Jonathan King's euphoric profit from Eurovision 2012

I am most pleased to learn that Jonathan King - currently flying high as the nation's 'vile pervert' - has returned to pop picking form and made himself a nice profit from Eurovision 2012.

The man once known in the UK as 'Mr Eurovision' - he produced A Song for Europe for the Beeb in the 90s, amongst other things - tells me that not only did he predict Sweden would win but won £700 on it at 7-1.

He tells me he backed the winning song Euphoria when it 'was just a demo entry in the Swedish contest; I knew it would win; but nothing to do with stars or literary techniques - just me knowing a hit when I hear it!'

Unlike anyone at the BBC these days.

Eurovision 2012: Mary Beard's bibliomancy predicts Engelbert's humiliation

Sweden, a worthy winner of Eurovision 2012. I am most pleased.

I am also delighted to report that a recent prediction that Engelbert Humperdink would flop at the show proved painfully true, with the UK last but one. My mystical divinatory tool was Mary Beard's ancient bibliomancy - the use of a book, opened at random, to discover a future truth. This is what I wrote on April 28 2012:

'Actually, the commonest book to use is the Bible. Now, let's see. I'll ask the question: 'Will Engelbert Humperdink win Eurovision?' I open the Bible randomly and (without looking down down on the page) select Ezekiel Ch 33 verse 32 (I swear I'm not making this up): this reads: 'And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.' Mmm, I think that's a definite No.'

So there, you materialist scum. To read more click here.

Oh, Sweden...

Duncan Fallowell: I LOVE Made In Chelsea and its genitalia exposures

Ollie Locke is well made in Chelsea

Dear Madame

I've just discovered the most EXTRAOOOOOOOOORDINARY TV programme called Made In Chelsea. I never watch television but I'd been 'stood up' and threw it on in a huff and there were all these Evelyn Waugh mutants from Mars - they'd all been 'stood up' too! We're not alone! Who directs it? The Mekon? Can't wait for the next episode - they're all off to some futuristic bling palace in the Andromeda galaxy to expose their genitalia to the stars. You must blog about it. Or was it an acid flashforward and am I the only viewer? On Saturday I also discovered for the very first time the erotic wonders of a place called Westfield Shepherd's Bush. An amazing psychedelic crotchfest on my doorstep! Why wasn't I told about it? Was it designed on mescalin? I feel God is looking kindly on me with these cultural wonders dropping like warm peaches into my lap. Best, no.

Love from Duncan

Dearest Duncan

Oh you darling. Made In Chelsea is a slightly sad attempt to emulate the success of The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE), a 'reality' show that bears more than a passing resemblance to a nature documentary. If only David Attenborough could be persuaded to narrate as the TOWIE alpha cock-cunters stalk their vajazzled* prey in sundry bars and nightclubs, we'd have a masterpiece on our hands.

I've watched a few episodes of MIC (I'm addicted to TOWIE) but can't get too excited about the travails of trustafarianism when an expensive education has been wasted on it. My understanding is that a few Chelsea residents and a snatch of Tatler readers pride themselves on loyal viewing - in other words, the show's audience is essentially the social circles of the 'stars'. And now Duncan Fallowell! I just hope this honour is not wasted on the MIC cast.

I can't believe you've only just discovered the Westfield shopping mall. I used to go there every weekend when I lived near Hammersmith. It is most certainly a bulgefest extraordinaire, though sadly not all bulges are sightly.

Duncan! I insist you get yourself on MIC. Then I'll watch it avidly as you tease, cajole, seduce and then dispatch the monied morons.

Love as ever

MA x

A brief taster of MIC without the attempts of Channel 4 to block embedding or bore us fuckless with ads.



* Vajazzling is a cosmetic procedure popular among Essex females involving the removal of hair about the crotch region - probably inspired by the example of sultry porn stars on Babestation or something. I think the male form of this procedure is 'pajazzling' but best Google it. I haven't the time. It appears that Essex types have unwittingly adopted the Italian philosophy of la bella figura and think nothing of spending all day on sunbeds and plucking eyebrows.

