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.

Quentin Letts: 'We can always post him a free sandwich next time'

Quentin Letts

During the recent general election campaign, the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts - a cock-cunting noroviral words-spewer - attended a Lib Dem rally in Streatham, South London. It was an 'oatmealy', middleclass, multi-cultural affair with a gospel choir and 'soapy men... boogieing to the Afro beat' - in other words, perfect fodder for Letts' brand of Full English Breakfast fat-spit.

I'm certain that if you pulled his leg, Land of Hope and Glory would sing out from his arse.

At some point, the chortle factory met a 'dark-haired woman called Jemima' who smelt 'faintly of cigarettes.' He wrote: '[She] imperiously asked me if I worked for Lib Dem HQ. When I said no, she attacked me for writing for a "racist" newspaper. I assured her that the Daily Mail was nothing of the sort. She proceeded to give me a lecture in favour of mass immigration....'

As it happens, Jemima has got in touch with Madame Arcati. She doesn't dispute the little that he wrote about their encounter, but has some interesting, humane observations to make about Letts - none of which would see the light of day in the Mail, of course. Since he introduced her to the public, and tried to skew our perception of her opinion, it's only right she is given space to respond.

'The situation was macabre and funny,' she tells me. 'Letts' fear of immigrant populations and cultures was beautifully set off by the Streatham community hall and gospel music. I did suggest the Mail was a racist paper, and though I intended to provoke what I thought would be a well-worn defence, he was in fact wildly surprised to find that anyone might think so.

'He said he believes that immigration currently threatens British culture. I said I thought perhaps his idea of "British culture" was that of only a small minority of the country, and asked him for an example of some aspect of this that he felt was under threat. He cited the Book of Common Prayer, which he said he had "fought for" extensively.

'In what way, I wondered, was immigration threatening that? Were Catholic Polish migrants bringing with them some kind of High Church assault of bells and smells on the Anglican prayer book? Was gospel singing an inherent attack on the heart of the Anglican faith, or does it just make Quentin Letts a little twitchy?

'His description of the whole event in the article reflects a similarly personal take. So personal in fact, as to sound like the voice of a man that never speaks to a soul outside the four walls he has carefully built around himself, equipped with new fortifications to protect his personal world view against the various assaults of the modern age (including, but not exclusively, liberalism, open mindedness, coalition, multiculturalism, science, the GMC, and Catholicism).

'The rally seemed strangely chaotic to Letts (enthusiastic young party, the LDs) who was surprised to see uneaten sandwiches (free food being the main attraction to hacks like Letts at such events); and the gospel choir was in his view so alien as to be necessarily ridiculous before they had even opened their mouths to sing.

'The guy is petrified of what he can't understand; quite human really, but he becomes offensive when his extremely narrow view is projected onto the wider British public, as in his column at the Mail. He should just stay at home next time, we can always post him a free sandwich. After all, Britain will evolve with or without him.'

To read Letts' piece click here.

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.

John Travolta - 'Scientologists treated his homosexuality'

Do try to get a copy of Ian Halperin’s new book Hollywood Undercover – he last made a great splash with Shut Up and Smile back in 2002, an expose of the fashion world that was Jackie Collins’ book of the year in the Mail. His trick is to reinvent himself with an outrageous name and persona, launch himself into a crazy targeted world, Borat-style, and then document the resultant absurdities. He is a satirical action man.

I’ve interviewed the author and will put that piece up soon. But its most explosive part is on homosexuality in Tinseltown. “Nine out of 10 actors in Hollywood are gay,” he asserts, having communed with the Queers of the Round Table, a salon of celebrity cock-cocking connoisseurs. Halperin tells me: “Without a shadow of doubt Travolta was gay. He went through the Scientologist’s auditing programme which purports to re-programme gays as straight. I have seen incontrovertible evidence of this. I was shown a video of one of his ex-male lovers talking about how he was paid off by Travolta and other evidence. And I’ve seen pictures of him kissing a male lover. However, Tom Cruise is another matter. Everyone said he was gay but I never saw the smoking gun. There’s no proof he’s gay.” More to follow, much more.

Lynda La Plante - 'Bloody immigrants!'

