough to elicit self-worried scorn (as in: "That's no age!"). Had Gerry Rafferty died at 61 or perhaps 59, reports would have used the word "untimely" or "premature". But 63 is just inside the Anytime Now zone. And considering his prodigious boozing, 63 was not a bad age at all to pass away. That's what we think without saying.

Another thought that goes unsaid is that Rafferty's Baker Street helped kill off the Smashie and Nicey-type DJs that infected Radio One years ago. Once upon a time any random switch-on to the station risked yet more exposure to Baker Street's "unforgettable sax line" whine.

It was probably the last melodic thing a whole generation of young female suicides heard before the one-way ticket ride to Beachy Head. Baker Street is a hymn to self-pity, ambient moooozak to sultry afternoon cider-cide. Smashie and Nicey always played it after the telling of some  listener's sob story - I can hear simpering Simon cunting Bates even now - to turn a sentimental tear into a lemming tsunami. Such monstrous behaviour could not continue forever. Satire came to the rescue and Radio One got down with the kids.

Baker Street was Smashie and Nicey's, their song. Heartburn's extended jingle, long enough and loud enough to disguise a long studio fart or the screams of a Baker Street fan facing death by garrote at the hands of her tone-sensitive lover. Baker Street summoned up middle-aged scrotes and their alimony problems, greying nose tufts and unwashed Y-fronts. Then came... Chris Moyles.

Mr Rafferty has much to answer for.

'Actor Pete Postlethwaite dies from cancer at 64'

...Reads the Guardian headline. It ought to read: "Actor Pete Postlethwaite dies of cancer at 64". Prior to his death, he suffered from cancer.