Josie Demuth: Is David Cameron a balloon man full of toxic gas?

Josie Demuth: 'Poutrageous'

OK, it's my birthday on May 23 and I'm struggling to get this (yes, this) up in thundery Salerno and it's all about someone you've never heard of before and she's called Josie Demuth. Ain't she a doll? (This is old skool tabloidese, I know; but I can do old skool tabloidese if I like) Josie is not just the editor of underground mag La Bouche Zine. She also has an e-novella out called The Guest (see links at bottom). Frankly, I couldn't give a toss what the youth of today think about anything, but I like players and Josie is a player. I can tell. Playing is an ageless, timeless occupation and ensures one gets from A to B. Also she's friends with singer-songwriter Bryn Phillips (see labels). So I lured Josie into celebrity culture-land and asked some pertinent questions.


Q: Josie Demuth! Editor of alternative online mag La Bouche Zine and author of the The Guest e-novella! Tell me in under 100 words what gets you up in the morning - what is your life purpose, what keeps your soul moist, your spirit aerated. What adds urgency to the teeth flossing?

Josie: I love life basically, in fact, I’d like to live till at least 800, if it were poss. There is so much to see, so much to know, so many ways to give, so many people to meet, all these great parties to go to, so much history and so much more to come. I love reading history books, but the present is fascinating too. I suppose all this gets me going - the excitement of what is out there and all the possibilities this presents and how artists and writers document this.

Q: Do you write all of La Bouche?

Josie: No actually, we have had many great writers contribute over the years. Most regularly a conspiracy theorist columnist, anti-poverty NGO War on Want who have written several features for us, and our Middle Eastern commentator StarBuks. More recently a gossip columnist has come on board; artist and pop star extraordinaire Quilla Contance who’s always up to something. She just sued Feedme music promoters for cancelling her gig at Punk Soho in favour of some dull corporate bash so you can read all about this exclusively in La Bouche. Some of my best friends Julia, Emily and Gemma have written for the zine too which is always interesting and fun reading.

Q: La Bouche is described as an 'alternative news and culture mag' - so what do you cover that The Sunday Times Culture section or Time Out fails to cover. And if you had a destruct button, which publication would you dispatch to the next life (with its staff and the cleaners), pronto?

Josie: We adore a genuine eccentric. We're not keen on prosthetic edge (Gaga), we like bona fide quirk. Yeah, eccentrics are our heroes, our pin-ups, in fact I think I’m going to start making special La Bouche pull-out posters of extraordinary people. I feel our society has become so timid of individuality. Mum says in the seventies everyone was just dying to be different and now it’s like we’re all desperate to be the same, unless the mainstream press starts telling us it’s okay to wear something, or like someone supposedly kooky. Also in the zine we give underground musicians and artists as much page space and time as our more well known interviewees. These have included some of the most talented, articulate and inspirational people I’ve encountered. 

RE the button, I’d like to keep the cleaners but it would be The Mail or The Sun. I’d have to toss a coin. 

Q: How many people read La Bouche?

Josie: Oh thousands MA.

Q: You've interviewed the likes of Bjork, Pete Doherty, Midge Ure and John Pilger (not forgetting my love, pianist and Occupy-prince, Bryn Phillips, who I note with displeasure has a partner with Greek relatives) - all of whom you say think outside the box. Who is the ultimate representation of alternative thought in your view. And which living person represents all that is conformist, destructive or life-denying - who is the dullest most ghastly person who personifies methane on this planet? Please don't hold back now.

Josie: I’m going to say my friend, the poet Stephen Micalef for the former. He is sooo thinking outside the box, he’s on another world with his thought. He carries around a big carrier bag full of poems, which he pulls out and reads wherever he goes, and his room is also up to the waist with poems. You can only open the door a few decimetres. it‘s surreal. His poems are like dreams, often about someone in the current media spotlight, like the King of Bahrain, sending these hilarious correspondences to Micalef or about the colourful characters he knows from the art world. No doubt he’s got some good ones about Rebekah Brooks. I’d love to hear them. I’ve heard he was never formally a student at Oxford but just decided to attend all the lectures, and went unchallenged the whole way. So he kind of mentally has an Oxbridge degree. So unofficial. I love it. For the latter, eugh, I don’t know, David Cameron? I often wonder if he is in fact a balloon man pumped full of toxic gas. A beige balloon man.