I’ve only just noticed that Lynda La Plante is turning into Paul Dacre. She’s pushing her new novel Clean Cut [Click here] and relates her research method - snipping out newspaper stories that have appalled her. “I’m turning into Victor Meldrew,” says the copper hair-dyed virago, “because I just keep saying ‘I don’t believe it!’ I use actual newspaper headlines in my novels, I don’t make anything up. The stories too, I just change the names and a few details. There was the story of the 82-year-old woman with cancer and no hospital bed could be found for her. She’s paid her National Insurance all her life and no bed can be found! Yet immigrants who’ve paid nothing find hospital beds. I know I’m a demented ferret, I even shout at the TV at what I see …” I think the Mail should sign up this woman forthwith and give the more moderate Allison Pearson time to marry her live-in lover.

Enid Blyton: A gay sign to simple Peter McKay

The deranged, alcohol-sozzled homophobe Peter McKay – masquerading as the Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle (banned in Irish editions on the grounds of irrelevance) – casts an aspersion on Radio 4's Today host James Naughtie for admitting to reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books as a boy. McKay writes that Naughtie’s co-host Ed Stourton affected “astonishment” at the revelation – “Being posh, class-conscious Ed will have remembered they were once considered ‘common’ by grand families.” He then adds that perhaps Ed thinks Jim’s literary tastes were once “effete”.

I don’t think so. Why, only yesterday - as chance would have it - I was reading an Orion interview with one of Stourton’s close friends, Nicholas Coleridge – MD of Conde Nast and the world’s worst novelist – who confesses to reading “200 Enid Blytons” as a brat. You don’t get much posher than Coleridge this side of the royal enclosure - and as we all know, birds of a feather flock together. And while Coleridge maybe a little effete for party posing purposes (makes one seem ageless) he is a confirmed cock-cunter. So, I suggest McKay finds another superstition in his gentle vendetta against "posh Ed".

Michael Coveney gives Quentin Letts a lashing

One of my favourite bloggers, Michael Coveney – who should be reinstated as the Mail theatre critic in my view (but would he have them?) – thanks Madame Arcati for naming the Mail’s right-wing all-rounder Quentin Letts as the creep who has been writing horrid things about him in Private Eye.

“It seems rather a grubby way of earning a few extra quid,” Coveney writes before noting Letts' Carmen Jones interval chit-chat with the Standard editor Veronica Wadley. “Let's hope she had a jolly good laugh at Master Letts's peevish skewering of her irritable theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh in the latest Eye. De Jongh's 'crime' was to stretch his legs during the technical hiccup at the Joseph first night and inform a security guard (or possibly Bill Kenwright) that he was a "f---ing theatre critic."

He then goes onto deprecate Lett’s “graceless” and “unfunny” comments about Thelma Holt and David Liddiment. It is no secret, of course, that Letts - or "the owlish sneak" as Coveney calls him - supplements his considerable six-figure Mail fee with a steady stream of £50 tip-offs to Fleet Street gossips.

On another matter, I have not forgotten Letts’ recent brutal assault on our new PM on Sky News, insinuating that Brown was only visiting flood victims for PR reasons. This hardly accords with the unwell Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre’s view of the No 1 Broonite whose workaholism, water-sign sulkiness and rages are the staples of a worthy life.

For Coveney's excellent blog, click here.

Allison Pearson, Arcati and The New York Post

From The New York Post, today:

"HERE'S one for The New Yorker fact-checking department. Is the weekly's film critic, Anthony Lane, married to journalist/author Allison Pearson, mother of his two children? Although the British couple often refer to themselves as man and wife, caustic media blogger Madame Arcati claims they're not legally wed. "Allison speaks highly of marriage: for the purposes of her £350,000+ column in the Daily Mail," Arcati writes. "When we are given moral lectures by gurus . . . it's sooooo important to know the backstory to the guru." The blog also posts a comment from Pearson: "OK Mme, you win. Anthony and I are not officially 'married.'"

I should say that Pearson has not confirmed herself as the commenter.

The stars speak: Brown, Blair and President Hillary Clinton

My areolae always turn a deeper shade of pink when the latest Old Moore's Almanack dive bombs from the heavens - vox stellarum, no less! I like to steal a march via the mumbo jumbo powers - and the 2008 edition is just out. Published since 1697, its astrological compass is a wide one, conflating predictions on weighty international affairs with pointers to favourable periods for flat-race jockeys. Between these future scopes are ads of much curiosity - the Egyptian goddess Isis promises self-assurance through her incantations, in English. Wonders to behold.

