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

Reward Showbiz™: The 10 most pointless celebrity books and TV shows

I'm a great follower of reward showbiz™ (© Madame Arcati 2010) - gigs bestowed upon slebs only because they have a name. Many showbiz or media projects are dreamt up simply as an excuse to get a star to front them. Such projects have three essential characteristics: 1) a star; 2) a journey, quest or list; 3) pointlessness. Here's my latest top 10 rewardees:

1. Joanna Lumley for Joanna Lumley's Nile, a new four part series on ITV1 starting this week. No earthly reason why the Nepalese goddess should be associated with this river, but it's an opportunity to wallow in cultivated mellifluousness as she bears her polished teeth at familiar sights - such as a lookalike camel - in various gurnings of rapture. Oh look, there's a pyramid.

2. Quentin Letts for his throwaway read 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. The Daily Mail's right-wing attack dog is a professional frother who appears to favour a return to Feudalism and the use of the rack. An utterly pointless addition to the listerature genre - he is after all part of the problem.

3. Michael Palin and his various TV/book tie-in travels, from the Sahara to his Hemingway Adventure. Nothing in Palin's career quite prepared us for the unedifying sight of a perfectly credible comic actor turning into a Phileas Fogg freebie tart. If he has shed new light on any part of the globe do let me know.

4. Andrew Marr for History of Modern Britain. Any excuse to get this gesticulating barker on the box. Rest assured, his "history" will be referenced by no serious scholar; it's just a loafer's guide to event whatnots, the sort of crap Reader's Digest might have once published for leisurely reads.

5. Jeremy Paxman for The Victorians: Britain through the Paintings of the Age (book and TV series). What does he know about art? The book was substantially written by someone else in any case. A great vanity juggernaut to keep a familar face on the screen.

6. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman for Long Way Round: TV series and book. A chance to ogle at two leather clad arses in different international locations. Shamelessly the book's publisher writes on Amazon "The fact that those men are figures with notable film connections ... may be the reason the book got written ... but so what?" How sad are the punters?

7. Richard Hammond for all his TV shows but Top Gear. TV looks for any excuse to have him either blowing up things or testing things that may blow up, all because he nearly got himself killed once. Each promise of doom leaves us cruelly tantalised.

8. Sophie Dahl for Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights (book/TV show). A Nigella Lawson copycat  - famous surname + food erotica. The book boasts Dahl's "Matisse-like line drawings" destined for no public exhibition. Only two years ago or so she was presented as the great white hope of literature after a spell as a waif on catwalks.

9. Peter and Dan Snow for 20th Century Battlefields (book/TV series) - lanky father and son become visibly excited in the historical presence of slaughter. Where's a swingometer when you need one?

10. JLS - for all those fucking endless music rundown shows they've been fronting since they didn't win The X Factor but went on to become the show's biggest boy band stars. Testicle hugs and downward spastic finger thrusts conduct their guides to Michael Jackson and others. The tiny one especially requires treatment.

Christmas books: Madame Arcati's supremely discriminating gift guide

The white beard you can keep, but Madame Arcati is happy to recommend a few books as gifts this Christmas. Unlike certain other media types who take their cues from old buddies in orthodox publishing, Madame Arcati does not discriminate between the self-published and the unself-published and the vanity published: I do not need the approbation of mediating editors to tell me whether a book is worthy of publication. I'll decide, thank you.

My few titles come under two categories: the recommended are under Tomes for the Tights (aren't stockings rather Joan Collins these days?) and the worthless mingers under Tomes for the Cheese Grater (I was shocked to learn that the slave kids of Haiti are punished by being forced to kneel on cheese graters). As I wrote in the below post, shredding a pointless book with your cheese grater (1) promotes wellbeing and (2) creates debris useful for rodent litter or snow in one's Nativity tableau (vivant or toy), as recommended by a reader who put Madonna's Sex book to this excellent use. All Tights titles are hyperlinked for easy purchase; all Cheese Grater titles you can find for yourself. So ....

Tomes for the Tights

Roger Lewis' Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life as it is Lived is an absolute must this Yuletide - by far the funniest memoirs published in years. Even his father's terminal "bum cancer" is framed by comic poignancy - ideal for those contemplating copping out at the Dignitas death camp in Muslim-hating Switzerland.

As comic, but set exotically, is Duncan Fallowell's travel book Going As Far As I Can, the pb of which came out in August. We head for the trog-world of New Zealand in the company of a merciless champion of Western secular culture: the resultant clash of aesthetics (and phwoar of cock-cockings) is both pyrotechnical and exhilarating. DF's prose is the bastard child of an aristo-plebby one-nighter. Reading him is like being fucked at an egalitarian orgy.

As creator of the cock-cunting and cunting-cock neoligisms, it's only right then that Madame Arcati recommends the German title Vulva by Mithu M Sanyal.  The vulva is one of history's Cinderellas - feared, ignored, abused. Yet today we have the designer "yoni puppets" to pat and stroke. What could these be? Well, learn German and find out and delve into the history of the vulva, bitches.

An Arcati fave is the ever notorious Farah Damji and her glorious, playfully-titled autobiography Try Me. It is both mea culpa (frauds, darling) and breathtaking tease: in one chapter she mocks the naive for falling for her pose in the redemptive confessional: as if! Its dishonesties are likely subtle, between the lines; in grey areas. Her story as told feels broadly true. Media, sex, drugs, slebs, jail - they're all here. Trashy novel content in classy narrative.