Q: Have you ever seen a ghost? Has a psychic ever hacked into your Akashic Records (apparently our spiritual national insurance notes) and told you something of your destiny? Or, are you a textbook secularist who lights candles to the graven image of Prof Brian Cox and his cretinous Willy Wonka-smile?

Josie: I had one possible psychic experience whereby bestie Julia (mentioned earlier) got her new phone stolen at a New Year’s Eve party many years ago. I was trashed in a corner but when I heard her calls of despair I got up, tore across the room, cornered this guy, stuck my hand in his inside jacket pocket and withdrew from it Ju’s phone! It could have well been a spiritual hacking, but I am also a big believer of the subconscious knowing all, as my book bangs on about, and perhaps the copious amounts of booze granted me access. I hope you don’t too much abhor my failure to fully commit to the possibility of a psychic intervention in this particular scenario, dear MA. 

Q: And now you have an e-book novella out, The Guest. Granta likes it I see. Your hero is Gideon Golightly - he's not related to Holly Golightly is he, y'know that gamine flirt in Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's?

Josie: He would like to think he is, but he is far less appealing, and thus must use sleazy mental trickery such as covert hypnosis to bed his bait.

Q: Anyway, I digress. Gideon I read earns fast cash on the 'underground seduction circuit' - what is that? Blow-jobs for bankers? Perhaps you'd better tell us what the book's about - do emphasise any sex as followers of this blog are jaded hedonists who have partaken too much of life's rich experiences and now pathetically seek any novelty to revive their limp and lifeless persons. I don't know why I bother sometimes. The cunts.

Josie: MA, you are so naughty! The Guest is about a disturbed and rather dangerous man named Gideon Golightly who goes about teaching and implementing psychological interventions designed to seduce women basically. As, Headpress said in their review of the novella, it’s kind of a bit like ‘Derren Brown on the pull. ' In answer to your Q, the world of seduction technique is that of a shadowy industry involving seminars, conferences, one-to-ones on the teachings of behaviour and language designed to unlock the seductee’s mind and induce a feverish condition of lust. This involves pressing all kinds of buttons, via the usage of emotionally stimulating phrases, a careful balance of insults and compliments, and in this case Gideon also employs stealth hypnosis. Anyway, one day Gideon meets April, this pretty but slightly irritating hippy and sets about practicing on her for his dysfunctional, sordid needs but feels a rare stirring of guilt and love much to his disgust.

Q: Do you sometimes hate your readers as an editor? I do. There they are, these passive recipients of all that you throw at them. Worthless scum doncha think? Perhaps I'll wipe them out by voodoo pinprick.

Josie: MA, you are so cruel to your doting army of followers (of whom I am one). 

Q: How's the e-novella doing? Did you decide to self-publish as a didactic act or was it the last resort after years of bitter rejection at the hands of blonde Oxbridge trustafarians - oh, but I hope you're not Oxbridge. You can never tell these days....

Josie: I don’t know yet, I only put it up the other day. Yes, there is that stigma isn’t there of being a reject. I sent it to a few people and then this literary agency got back to me and said they would be much more interested if I had moulded it to 'The Talented Mr Ripley' author. This really put me off. I thought this is so ironic because I was so worried someone would pinch my idea or create something similar and then I submit something original and it’s like ‘make it like something that already exists.’ I don’t wish to sound pretentious, but I just wanted my writing to be more like my own art than a tried and tested product. I mulled the Kindle thing over for about a year and then I thought, oui, pourqoui pas? I am not an Oxbridge kinda gal, nope.

Q: Do you sleep under a duvet or blankets? Who shares your bed?

Josie: A lady never tells about their blankets..

Q: And where do you live? Do you have a garden with bedding plants? And what's your star sign.