Now, it's easy to mock. I could dwell on the fact that though the eponymous Dr Francis Moore is a master of horoscopic calculation, he thinks Anthony Eden's predicted resignation was in 1937 when he means 1957. But no matter. Where's a decent sub-editor when you need one? I come not to bury Dr Moore but to congratulate him for he got a couple of things right - the departure date of Tony Blair and the flavour of the new capo dei capi's government, Mr Broon.

Last September I noted Moore's certainty - from his vantage point of early autumn 2005 for the 2007 edition - that in July 2007 “The Sun and Moon are on the Midheaven at London pointing to somewhat greater popularity for the government. Radical changes both in policy and personnel are possible, and will be carried out very smoothly.”

Is it not reasonable to suppose that Old Moore's had foreseen Blair's departure date even before the then PM himself had faced up to reality? - and is not the Blair-promised "smooth and orderly transition" (to Brown) anticipated? We could argue over this, so let's say it was a shrewd guess. And Moore is correct about the government's popularity - nine points ahead of the Tories as I write.

For August 2007, national celebrations are foreseen as “old-fashioned values are reasserted” with more and more people getting married ... well, an exaggeration perhaps, but puritan Brown is likely to alter the tax credit rules to favour married couples, and I'm sure that it is this that Moore foresees as the country is enveloped in a stifling dose of Scottish Presbyterianism. Expect happy headlines from the Daily Mail, then.

Labour-haters can take comfort that everything goes pear-shaped from November '07 when scandals renew our healthy and deserved loathing for politicians. Oh dear, the Mail proves characteristically fickle as it did with Blair.

So, all that was in the 2007 edition. What of the 2008? When it was put together Moore would not have been certain - from the vantage point of October 2006 (long deadlines!) - that Brown was a shoo-in for No 10. That doesn't stop him from running an astrological profile of The Gord (along with the likes of Noel Edmonds and Helen Mirren). Brown has not one but four planets in secretive Pisces - so even if I didn't know that the subject was once suspected to be gay or bisexual, I would have to say that this is a man acclimatised to surreptitiousness and the murk-side of Westminster. Valedictories on his political career will feature the word "enigmatic", I predict.

Moore fails emphatically to predict Brown's accession beyond the obvious "Gordon Brown's future lies in the hands of his fellow MPs and they may think his credentials are sound ... " Yes, and the sun may shine yet. But Moore is less convinced that Brown can hold onto power against what he calls the "charisma of Cameron". Improbable now, but events, dear boy, events ...

Moore's map for 2008 is exceedingly depressing for Brown: though it will be a "business-like year" for the UK, rather humdrum due to "slow-moving planets" as Pluto moves into Capricorn, the government will be reviled - I therefore deduce that if Brown does not call a General Election in 2007, he will test his appeal some time after '08. Or Moore is utterly wrong, as no election is hinted at.

For the US however we should congratulate in advance the Democrats on a return to power as President-elect Hillary Clinton beckons in November. Meanwhile, "At Doncaster, the November Handicap races may be won by a 3-year-old carrying 8st 8lb."

Foulsham's Original: Old Moore's Almanack 2008, £1.99

Michael Coveney and his queer preoccupations

I must confess that former Mail theatre critic Michael Coveney is an excellent blogger - do catch his Whatsonstage site when you're quite exhausted with me, I won't be bitter. Unlike about 98% of journalists he intuitively understands that a blog requires both news of a sort and signs of actual visceral temperament: your average journo has learnt to arrange words in a stately way for his or her overbearing editor (often confused for the mass audience) but somehow leaves one thinking that he or she is talking over one's shoulder (as is invariably the case should you encounter them at parties).

Only in one respect does Coveney - who has failed to date to confirm or deny my earlier story about the Curious Case of his Missing Lloyd Webber Book Chapter - let himself down: he appears to have a problem with sexual aberration. Recently he accused AA Gill of walking and talking like a "homosexual male model" (when as I said most male models walk like John Wayne for runway purposes). Now, in his current posting, he describes the Evening Standard's art critic Brian Sewell as "epicene".

Now, the matter here is not that Sewell may not be epicene (a dowager with testicles, more accurately). My concern is that he feels the need to draw our attention to the non-issues of Sewell's gender (male, plainly), sexual orientation (homo, plainly) and - what I call - psychic impression (a dowager with testicles, I suggest). The contemporaneity of the walking talking homosexual male model and the epicene Sewell in Coveney's blog leads me to suspect that he perhaps is making the mistake of comparing both Gill and Sewell to his theatre PR wife Sue Hyman whose masculine severity is a thing of wonder; and this may account for her husband's preoccupation with those who fall short of their catalogue-assigned gender energies.