And for total teeth-chattering joy do buy Jonathan King's memoirs 65 My Life So Far, which I shall review shortly. How could I not like a book that favourably name-checks this blog on p570? We all know what JK was done for: over-worked cock-cunting newspaper scrotes have decreed a persecution. Yet this book is an immense surprise: gossipy, revealing, insightful, scandalous, huge fun. A recommended gift for the multi-millionaire maiden aunt who refuses to die and whose legacy you impatiently await. She'll die usefully with a pre-rot rictus on her wrinkled mug. You won't be charged with her homicide.

Me: The Authorised Biography by Byron Rogers is the blissful tale of how one of Britain's most stylish writers became the object of an intense infatuation: Does Mr Rogers have a cock as big as that of his former employer, Prince Charles? The title may or may not reveal all.

For cookery lovers, may I introduce you to the Rt Hon The Countess of Shannon alias the global mystic guru, Almine. A few years ago Almine gave up her life of ermined British privilege and turned into an international goddess served by angels. So who better to pass down tips on puff pastry? She has two titles: Cooking with Class and Memoirs & Meals (click here). Makes Nigella and Delia look like the raucous lower class cook Mrs Bridges in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Shena Mackay's The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories was released in late 2008 but who cares? A more wonderfully surreal short story writer you will not find: her quirks are encoded not manufactured: queerness and peculiarity run through her soul. She is most otherly. I want more, more, more.

Philip Hoare's Leviathan gets it wrong on sperm whales - no,they cannot swallow a grown man. Never mind. His prosaic quest to commune with the warm blooded spurters of the seas helps to cutefy the whale kingdom: a species to be protected must first have the ah factor.

Interior designer Nicky Haslam's memoir Redeeming Features reports that Wallis Simpson's Edward was once a bisexual drag artist and that Lord Snowdon cock-cocked with the author. Wallis herself may have been hermaphrodite because her maid once whispered that the old girl's knickers were stained with urine always at the front. Gorgeous society flim-flam in which people merge at times with their stylish inanimate objects. So that at one point I became convinced Tallulah Bankhead was a wallpaper.

For the less demanding, Katie Price's novel Sapphire should not be scorned: her ghost writer Rebecca Farnworth is as smart as they come, weaving in sly digs at her subject (Katie Price aka Jordan) in a fictionalisaton of the tabloid-trimmed life that requires dark orange model flesh topped up daily by 18-minute sessions in a carcinogenic sunbed. Simply mindlessly thrilling, dearies.

A few months back I reviewed the novel Dazed & Aroused by handsome male model Gavin James Bower. I hadn't read the book and still haven't but I don't see why that should inhibit me from recommending the British version of Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama. Your OK!-reading brats will adore it - I believe Kate Moss has a walk-on part, but I don't know. Perhaps someone will confirm or correct.

And finally, the "psychic barber" Gordon Smith has a book out titled Why Bad Things Happen. Why was my pet pussy run over by a cripple in his fucking cripple car? That question is not asked or answered, more's the pity (for that's what happened to my Prudence aka Pruce), yet this famous medium tries to shed light on the question of misfortune's purpose, with insights on the next life. Derren Brown is a very poor substitute for this sort of thing.

Tomes for the Cheese Grater

Clive James' The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years is fatally hobbled by its author's incessant need to remind us of how brilliant/famous he is. Whether working through Linguaphone to read a classic in its original tongue or telling us why he deigned to take a phone call from Tina Brown, his book reeks of a clever juvenile wanker locked in a mirrored closet.

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is Richard Dawkins' latest piece of propaganda against faiths - even though his brand of science is akin to faith, such is his messianic zeal to mix facts with popular theories. Though Dawkins reviles all divination, he has never researched such lowly topics as palmistry or mediumship. Very scientific!

Some time back I wrote an affectionate item about a strange little one-man industry called Chas Newkey-Burden. He churns out about half a dozen books a year - many of them in the genre of listerature. Since then the Julie Burchill once-time co-writer and right-wing squirt has foolishly picked an argument with me, so the first casualty of this is all his books. Let's see:  Simon Cowell: The Unauthorised Biography; Amy Winehouse: The Biography; Michael Jackson: Legend 1958-2009: all manically churned mayfly productions that suffer expiry after a brief fuck of publicity. The sound of a writer is tap tap. The sound of Chas is snip snip.

Illusionist Derren Brown is quite a talented caricaturist as his book Portrait demonstrates. However, his demeanour irritates me. He should not be encouraged.

Worst, most successful writer in the world Dan Brown released The Lost Symbol this year as part of his mission to keep Tom Hanks busy. His quasi-mystical thrillers are rutted with awful clangers: is the Pope a Protestant?

Most pointless book ever is The Atheist's Guide to Christmas by Ariane Sherine. Silly cunts like Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring contribute their tips both serious and not. Yet for most, Christmas is already just a secular exchange of gifts, with carol song as sentimental soundtrack to retail park festive forage. No real need for a Church of Atheism, then.

Though a late 2008 release, foodie tome Table Talk: Sweet And Sour, Salt and Bitter by the Sunday Times writer AA Gill affords an opportunity to remind people that he recently shot dead a baboon, to see what killing a primate was like, or at least he made this claim in a restaurant review. The minor Twitter controversy this provoked must have disappointed the fathead ligger.

Stephen Fry in America (pb out last May) and its TV series may have persuaded the cultural Zelig to piss off to LA. If he goes, re-cut 'n' paste this under Tights. Job well done.

I detest family photo albums so why the pompously titled Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare should be an exception I do not know. Should it not be titled Snapshots in History's Footnotes? The cover pic of young handsome Gore is very Freeman's catalogue: longevity is his undoing.