Josie: Borough in a flat high up, I don't think I've ever had a garden, I wish I did I'd build myself a little tree house and have Bryn over for cocktails. I’m an Aries.

Q: Ten years from now you're a highly paid section editor on The Sunday Times. Have I just defamed and insulted you? Where do you want to be a decade hence? Would you still want to be in the Etonian paradise that is the current UK?

Josie: Well, I guess it would be a little pig-headed of me to say I’d be totally closed to the mainstream press. they are clearly a great platform to unleash info from, where allowed. I like to go to the Amnesty International Media Awards where I’m always extremely inspired by the brave journalism submitted by big news outlets from The Guardian to The Financial Times to even Sky actually! But I suppose writing wise , I'd like to make more zines. I'm making a poetry and fiction one and I write for art magazines too so ideally in ten years time I'd like them to be sending me to excellent parties in faraway places, and I have more shadowy novellas to get on with so hopefully they'll be done. I also hope to be a nurse by the end of next year so I don't know where this will all take me...

Q: Josie Demuth! Thank you so much for your time. Good luck with your wonderful mag and novella - Arcatistes wish you well. x

Josie: Thanks MA, you're a dar x x


La Bouche Zine, click here
La Bouche Zine blog, click here
Josie Demuth website, click here
The Guest by Josie Demuth, click here to buy

POEM! 2012 - join Damon Albarn, Molly Parkin, Michael Horovitz and more

Click poster once to enlarge

One of the UK’s most treasured poets, Michael Horovitz, gets in touch to tell me of his upcoming London event POEM! 2012 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, on June 14, 2012, from 7pm.

If respite from Marks & Spencer Diamond Jubilee cake or flag-waving Olympics paganism is what you seek, then join the likes of Michael, Damon Albarn, Molly Parkin, Steven Berkoff, John Hegley, Private Eye's EJ Thribb, singer-songwriter Gwyneth Herbert and so many other lyrical luminaries in a celebratory evening of poetry, music and song.

Michael says of the occasion: “For me, the Olympic ideal has never been about competition. It is about celebration, cultural achievement, sporting achievement, the declaration and achieving of peace and accord between nations. I founded the Poetry Olympics in 1980, partly in response to British athletes being called upon by the Government to boycott the Moscow Olympics that year. The primary aim of the Poetry Olympics was and remains the Healing of the Nations and transformation of the atmosphere of artistic and social aspirations from competitiveness to communality. If we can even begin to achieve that through bringing these great poets, performers and musicians together in the Queen Elizabeth Hall for one heaven of a party, so much the better.”

Tickets £12/£10 are now on sale via the Southbank Centre (including a limited number of Concessionaries @ half-price)

Southbank Centre Ticket Office:

0844 847 9910 / Book online

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/

Bryn Phillips - the Occupy star with the X Factor

Bryn Phillips

Three years ago Madame Arcati turned Simon Cowell (that explains the sulphur fume - where's the violets nosegay?) and happened on an amazing singer-songwriter talent called Bryn Phillips. I even got to interview him - click here.

If you follow the link there's a video of him performing one of his own songs, Femme Fatale, on an out-of-tune upright piano at a Mark McGowan/Farah Damji event. Since then Bryn has taken up the Occupy cause, locked horns with the Corporation of the City of London, serenaded the cops on the steps of St Paul's, done something contentious in a Tesco (an unbooked gig, I think) and formed a new band - Bryn Phillips and the Big Society.

What I didn't see coming was his move into commercial dance/anthemic pop - love love love! Here's a fly-on-the-wall at a gig at The Elevator Gallery, featuring his last band Private Lives. The new version of Femme Fatale is a hit waiting to happen; I'm infallible in my tastes and judgement. This man's going to be big. He could end up a judge on Britain's Got Talent if he's not careful. And don't forget where you first heard all this! Plus he's a Leo. Can't fail.

Interview with Bryn in La Bouche Zine, click here.