It seems odd to me that anyone with such a preoccupation would be drawn to the theatre, even if only as a critic. As my late friend Truman Capote was wont to say, most English male actors of any quality are gay - and many of the female are camp. Put another way, I can't imagine why a vegetarian might want to work in an abattoir. A person's inner drives and prejudices maybe discerned by their reflexive insults and humour: I fear Coveney is revealing a little too much of his inner life, or nightmares.

Otherwise I commend his blog and shall be be scrutinising it with even greater care from now on.

Michael Coveney: The missing Lloyd Webber chapter?

Private Eye appears to be entranced by the former Daily Mail theatre critic Michael Coveney – I never did quite understand why Dacre axed him – and with his lively whatsonstage blog.

He recently described AA Gill as “talking and walking like a homosexual male model” – in revenge for Gill’s manufactured rant against theatre critics (dead tree zombie controversy, yawn) – which regrettably betrayed Coveney’s ignorance of male models. All of them, straight or gay, walk like John Wayne as per their training, though one or two may mince off post-runway and have anal intercourse with sundry lovers. All sorts of things happen, I guess.

Now it appears Coveney is embroiled in another row after making rude comments about Blanche Marvin, 82, a veteran theatre-goer fag hag who’s a fave with gay critics – they are planning to unleash a terrible revenge on her attacker. Perhaps a whoopee cushion will be put to good use one night before the curtain rises.

All this reminds me of the late theatre critic and Noel Coward aficionado Sheridan Morley, who, like all his colleagues, was a shameless and accurate gossip. A little while before his premature death, I popped round to his lovely home in Chelsea Harbour – before he moved to Battersea – and he talked some about Coveney.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this," he said, promisingly, "but that book Coveney wrote about Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story, standing currently at about 405,000 in the Amazon hit parade) – well, Andrew went ballistic when he read one chapter – he sort of had fact approval – which suggested that one of the reasons why Andrew and Tim Rice broke up was because of Andrew’s intense feelings for Rice which were not reciprocated. Andrew absolutely demanded the removal of the chapter or else he would withdraw all cooperation. So the chapter was removed. I really shouldn’t be telling you this.”

I have no idea whether Sherry was being mischievous - and I would not wish to put any construction on these "intense feelings" which strike me as indicative of a healthy emotional life - but I’ll ask Coveney whether it’s true or not.

Allison Pearson: Are you married to Anthony or not?

You see, if you place this incomplete sentence in the Google search box - "allison pearson married anthony lane in" - nothing comes up. Usually, at some point, a year is mentioned for a marriage. I notice that in Allison's CV from her agent, PFD, the following statement is made: "She lives in Cambridge with the New Yorker writer Anthony Lane and their two small children."

Now, don't get me wrong. I couldn't care tuppence if Allison and Anthony are married or not. It matters not at all to me. I mean, even the Mail's editor-in-chief Paul Dacre attends gay civil partnership weddings these days. So, it's not as if this is a moral inquiry. This is about being accurate.

Allison speaks highly of marriage: for the purposes of her £350k+ column in the Mail, marriage is the garlic against societal moral deterioration. The other day she wrote highly of Ian Duncan Smith's mooted tax breaks for married couples - this is code for the Mail's Middle England fetish for right behaviour. A number of profiles of Allison and Anthony describe them as married. Yet are they? I'm just asking for a yes or no.

Nothing will happen in consequence of an answer. If they are married, then isn't that wonderful? If they are living by some other arrangement that's OK too - I'm sure Mail readers will understand in these times of lifestyle diversity. I know that Allison is especially cognisant of PR, so maybe she'd like to drop me a line and just clarify the situation. PR is sooooo important.

When we are given moral lectures by gurus of the qualipop zeitgeist, it's sooooo important to know the backstory to the guru. So that we know where he or she is coming from.

Allison Pearson: When did she marry precisely?