Last and least, a title can ruin a book for me. Ant and Dec's Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story is very Mike and Bernie Winters. Get it out of here!

David Litchfield interview: 'Ritz, Ms Nicky Haslam and other lewd acts'

David Litchfield

If you don't know of Ritz then just fuck off. Ritz was the best British magazine ever, the magazine that ushered the antichrists of celebrity journalism and the paparazzi into our modern UK media with its pioneering Q'n'As, swaggering photography and total respect for the uncorrected hiccups of A-listers - their burps, farts and slip-ups. It was co-founded in 1976 by David Bailey and ... its editor David Litchfield.

Mr Litchfield is a shadowy coolish figure, a bold name phantom of murky European blue blood - [my] "step-great-grandmother was a Hungarian Countess, Ottilie von Schosberger" - and for more bio click here. Ritz was the size of a newspaper and had the heft of a glossy: it dazzled with its range and bitchery - speaking personally, its daubed logo alone prompted dilation, pupil or otherwise, as if a sculpted buttock in a WH Smith pew. Ritz roamed as an invited member of the slebby party circuit, and repaid the best canapés with delicious copy for the kleptomaniac stay-at-home broadsheets. It made you feel so-not-up-there.

Mr Litchfield and Madame Arcati interacted ....

David Litchfield! My God! I mean, you are a God. You co-founded with David Bailey the most glamorous magazine Britain ever had, Ritz. I guzzled on its celebrity teats before its closure in the early 90s. George Michael cites it as a major influence, even Jordan appeared in it. EVEN Nicholas Coleridge with all his umms and errs. He's so inarticulate. Why David, why? (did you close it down?)

Not ‘that’ Jordan! The World’s End Jordan. Michael Roberts’ Jordan. ‘The Dyke from the Deep’. Coleridge only ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ when he hasn’t had enough Retsina. After fifteen years of partying, I needed some fresh air.

Ooops, if you've seen one Jordan you've seen them all. Ritz was modelled on Warhol's Interview, was it not?

Yes, but only enough to annoy Bob Colacello. We had fashion and girls, for God’s sake. Andy loved it because Ritz had gossip. He never understood why Interview didn’t. Did you know Andy and I had the same mother?

Er, really ....You are to blame for our celebrity-obsessed culture just as Lichfield brought the paparazzi to Britain? Defend yourself. Are you to blame for .... OK!?

Celebrity is ‘fame without talent’. We only did people who did things. We did gossip, bitch and parties so that we didn’t have to pay for our own champagne and cocaine. We used to travel by taxi, singing ‘Cocaine, Cocaine, The Musical Fruit’ to the tune of ‘Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam’. How was it all going to end?

Photo: Mr L, by John Swannell, National Portrait Gallery

Is it true stars like Brando, De Niro and Her Serene Highness Grace Kelly used to pop into your office for a booze up with Bailey, photographer Richard Young and yourself?

Yes, it’s true. It’s all true. But rarely in the office. Usually at Langans’ or Eleven Park Walk or Bailey’s place. And never Grace, or the Bagel Snapper. He was busy convincing Bubbles Harmsworth that he worked for the Daily Mail. I did Princess Stephanie at her hotel.

Name a few of the favourite celebrity pieces you ran, and least favourite. And name one star cunt. Lord Lichfield said when you interviewed him, "Now, let's get this straight. Why don't I get paid when I work for you?"

My favourite interview was with Orson Welles, who only said: ‘NO’. Nothing else. My second favourite interview was with The Queen. I said: ‘Oh, Hi’. She smiled and said: ‘Oh, Hello’, and then security arrived. My third favourite interview was with Jack Nicholson. One whole night at Blakes, with every organic chemical known to man.

My favourite introduction to an interview was by Francis Wyndham, who introduced Tony Snowdon to me by saying ‘David, have you met the Queen’s sister?’. Some of my favourite quotes included Elton asking Bailey if he still flew from aerodromes and listened to the wireless.

Bailey saying to Bob Marley: ‘What do you put on your hair, Bob?’

Harrison Ford saying to Bailey: ‘Is that my shit or your dog’s shit?’

Tennessee Williams saying to me that he was just a sad old queen and to Lyndall Scott Ellis that he didn’t like niggers. She was one. And probably still is. You know Lyndall? She was the one who, when asked by a TV-interviewer what were her interests, said in that wonderful drawling voice of hers: ‘Canine atrocities and infanticide’.

Our highest selling front cover, by the way, was a picture of ‘Clive’, Clint Eastwood’s Orang Utang. I can’t remember who did hair and make-up.

My favourite star cunt was Kelly Lebrock, Yum! [Who? - MA]

In response to Patrick Lichfield’s question, I told him what Helmut Newton told me, we should only pay the photographers we rejected. And he never asked again.

And Nicky Haslam. He roamed party-land for you along with Frances Lynn ("Bitchiest gossip writer..."), Amanda Lear. What was Nicky like to work with? Did he come into the office? Are your memories fond? He's nice about Ritz in his memoir Redeeming Features ...

Ms Haslam [pictured left] was a nightmare. She used to ‘blub’ all the time. I only used her as a favour to Bailey, because she couldn’t get any other work apart from walking Princess Michael and Mick Jagger. She was such a snob. And now we discover her father was in trade. Isn’t it wonderful? D for divine.

Amanda Lear only stayed long enough to polish her whip. I was the only one who stayed until the end of the party.