Derek Acorah: 'Mary loves Dick!' - the video and the laughter

'Clairvoyant' Derek Acorah is trending on Twitter in the wake of his claim that Maddie McCann is in the spirit world. While sceptics rage and Spiritualists despair, here's Our Del in action on Most Haunted. Wait for Yvette Fielding at the end wetting herself over Derek's 'Mary loves Dick!' Even Derek has a laugh.

Mary Hopkin hits out at the rise of the Melisma-trolls

Mary Hopkin

It was of course your ever-reliable Madame Arcati who first foresaw the tragi-comedy that BBC1's The Voice is turning into - a vast £22 million wail of a show whose patron saint of vocal gymnastics is the late Whitney Houston. While most of you out there were swaying your arms to some pro-am screamed-out golden oldie, like tone-deaf seaweed in an old Jacques Cousteau TV doc, I was filing nails on two fingers.

Up to now I had no idea that there was a word for this endless, mindless, godawful screeching. Now, thanks to the legend that is Mary Hopkin, I have learnt it. Welcome to the world of melisma.

Mary - my new friend on Twitter - introduces us music illiterates to melisma on her splendid website at http://www.maryhopkin.com/. She defines the word as: 'Noun: several notes sung to one syllable.' Mary adds her take: 'The current definition seems to be: as many hemidemisemiquavers as humanly possible crammed into a single syllable.' She says that female popstars are most prone to 'melismating', tagging the tarts of tinnitus 'melismatrolls.'

Mary - a beguiling Taurean most famous for her 1968 No1 global hit Those Were The Days - is too well-raised to name the stellar culprits of this singing style but telepaths know who she means.

She does wonder, however, whether the overuse of melisma is the result of social phobia or something. She reveals that she herself can melismate by seating herself on a washing machine and setting it to fast spin while in song. I'm sure Jessie J would be impressed. 

For more of Mary on melisma, see her blog for March 6, 2012 - click here.

The Earth Turns from Mary Hopkin's latest album You Look Familiar (with son Morgan Visconti)

Warning: The Sun's Fabulous Travel Hairdryer could ELECTROCUTE YOU TO DEATH

PRODUCT RECALL! First off I thought The Sun itself was being recalled on the grounds that it might electrocute you to death, or something. Then, as last night cleared away, I realised it wasn't the paper itself that might electrocute you to death, but its pink 'Fabulous Travel Hairdryer' gift. 

So that even if Rebekah Brooks' explosive hairstyle alone might not dissuade you from ever reading a Murdoch newspaper again, its hairdryer could be the agency of your frazzled, sizzling, smokin' (and permanent) disengagement.

Then I remembered Private Eye going on about The Sun's pink Fabulous Travel Hairdryer. It reported that this appliance had first attempted to give itself away with the News of the World's Fabulous magazine supplement earlier this year. Alas, Rupert - giving no thought to the wet-haired traveller - had then suddenly closed down the paper without much notice; and the Fabulous Travel Hairdryer giveaway was no more. Then (Too many thens! - ed), the offer was resurrected lately because Fabulous (the mag), which squatted at The Sun for a few weeks (on Saturdays), had moved back to its Sunday gig, now as The Sun's supplement.

Perfect time to whip out the pink travel hairdryer giveaway and empty the warehouse which requires rent payment. 

And now the PRODUCT RECALL! It seems that the appliance could ELECTROCUTE YOU TO DEATH. So, please, return it, if you are not already dead. Click here.

Rebekah Brooks: Vanity Fair's rapid, elegant revenge

Rebekah Brooks at Leveson

Selective amnesia and photographic recall aside, Rebekah Brooks' stint in the forensic chair at Leveson drew attention to Vanity Fair - and how a report it ran back in February, on her mysterious rise to power and her reported peacemaker role between Rupert and James Murdoch as Hackgate kicked in, was (she said) a load of cobblers. Or words to that effect.

I must commend the glossy for its slickly lethal response to Brooks' dismissal of its credibility (and marketing opportunism). It has put up a short report on proceedings at the Royal Courts of Justice with a transcript of her denial that she ever played Kissinger between king and heir. The writer is amused by Brooks' 'white Peter Pan collar' and an evocation of 'Winona Ryder's court costume as imagined by Tim Burton.' Others have likened Rebekah's appearance to one of the Salem witches,

Whatever else Brooks' fate, fashion death has been pronounced.