And while my mind is on the Mail, would someone tell me where precisely its £350k+ Glenda, Allison Pearson, married her partner Anthony Lane. In profiles of this fine upstanding paragon of marital responsibility - with a natural sympathy for the Tories' rediscovery of the joys of marriage as the centre-piece of civilised society - Lane is described as her "husband", but I feel wretched that I never had an opportunity to send a wedding gift, or even get to cast a hefty bucket of confetti over the pair. My usual delving skills have failed me on this occasion. So would someone plainly tell me the date and venue of the union ceremony - perhaps you were a guest. And of course darling Allison may email me if she wishes ...

Brian Sewell: A beautiful portrait

Thank God (or the gods) that Brian Sewell still has a place in British journalism - as art critic of the London Evening Standard. How editor Veronica Wadley must cringe as a Sewell sentence uncoils like a vast and fattened boa constrictor, minimally interrupted by the occasional comma or semi-colon. His paragraphs, too, are modelled in proportion on the huge chiselled stones of the pyramids; one wonders whether word slaves heave these great blocks into space, as sad little tart hacks elsewhere have to settle for sound-bite prose.

Recently I was privileged to discover the work of Paul Binnie, who I understand is a comfort of sorts to Mr Sewell - but that Madame Arcati could say the same! In particular I was drawn to Paul's portrait in oil of Sewell - a fabulous sight, entitled The Turkophile. You may have seen it already, but in case you haven't, here it is; purloined without permission, so I suppose Mr B will threaten to sue me along with everyone else. He should grant me an interview instead so that we may luxuriate in the aromatherapy of Sewell.

To enjoy Paul Binnie's brilliant art, do visit his site and make him rich(er) [Click here].

For the enlargement of your vocabulary, and other things, do visit the master himself [click here].

PS: Someone once described Sewell's voice thus: "He sounds like a dowager duchess carefully recalling a large turd she was once mistakenly served during tea at Claridge's. After a while, though, you stop noticing the peculiar enunciation; it is the words that fascinate ..."

Tina Brown trashes Mail's and publisher's blurb

On Sky News this lunchtime Tina Brown did two extraordinary things – she trashed the blurb on her book The Diana Chronicles and disowned the Mail's description of her as “a close friend” of Princess Diana.

Of the blurb – which describes Diana as “a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy” – Brown said: “I never wrote that, that’s the blurb. My book is more complicated than that .. it doesn’t have heroes or villains ….” Asked if she distanced herself from the blurb she replied categorically: “Yes”.

As to the Mail, it ran lengthy extracts from the book over two weeks and sold it to readers as the work of a “close friend of Diana”. Brown on Sky said: “That's just the Mail, I was not a close friend of the princess, I was an acquaintance who always approached her as a working journalist …”

A lesson to newspapers and publishers: don’t try to over-sell a canny master of sell.

Jeremy Langmead: heroic revenger

, I'll always adore an elegant revenger, and Jeremy Langmead - the editor-in-chief of the wanky IPC mag Wallpaper* - is my new hero.
He'd already impressed me last week when in an interview with Press Gazette he paid "tribute" to one of his past bosses, Veronica Wadley, editor of the imperilled London Evening Standard. After showering some flattery diversionary nonsense on this ghastly snob he revealed not only that she was Daily Mail-esque (an insult among those who know) but that her editorial line was: "I want this feature and I want the person who was in the train crash yesterday, but she's got to be middle class and she's got to be pretty and wearing a skirt."
Female, a bit monied, not lesbian. Tut-tut.
Today in the Indy's Media section, Jeremy exacts revenge on another ex-boss, some monstronsity I'd never heard of called Alison McDonald. Is she still the editor of the Sunday Times Style magazine? Answers on a postcard. But anyway, Jeremy reveals that she has or had a "generous cleavage which often played host to the ash from her filter-held cigarettes ...."
I like that piece of detail, filter-held.
But it gets better.
Jeremy relates how he dared to book a day off to celebrate his birthday after working a 10-month stint without a break as her deputy on Style. Yet just as his dinner party was about to start here was Alison on the phone demanding he write a 1000-word piece about male celebs' bad hairstyles by 11pm.
Alison could be dead for all I know but I wouldn't be too happy about all this information being released into the public domain. What Jeremy fails to say - and here I have some concern about the state of his soul - is that there's legislation against Alison's kind of abuse. Journalism is not going to rise above its present hellhole status unless we stop trying to make light of dysfunctional managers who veil their incompetence by making everyone else's life a misery.
Blessings nonetheless on the handsome hetero, Jeremy.