Clive James and Peter York worked for you. What's happened to Clive? And I spotted lots of Ambre Solaire on York's collar once: face dyeing is an understated art, doncha think?
 
Poor Clive. He never recovered from my refusing to sell him shares in Ritz. Peter York never worked for us. I tried to warn him about face-painting. I told him what it had done to George Hamilton. But then I also warned him ‘If you are going to perform a lewd act with a vacuum cleaner, do it at home, rather than at the car wash’. But you know Peter, he never listens.

Is there anything like Ritz today? And what do you think of the "professionalising" of titles like Tatler and Harpers & Queen (now dreary Harper's Bazaar minus Jennifer's Diary). Wouldn't you say Ritz was the forerunner of Hello! after its brain and teeth were taken out?

No, I don’t think [there's anything like Ritz today]. Harper’s should have kept Jennifer’s Diary and thrown away the rest. Tatler needs more Retsina.

No. No. No. Ritz was about ‘vanity, avarice and malice’. Hello! is about ‘shag-pile carpets and ranch-style homes’.

Now David, tell us about your life today. Where do you live? And where do you party? Do you still see Bailey? Oh, and your brand of toothpaste.

Cowes, Shepherd’s Market, Müllheim/Baden, Havana and Castellane.

And Heinz Schumi still does my hair.

No, I don’t see Bailey, ever since he stopped drinking and started going out with Damien Hirst. It’s so sad.

Would you ever bring Ritz back? How much money would you need? Or a website ... ?

Yes, but only as a very expensive newspaper. And all for the same money it cost me the first time around. Sealed bids, please! I’d just love to get Frances Lynn back with the headline: ‘The Bitch Is Back’. Fran really was the bitchiest bitch. She taught me all I know about libel. Bless her!

Have you thought to write a book about Ritz? Or if you have, reissuing it?

Yes, with my daughter, Summer Lee.

And what's this about a film script, Hannibal, The Legend?

Isn’t it wonderful? Van Cleef and Arpels is playing the lead.

Have you ever consulted a psychic?

Yes, and they were both right: I am of Gods and Kings.

And finally, David, is there one decent gossip writer or site left in the world?

Oh, come on, Mary!

David! Thank you so much. I'd get on my knees but I'd never get up again. xx

You should talk to The Queen. She’s got this wonderful tilting throne.

David Litchfield's website

*****

Oh, and here's an extra bit. Frances Lynn recalls working with David ...

David Litchfield was the best editor I've ever had. I always obeyed him even when he warned me to write even bitchier stuff about my then friends, most of whom I thankfully lost.

I was the only one on Ritz who got paid. I would go to the office dressed in rotting rags, begging Litchfield for money. After I gave him a generous glug from my hip flask, he would sign a cheque with a shaking hand, so traumatised that each time I thought he would have to check into the Maudsley.

Litchfield was psychotically mean about money, but I have to hand it to the vicious old sod that he managed to con hacks like Clive James to write for Ritz for free. Litchfield is the only editor I’ve had who didn't edit my stuff, not even when I wrote something libellous shortly after Ritz started. Although I sobbed for forgiveness, I was secretly praying the rag would get closed down because I was exhausted from going OUT twenty four hours a day. Litchfield might have been vindictive towards his victims, but he told me not to worry and found the whole thing amusing.

During the late Seventies, Litchfield was my Svengali and I shall be eternally grateful to him for making me realise what a talented old bitch I used to be!

Roger Lewis: 'My guilt over pompous pantaloon Clive James'

Dear Mme Arcati,

I have been feeling guilty about being so beastly to Clive James. I decided therefore to read his new memoir The Blaze of Obscurity in the hope of revising my opinion that he is a pompous pantaloon. Here are a few choice quotations:

"I would have liked to have been in England when Larkin died."
"My own view of the past was expanded considerably by a recently acquired ability to read Russian."
"Hardly anyone ever resigns from the Garrick."
"When waiting in the car with my driver, I would read to him from Simenon or Maupassant."*
"At the same table as David Hockney, Philip Roth, Harold Pinter and Sir Isaiah Berlin, it was flattering to be treated like one of the boys."
"I talked to the granddaughter of ... Vinicius de Moraes, whose poetry I later learned to love."
"Sitting outside my favourite cafe in the Rue de Université, where I still write at least part of all my books ... "
"I had become so caught up with learning to read Japanese ..."
"At one time I often saw Gore Vidal socially ..."
"Peter O'Toole quoted one of my own poems to me ..."
"I was working late in my London apartment when I got the news [ of Diana's death ], and for several days afterwards I couldn't stop crying... Finally a call came through from Tina Brown at the New Yorker. I owed her too much ..., so I took the call."
"I could easily improve my knowledge of the syntax and the grammar [ of Spanish ] by underlining the various ways in which the clichés were held together."

Roger Lewis
The Angel With Horns
(Tory MP Michael Gove raves about Roger Lewis' Seasonal Suicide Notes in The Times today: "Its [sic] the perfect Christmas present." As a result of this, and/or Roger's interview below, the book is, as I write, at 210 in the Amazon hit parade, from over number 900 at the weekend. For once, Gove is spot on)

*Quote in red is Madame Arcati's favourite. I had a vision of Lady Penelope reading Descartes to Parker ...

Roger Lewis interview: 'I think Clive James is a silly cunt'

I have Duncan Fallowell to thank for giving me the biggest laugh of this year. He introduced me to the world of Roger Lewis and his fantastic autobiography Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life As It Is Lived. It reveals a man who deplores Clive James, Simon Cowell, Harold Pinter, et al.  Of Andrew Roberts, Lewis likens the historian's "grimace" to that of "a baboon with diarrhoea trying to hold it in." The state of loathing often elevates him to the lyrically comic. If Gore Vidal had a sense of humour he'd be something like Lewis. If Scrooge had a heart (before the visitations), etc etc.