The magazine has also helpfully included a link to its February report 'Untangling Rebekah Brooks'. The words salt and wound come to mind. Perhaps less endearing is the magazine's patronising invitation to watch a video of Brooks' display of selective amnesia and photographic recall - it's 'all quite entertainingly British.' Doncha know.

Vanity Fair Leveson/Brooks revenge report, click here

Vanity Fair: Untangling Rebekah Brooks, click here

Twitter's 'Snobs' named: Chris Moyles, Annie Lennox and... Yvette Cooper!

One of the joys of Twitter is clearing out useless, boring or unresponsive tweeters with Twit Clean (this is not an ad!). The service produces reports on tweeting performance.

Now, let's see. Annie Lennox: she's described as 'self-obsessed, talks about self more than 50% of the time.' She's also rated a 'Snob' because she follows back only 0.02% of her followers (c.72,000). Well she can go.

Radio One DJ Chris Moyles is also a Snob, only following back 82 of his 2.3 million fans. Other Snobs include Guardian Books, Jemima Khan (following back only 150 of 170,000 followers), Eminem (no interactions), the New Statesman (selling as few as 4,000 copies a week according to Guido Fawkes), Mariah Carey (following back just 58 of 7 million fans), Queen Rania, Telegraph writer Mary Riddell, Yvette Cooper (and she wants to be the next Labour leader), Donald Trump and TMZ.com.

Alas, Tatler is 'self-obsessed' and therefore 'not so interesting' (a pity because the magazine is now excellent).

Missing, presumed sedated, include Fern Britton who has posted nothing in 804 days; and Private Eye deputy editor Francis Wheen (who has a poorly back and his literary shed is now ash - fair excuses).

Wheen remains. Most of the rest - you've bored me long enough.

George Michael: UK newspapers ignore US gay teen torture story

For more info on George Michael's recent tweeted rages against the press, watch the film (he commissioned) Hiding Out below. It's an excerpt from a documentary on Californian boot camps for teen gays compelled to undergo so-called aversion therapy and on hidden 'safe houses' where they find refuge. The myth of the therapy, which involves torture and other abuses, is that homosexuality does not exist but is a product of confusion. Many kids who escape the camps are rounded up by the police and returned to these fake clinics.

This is the story that UK newspapers chose to ignore.

On his Twitter page @GeorgeMichael, the star recounts showing this film to a bunch of 'gay and straight campaigners for civil and gay right at Equality Rocks, a concert in Washington. To my great surprise, it was to no avail. Absolutely nothing came of it.'

George Galloway: A poltergeist and the phantom 'Arab prince'

I first heard of George Galloway's upcoming cameo in movie The Enfield Poltergeist last year. That supposed supernatural activity was witnessed in a council house in a very common part of the UK presents no political embarrassment to one of my favourite politicians. The British film is produced by his son-in-law Jay Stewart and is due for release in autumn 2013. For more info, the flick has a Facebook page here.

Btw, The Lady magazine runs a very interesting interview with George, click here. In it he reveals the identity of the man (described by the News of the World as an 'Arab prince') who accompanied him on a now notorious visit to Cuba. In fact the 'Arab prince' was New Labour minister Shahid Malik. Lord Leveson please take note.

In the video below, George introduces us to the true-tale horror recounted in The Enfield Poltergeist.

Boris Johnson wins - and I told you so

On February 23 2012 I forecast that Boris Johnson would win the London mayoral race - just about. I also forecast that Ken Livingstone would not disgrace himself. To read the astrological analysis, click here.

Ritz Newspaper is BAAACK! Frances Lynn explains all

Frances Lynn

Once upon a time, in the 70s and 80s, there was this big ol' cafe society newspaper and it was called Ritz. Clive James and Peter York were among its contributors. And its scurvy gossers included Nicky Haslam, Amanda Lear, Stephen Lavers and... Frances Lynn, London's bitchiest social scribe. Why, Nicholas Coleridge once described her as 'absolutely crazy'. You thought Ritz was dead? You thought wrong. Frances Lynn has spotted a revival and this ain't no zombie....