Learned, misanthropic, baroque, supremely dyspeptic: this is a man who reports that his father died in 2004 of “cancer of the bumhole… My sole inheritance is to comprise spare bumper packs of Coloplast Direct Wetwipes”.

"Like most truly funny people, Lewis has a markedly serious side, a bottomless well of melancholy and possibly even a dash of genuine madness," writes Sunday Times reviewer Christopher Hart of 49-year-old Lewis. A journalist and biographer of Anthony Burgess and Peter Sellers, he is a former Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. More to the point, he is also the author of Charles Hawtrey: The Man who was Private Widdle. 

Roger Lewis kindly submitted to a Madame Arcati analysis.

Roger Lewis! Hello! Congratulations on your autobiography Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life As It Is Lived. You have given misanthropy a good name. "Roger Lewis is a genius writer, and he knows it," writes Lynn Barber. Do you know it? And what do you think of the demon Barber now she's exiled herself to the Sunday Times?

I must indeed know it -- as how else to account for the fact I live in complete poverty and total obscurity in remote Herefordshire, threatened by bills and bailiffs. I'm like one of those consumptive characters in La Bohème, working under the damp bedclothes because I can't afford to put the heating on. If only I could be mediocre -- oh, for then I might have had a career. I'm too vivid, I fear. I'm not what you might call a safe pair of hands. As for Ms Barber -- she's doing well with that slim tale of her youth. She told it first in Granta. Then again as a little paperback for Penguin. Then as a film. Then as many a feature article. What I'd like to have seen -- Lynn interviewing Lynn by Lynn in her demoniacal mode. As it is, she's allowed herself to slither off the barbed hook.

You come across as a champion hater - weddings, Clive James, bad manners; yet you love Austria and stories featuring wooden legs. Of all the things and persons that appal you, name THE most appalling. And THE thing you most adore.

I don't think I hate things -- I am just exasperated by phoniness and smugness and deliberate amateurishness. I am the Voice of Everyman ! I am the Very Platonic Ideal of Sweet Reasonableness! I have standards! But to answer your question -- the most appalling thing is heterosexual reproduction. There are too many people on the planet. It is verminous. We need a nuclear war or a plague. What I most adore -- finding an old world restaurant with linen tablecloths and doddery waiters.

And Clive James ... he's very nice to his mistresses, and he can read novels in about 57 different languages. Surely that counts for something in these semi-literate times?

I think he is a silly cunt. I mean that in a caring way. If Professor George Steiner decided to be a circus clown -- that's Clive James. And I apologise for insulting circus clowns, as my son Tristan is one with Zippo's. Once you have read Craig Brown's brilliant parodies of Clive's would-be aphoristic style, it is quite impossible to revert to reading the originals.

Was there a precise moment in your early life when you realised you were possessed of a nature of powerful emotions? (Please don't tell me you tortured earwigs in the garden shed).

Do I have powerful emotions? Who do you think I am, Maria Callas? I get it all from my mother, who is just permanently ferocious -- her temper could put Caerphilly Castle into fucking orbit. I never knew calmness at home as a child. So off I slunk to the attics of this huge red brick Edwardian villa we lived in, to play with my Pelham Puppets. There was a laboratory up there too, where Jeremy Lewis' father Morley once conducted medical experiments. I grew up in an atmosphere James Whale put on celluloid.

Do you know your astrological sign and if so are you true to it?

My star sign is Bestial.

Is it true the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre - who has just bought a wonderful property in the Highlands - wilted when he read one proposed serialisation extract from Seasonal Suicide Notes? He must be a wise man really because he ran something in the end.

Ever since he authenticated The Hitler Diaries, I have not been able to take Lord Dacre wholly seriously. But the Mail has a new and enlightened features editor now called Sandra Parsons, with whom I dealt. However, as a result of my appearance in her pages, my sales ranking plummeted on Amazon.

You deplore bad manners - if there's one thing you could magic away or into existence to improve human intercourse, what would it be? And may I have a taste ruling on the increasing use of the word cunt.

I love the word cunt. Most euphonious. I got drunk the other night and the next day I discovered I'd re-written the lyrics of Les Misérables -- Les Cunterables -- inserting the word cunt in every possible place. This had been e-mailed at 4 a.m. to novelist Paul Bailey, who fell over in Turnham Green and did his ankle in. I am now fully expecting that after my next session on the single-malt I'll be giving the world Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Cunt, Annie Get Your Cunt, My Fair Cunt, and A Funny Cunt Happened On The Way To The Forum.

Apropos bad manners -- I was agog when I had luncheon with somebody at St Alban and they kept poking at their Blackberry device with a little cocktail stick thing, like the monkey in Kubrick's 2001 playing with a bone. I felt that was rude. I think being rude to waiters / underlings is unforgivable. If I see anyone doing that in a restaurant I want to punch them in the face -- luckily I do have a vengeful, violent streak. (Welsh, you see.) To improve human intercourse? Well, it would be nice if people replied to letters. These days you write to people and you might as well be chucking the envelope down a well.

In your book you complain of poor financial returns on your Anthony Burgess and Peter Sellers books - would you ever consider writing a biography of a celebrity just for the money - such as Katie Price (aka Jordan), Paris Hilton or cry-baby blogger Perez Hilton? Perhaps you could turn water into wine. Each has a huge following. You could bathe in scented rose petals for the rest of your life.

I would do anything for money, except live in West Drayton. But I have never heard of the people you mention. I thought they were hotels, like Bromyard Stakis. Water into wine -- ah yes, the Jesus trick. On the other hand, to mix the metaphor, you can't polish a turd.

You do like the high life, you dine at The Ivy, for instance. Is it that you're wealthier than you would have us believe?

I adore the high life. It should be available to all, 24/7. Believing as I do that the only way to waste money is to save it, I always splash out on myself and my loved ones. Then I get back home and there is a summons for Council Tax arrears. My late father was the same -- he'd come back from a gloomy visit to the bank manager and buy a Picasso etching, cashmere coats, a case of vintage sherry from Berry Bros., a dozen hardback books posted from Hatchards, a suit or two from Gieves & Hawkes, and a seaside house in France. He had style. Then he died from cancer of the bumhole.

Now I have heard a rumour you're working on a book that will feature one of my alter egos, Margaret Rutherford. I regard her as the most splendid presence in the English movie, an unsurpassed Miss Marple (the TV versions are pallid). Do you agree? And tell us about the book.

Well, it is not a book about Margaret Rutherford. Margaret Rutherford features in my next opus, Growing Up With Comedians. To be published by Century in the summer of 2010, if I can get my mind back on it. The advance was pitiful -- approximately the equivalent to ten minutes of a lawyer's time. Dedicated to Craig and our late much-lamented chum Hugh Massingberd. Essays and profiles and meditations on my personal favourites, from Alastair Sim and Terry-Thomas up to Johnny Vegas and Malcolm Hardee. It is a feverish book about how comedy deals with sex and death. It is about comedy as tragedy.

Do you shower or bathe? And without looking do you know the price of the brand of bar of soap you use? I hope you don't resent my treating you as a celebrity in OK! magazine ...

I can never be a celebrity. I am so fantastically fat and ugly. You need to be photogenic, like Peter Andre. Not even the great Francesco Guidicini of The Sunday Times could make me look half human. Talk about Phantom of the Fucking Opera. People thought Stratford Johns was still alive.

In my Austrian birdcage I shower. There's also a horrible little shelf in the pan of the bog, for one to examine one's stools -- they are weird these Germanic peoples. It it a digestive / health conscious thing or is to tell fortunes with? Here in the Herefordshire Balkans I sink like a hippo in the tub. I get my toiletries from Penhaligon or Trumpers. I really do. Another reason for being bust. If I unfortunately resemble Stratford Johns taking a mid-morning crap, at least I smell nice.

One reviewer suggested you should see a psychotherapist to analyse your furies. Your thoughts.

My wife is an educational psychologist.

And finally, Roger, if you could be persuaded to host a literary party in London, name five living people you'd invite, and why, and five living people you would bar at the door or kick up the arse, and why.

Those welcome: Barry Humphries (not as Edna or Les but in 1890s mode ), Duncan Fallowell (who is never in anything other than 1890s mode ), Mark Rylance (the greatest living actor -- I've known him since he was Peter Pan), Craig Brown (a very nice Old Etonian), Professor John Bayley (another nice Old Etonian -- and my beloved mentor at Oxford).

Those who can fuck right off: Jonathan Coe (because he was disobliging about me in his Acknowledgements to one of his books and also because his fat wife cut my wife dead at one of my launch parties), Blake Morrison (whose review of my Anthony Burgess masterpiece was homicidal -- I'd love to hear that he has met with a fatal accident), Brian MacArthur (who cut my fee in half when he took over as Lit Ed of the Daily Telegraph -- I'd love to hear that he has met with a fatal accident), sad mother Julie Myerson (who asked me if writing is what I do full time -- yet who'd reviewed my Sellers movie at Cannes and hadn't made the connection), and everybody at HBO (who didn't invite me to the premiere of my own movie at Cannes, because I was "only the author") and whilst we are about it, everyone in my Welsh family (because I don't like being part of anyone else's DNA). That's not five, sorry. That's five hundred.

Roger, you are an angel with talons. Thank you again. And good luck with Seasonal Suicide Notes. It is one of the funniest books I have ever read. x

Apparently it is what Matt Lucas' ex and Stephen Gately were reading when they croaked. The Coroner is going to be after me for murder.

Click here to buy Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life As It Is Lived. It's better than Dignitas.

Roger Lewis: Why he sucked his trousers up his arse

Has the Daily Mail run the extract from the funniest book of the year yet - Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life as It Is Lived by Roger Lewis? I can't be bothered to look, and I'm awfully busy, so please be a duck and check it out. Last I heard, the paper bought the serial rights then got the wally-wobbles. Editor Paul Dacre was horrified by the book's venomous refrains (foreign to him as we know), spiked it, and ran something toothless by Janet Street-Porter. Very foolish. (Yes! The Mail has run the extract, a commenter claims. Now I can't be bothered to rewrite this par. Mr Dacre has proven to be more pliant than legend allows. He also has good taste in property. Longer[er] may he reign!)

While we await news (no longer), have a slurp of Lewis' glorious book from Christopher Hart's great review in the Sunday Times. Lewis, a journalist and biographer of Peter Sellers and Anthony Burgess, reveals himself to be an authentic, wildly comic, splenetic misanthrope: a hater, among many other things and persons, of Clive James (let's start a club on this fraud), bad manners and Andrew Roberts who has the “grimace of a baboon with diarrhoea trying to hold it in." He's also the first writer to allude to the late film critic Alexander Walker's homosexuality: for some reason it's a complete no-go area in some quarters.