Is this the perfect time for a Ritz revival? 

At this year's London Book Fair I was in the Random House area having a cup of tea with a Fleet Street obituary writer. She  was in the middle of advising me to publish all my old Ritz interview tapes (the laundry list includes Sammy Davis, Jr, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Frank Zappa and Anthony Perkins who successfully persuaded me to come off sugar), when a  man at the next door table got out a copy of Ritz. I immediately pounced on him, saying I used to write for the rag. It turned out he was a literary agent called Robert Smith, who represents ex-Ritz editor David Litchfield, incidentally the best editor I've ever had.

After Robert Smith informed me copies of Ritz now go for £50 a copy, he confided he was at the Fair touting Litchfield's idea for a book on Ritz. I promptly told him, the copyright of all my old gossip and film columns plus all my old Ritz interviews belong to me. Mr Smith informed me Litchfield is banking on his friends letting him use their stuff for free.

At the Book Fair, there had been useful seminars on how to put one's books on Kindle which makes me think maybe I should put all my old Ritz stuff on a Kindle book before Litchfield helps himself  to my material. If I do decide to do this, I would have to use footnotes explaining who the Cafe Society figures in my old columns were, as most of them are long dead and forgotten.

This week, I was invited to the Soho Hotel for a screening of Celebrity Exposed, the documentary  featuring Richard Young, my old photographer on Ritz. It is produced by John Osborne and well directed by Don Letts (they are both directors of Brassneck TV, the documentary's production company). The doc comes out on Sky Arts 1 at 8pm on 8th May and it's worth recording just for the amusing Vivienne Westwood, David Bailey and Elton John interviews alone.

'Andy said everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, now it's more like 15 seconds,' Bailey quipped on screen, referring to the current Big Brother-influenced Celebrity Culture.

After the very entertaining doc, Peter York who has known Richard Young since his first snaps appeared in Ritz interviewed him on stage. I noticed all the high maintenance women in evening dress (Heather Kerzner, Kelly Hoppen, Yasmin Mills and Nancy Dell'Olio included) stayed on for the talk instead of going ON. 

Richard took great relish in explaining David Litchfield had warned him from the very beginning he wouldn't be paid a penny for his Ritz Gossip snaps, but as compensation would be given permission to sell all his photographs to Fleet Street.  According to Richard's gospel, Fleet Street were amazed how he got into all the Ritz parties where no Fleet Street hack would ever dare to gatecrash. 

Richard also expressed nostalgia about all the naked ladies who were prevalent at parties and clubs which according to him simply doesn't happen now. Going OUT during the late Seventies and early Eighties was much more spontaneous than the Social Scene now, which seems to be completely controlled by the publicists and the Media.

After the screening, Kelly Hoppen (with the best hair in London) kindly gave me a ride in her chauffeured car to the after party at a 'secret rendezvous' in nearby Soho. I know certain people 'around town' won't invite her to their homes as she is known as a "Hello Girl" but I thought she was adorable. Especially when she told me  at the very start of her career as an interior decorator, Richard took a snap of her, which she feared would embarrass her when she become 'famous' in later life. 

'I shall never forget what Richard did for me. I told him I wasn't happy with the picture and he deleted it on the spot,' she said.

At the champagne fuelled party, organised by Susan Young, the power behind Richard's throne, Richard's family, fans and friends including Gary Kemp, the zany jeweller Stephen Webster and Nancy Dell'Olio were there. I don't know why she is so unpopular as she was lovely to me asking what Richard and I got up to during our Ritz days - as if I can remember. After all, our crazy days on the Beat is getting on for 40 years ago now. 

After I informed Nancy DO my old Gossip job was to write bitchy things about my victims, she shrank away from me, which was quite a relief as I was afraid her extended eyelashes were about to poke into my eyeballs during our cosy tête-à-tête.

One of Frances Lynn's websites - click here