Thanks to Lewis' poor health “I’ve been coughing so much I sucked my trousers up my arse.” And when his father died in 2004 of “cancer of the bumhole… My sole inheritance is to comprise spare bumper packs of Coloplast Direct Wetwipes”. Oh yes, please. Buy now.

Click pic for large version. My thanks to Duncan Fallowell for this photo of the Roger Lewis book launch at Zippo's Circus on Hampstead Heath last week - Roger's son Tristan is a clown and juggler with Zippo's. Duncan Fallowell is in the white trousers and Beryl Bainbridge is offering him money - he can't remember what for. Paul Bailey is in the background (my apologies for trying to kiss you once, Paul ...)

Molly Parkin: 'Croatians love my new cock paintings'

Molly Parkin. Photo by Tommy Candler

My fiancee Molly Parkin has sent me a letter. She is off to Croatia this summer to exhibit a collection of her new paintings many of which take the cock as subject. I hope this isn't Madame Arcati's influence. She also waxes on recent cock posts here. Anyhow, here's her letter to me ....

You said to let you know re: Croatian gallery girls. Utterly charming, completely bowled over by the paintings. They chose 11 of the very biggest ones, one 6ft by 5ft abstract, which I only painted yesterday, Sophie's Summer Wedding. And another one, an orgy scene, full of cocks of all nationalities entering every sort of orifice. Also another full of cocks, one black one actually piercing the pussy of the white girl. And another belonging to a pale teenage rentboy, being manhandled by a sophisticated divorcee, awaiting her false mammaries.

Hello Rudolph Nureyev. How's Dame Margot? "She's fine. I'm bigger than Sam Leith, dah?" (Photo by Richard Avedon)

The Croatians proclaimed them "very powerful indeed", full of wisdom, and not as "sweet" as they expected (they didn't add "from an old lady").

When I offered to paint out the cocks before the exhibition, in case of giving offence to the Croatian nation (thinking of the mealy-mouthed turds' response to your penis parade), they exploded with vehemence at the very thought. More our cup of tea, then, the Croatians!!

Adore all this cock business on Madame Arcati you've been up to, and the way you actually voice it, so clever, so naughty, so titillating; arousing, too. Brings a rush to the brain... er, um, yes, and there!

Oscar Wilde would have loved it. And Joe Orton. And Mae West. And Vincent Price. And Coral Browne. And Noel Coward. Others must too. Can't we see more of the jiggling sportsmen stuff? Or even Ronaldo in and out of trunks? Moving around, or prone.


Perhaps some political figures such as Profumo, who's weighty down below, I am told. Or is libel the trouble? It's all very well to tell tales on cock size but we hunger for the illustrations. Put it to your public. I can vouch for senior citizens, female, judging by my 80-year-old sister's avid interest. None of us is interested in Page Three girls.

Love Molly xx

Just for Molly to celebrate her Croatian triumph

Croatia website

Fiona Russell Powell: Why I went to the Screws over Clive James

Fiona Russell Powell

Long before 68-year-old opera singer Anne Howells' recent kiss 'n' tell in The Oldie about her affair with "Clyde" - the widely suspected nom d'amour for married Clive James (he denies) - the former Australian TV entertainer, poet, polymath and pal of Martin Amis enjoyed a five-month relationship with the writer and former ABC band member Fiona Russell Powell between 1987 and 1988.

The first the public got to hear about it was courtesy of a News of the World splash. “He had this thing about my breasts, he liked to look at them. He was very fond of turning all the lights off when the moon was out and getting me to sit on the sofa to the strains of Bizet," she told the tabloid. He loved soaping her tits in the bath and she revealed he was desperate for a knighthood: he's still waiting. Perhaps, like Christopher Lee, he'll have to wait till he's 87.

The paper also reported that Fiona, then 34, was threatening to sue James, then 57, for libel over a "blonde nutter" lead character called Jane Austen in his novel Brrm! Brrm! She claimed Austen was plainly modelled on herself. Nothing happened thereafter. James only admitted that his literary character had the same hair, wrists and slash marks as Fiona.

So I caught up with Fiona - who used to write for The Face, I-D and Blitz - to talk about what had mystified me all along: why she'd gone to the paper in the first place.

Darling, always a pleasure to talk with you. Clive James is back in the news and you've been mentioned. Again!

There was a big piece in the Sunday Telegraph the other week on his latest "alleged" infidelity with the opera singer that was taken from an account she wrote for The Oldie. The journalist covering it for the Sun. Tel. had a paragraph about me, that's all.

What are your thoughts on Howells?

I would like to add a couple of things. First of all, I'm not surprised to hear about the opera singer because I remember Clive telling me that he still saw old girlfriends. He said whenever he went back to Australia, he would sleep with a girlfriend he had gone out with in the late 50s, ages before he met his wife, and he's kept it going throughout his marriage.

When I wrinkled up my nose at the thought of him shagging an old bird (I was young, remember!), he said he loved women of all ages. He was quite flattering because he said I was the sort of woman who would always be fanciable, even when I got older. He also said he had girlfriends in many cities all over the world, who he saw whenever he was in their country.

By the way, I'm not the first young woman to have been bedded by Clive to appear in one of his books although he gave me the dubious honour of making me a lead character. In a book he wrote called The Remake, he told me a young blonde features in it who is based on a literary graduate he knew.

His sexual charisma is something else, and not immediately apparent I must say. But Fiona, why did you tell-all to the News of the World in the first place? Isn't it all a bit tacky?

The thing I want to point out about the NOTW story is that it wasn't me who kissed and told, it was Clive who kissed and wrote first. When I finally read the book (Brrm! Brrm!) I realised he had stolen my life lock, stock and barrel - so that I was totally recognisable to anyone who knew me; but he also had used it as an opportunity to put me down. Someone read it recently for the first time and emailed me to say that, in their opinion, it's very nasty and that I must have really got under the old boy's skin.

I gave Clive a chance. I called him and confronted him about the book and it was his response that made me decide to go to the papers. Bear in mind that when I rang him, it had been several years since the book had been published or since we had been in touch. He recognised my voice immediately, saying: "I wondered when I would hear from you. You took your time." Obviously he had been expecting me to contact him about it. He was very relaxed about it and still called me darling.

But what did he say about "your" character in his novel?

When I talked about the book, he denied it, and I asked him how he could do that, who was he kidding? I told him that I was considering legal action and it was his reply that told me just what an utter cunt the man is. He said, "Darling, the girl in the book takes drugs, is an alcoholic and a suicidal nut. Are you prepared to take the stand and admit that you used to be a junkie, drank like a fish and had psychiatric problems?"

To which I bravely replied, "If it's relevant, I'm not afraid to tell the truth." He said, "I think you will find, darling, that you won't be a credible witness. They won't take you seriously." I thought, "So, you stole my life without asking because it makes good material for your book but when I object, you're quite prepared to turn around and use it against me."

That's when my mind was made up. I would do to him what he had done to me: expose him publicly. I knew he would hate that more than anything because, although in those days his profile was high and he seemed to be everywhere, in fact, he is an intensely private man who likes to control his image very carefully and hates anything about his private life being revealed.

Can you believe it (so sure was he of himself) that at the end of that phone call, he actually had the cheek to say he missed me and invited me round to his flat? By the way, I called his publisher and they were very rude to me too, which wasn't very clever on their part.

So what did you do next?

As soon as I got off the phone, I called Max Clifford. However, I still think Clive got off lightly. Although they had the answering machine messages on tape, the NOTW lawyer said that, because he only mentioned love, but not sex, and considering Clive would probably sue, it was best to err on the safe side. That's why they didn't run the original story in the end but went with the fact that I had served a writ on him.

Why didn't you sue him?

Simply because I couldn't afford it. As you know, in this great country of ours, unless you are rich, you don't have a reputation worth defending. It cost £5,000 just to serve a writ on him. I was advised that, though I would probably win the case, Clive could afford the best lawyers who would do everything to got to delay the case until I ran out of money.

Max took his cut - I even got screwed there; he's supposed to take 20% and I got £20,000 from the NOTW. However, when I received my cheque from Max, it was for £15,000 so he'd actually taken 25%. I asked for the grand he owed me but never got it. Watching the way Max works is an education in itself but I'm not sure it was worth a quarter of my fee.

Incidentally, years later, when Clive thought it safe to do so, he more or less admitted to it, first in an interview in the Evening Standard, about four years ago, when he said something along the lines of I had "good reason" to complain. He also talked about me in an interview Ginny Dougary (is that her name?) did with him in The Times about 18 months ago. I've got it somewhere if you want me to dig it out.

Thanks Fiona. Let's talk again soon - about current work projects, life and, oh, anything really.

PS The Ginny Dougary interview in The Times for May 12, 2007: the relevant passage starts - after mention of Brrm! Brrm! - with James saying: “I’m sorry about her [Fiona]… she was a talented young girl.” Since there is something elegiac about his tone, I ask him whether she’s still alive. “I have no idea,” he says (she is). “She had some very...” Drug problems? “Yesss. I regretted that. The occasional busy journalist, especially in Australia, likes to run an article when they hear about this, saying that Clive’s marriage is on the rocks, and I have to point out, if I get the chance, that my marriage has been on the rocks for 40 years.” Click here to read the piece in its entirety.

Fiona's website click here.

And who's wearing the dildo belt at 1.25 on? Catch the face at 2.11.

'Celebrity cocks that have entertained me'

A certain incorrigible person of the world writes to Madame Arcati about her encounters of the celebrity cock kind. Adult content, poppets...

Dear Madame,

Given your obsession with cocks - you old size queen! - I should tell you that Clive James has quite a reasonable cock. I would put him at a quite broad 6 and a half inches to a seven.

David Lee Roth is a Princess Tinymeat, as is George Michael, as we all know, thanks to Brad Branson.

Steven Berkoff's is short but very very thick and Mickey Rourke couldn't get it up because he'd injected so much liquid valium.

***** ******** tells girls his cock is tiny as part of his chat up technique. When a man tells you his dick is small, naturally, you don't believe him. Well, he wasn't lying. I've already horrified you, no doubt, by telling you I've got a tiny cunt [in a section edited out, alas] but *****'s cock is so minute that I couldn't even tell when it was in me or not. He was very straight sexually. Thought I was a pervert when I suggested rimming and a bit of hanky spanky.

But he kept pestering me to have sex with another guy while he watched. When I told him ***** called that "homosexuality by proxy" he went mad!

Grace Jones tried to seduce me but I wouldn't go further than massage skin cream all over her. She used to lie in the bath for hours, full to the brim with bubbles. She was horny as fuck with anything that moved.

I've never slept with Keith Allen despite several attempts on his part. I can tell you more if you want to know. My mind is always in the gutter, looking up the stars skirts.

Your Friend Forever x

Dear Darling,

That'll be enough for now. Save the rest for your memoirs.

Love MA x