Julius Caesar and The Sun's sad attempt to educate PM

I applaud the Sun's attempt to educate the Prime Minister David Cameron on British history after his lamentable, red-faced performance on David Letterman's chat show. The paper prints 20 facts that may be news to the Old Etonian. Alas, we have only to get to fact 2 to spot a howler. 'Roman Emperor Julius Caesar didn't conquer Britain...' it starts. JC was never emperor, not even king. At best he was dictator for life. The first Roman emperor was the later Octavian aka Augustus.

Natalie Rowe and Molly Parkin meet in a shop and discuss George Osborne and toff sex

George Osborne and Natalie Rowe
back in the early naughty 90s

What is it about my darling (everlasting) fiancee Molly Parkin and shops?

Only the other day she told us about her encounter with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their kids in Ad Hoc, the King's Road cutting-edge fashion store. Now she tells me that about 18 months ago she chanced on another noted beauty of some notoriety in a shop - Natalie Rowe, the lady and 'dominatrix' who claims to have kept the smile on George Osborne's fresh, shiny face long before he unleashed austerity upon us as Chancellor.

This unscheduled meeting took place in King's Road newsagent Lucky Me Enterprise. 'It was early evening,' says Molly. 'I understand now she's a regular customer there. I went in to buy my chocolate eclairs and rubbish celebrity magazines. And this beautiful creature wearing a wonderful perfume approached me and said, "It's Molly Parkin isn't it? I'm one of your biggest fans - I love your writing and reading about you...". And then she told who she was - Natalie Rowe.

Molly Parkin

'She had such glamour, translucent skin and a beautiful mouth, and laughing eyes. An educated girl, an upper class Chelsea accent; high bohemian. She waited for me to make my purchases and then we walked out together and along the King's Road in the Sloane Square direction. I asked her what she did for a living - I didn't recognise her name or recognise her from the famous party photo [above] of her with George Osborne when he was a 22 year-old Oxford graduate.

'She said: "You've not heard of me? I used to be a madam, I ran Black Beauties." And I said: "Oh, I always wanted to be a madam!" I'd conducted orgies in New York and at my old house in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. She told me she'd sold a story to the Sunday Mirror about George Osborne, and mentioned something about the News of the World and phone hacking (when Andy Coulson was editor) and how George was denying using cocaine at one of her parties [which he has repeatedly denied since].

'I asked Natalie: "Did you fuck him?" She replied: "Absolutely".

'I said that he's a typical Old Etonian, isn't he. [Osborne did not go to Eton, btw] In my experience, Old Etonians have a predilection for vice girls. I told her of an Old Etonian I'd known, an aristocrat, and how he'd asked me to wear a tightly belted mackintosh in a bed with rubber sheets - he loved the feel of them - and I'd asked him, "Are you incontinent?" He'd given me a vintage yellow Rolls Royce and had champagne delivered to my door every morning. He even gave me diamond rings which I gave to mother. Sadly the rings were stolen by a window cleaner.

'We laughed a lot talking about Old Etonians and their love of exciting sex which some call kinkiness and then she told me that publishers had approached her to write her story - I know she mentioned Bloomsbury, which surprised me, as publishers of Harry Potter.

'We must have talked and laughed for about half-an-hour. She said, "I love talking with you and would love to talk again." We hugged and parted our separate ways. I felt we were sisters under the skin; she's a sweetheart.'

Natalie sounds adorable. Do get in touch if you read this, poppet. Certainly bachelor George had great taste in, er, interesting friends.

PS If you're famous and see Moll in a shop, do go talk to her. I'm all ears!

Hugh Grant, the former Screws hack and the haunted pub in Dover

The Castle Inn, Dover

It's certainly the most delicious media story of the year (to date). A major British actor bugs the hack who once bugged him. Their topic of conversation: illegal phone hacking. Part of the transcript of Hugh Grant's highly revealing taped conversation with former News of the World whistle-blower Paul McMullan is now online at the New Statesman website: click here.

Priceless nuggets include Andy Coulson's alleged complicity in phone hacking, the PM's unhealthy proximity to Rupert Murdoch moll Rebekah Brooks (who, as one witty Arcatiste has pointed out to me, looks more like Robert Plant every day) and how Murdoch wickedly plays his multi-media games with celebrity pawns - the Nicole Kidman/Moulin Rouge! tale is a thing of beauty.

Grant travelled to the Dover pub/hotel McMullan runs, The Castle Inn, where all was revealed; and he generously encourages readers to pay the establishment a visit. It sits on the corner of Dolphin Lane and Russell Street. Click here to read about the colourful history of the 18th century coaching inn: it is of course haunted, and the medium Derek Acorah will want to know about the 'creaks, icy blasts and apparitions' should he ever be called in for a spot of exorcism.

I only mention all this because I want to see Mr McMullan safe and secure in his new business, out of harm's way and solvent. He is a very important source for future scholars of the worst scandal ever to hit British newspapers. Long may he thrive.

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

Richard Dennen

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

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

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

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

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

Madame Arcati's Top 10 Sexiest Posts of 2010!

Kevin Spacey CBE: bio post is No 1

Happy New Year, poppets! 2010 was the year Madame Arcati retired and then resurrected herself. I would love to say that my comeback owed to a public clamour but in fact, as in all things, my own moods played dictator. Blogging in itself serves no useful purpose beyond adding to the online cacophony. The only point to Madame Arcati is I get read.

Now I know you love lists, so here's my top 10 Madame Arcati posts of 2010, with a little commentary.

1. In terms of reader comments, most surprisingly popular post was my piece on the world's first Kevin Spacey (CBE, hon*.) biography, authored by famous Spaceyphile, Robin Tamblyn, click here. If you only read the books pages of our newspapers and literary mags, you'd never know that Hollywood's most secretive actor finally has an unauthorised Boswell. Self-published books always pose a challenge to book editors: who's to tell them if the book's any good? Mostly, these whores of journalism take their cues from their friends in publishing and from publishers' imprints. God knows what they'd make of the Bible were it submitted anonymously for consideration.

2. While bloggers serve no useful purpose in the general sense, they can be useful as trend muscle. So when Madame Arcati joined the online campaign against a plan to appoint Rod Liddle as editor of the Independent, one knew the war was won. Why anyone thought that a right-wing fool could be saviour of a leftish newspaper was beyond comprehension. Did someone forget to eat their spinach? So I was delighted to write the headline: "Rod Liddle won't be editing the Independent". Click here.

3. Sheila Vogel-Coupe - crazy name! This porno star and prostitute, octogenarian granny of an X Factor starlet already almost forgotten, brought tens of thousands of readers to the blog, much to my amazement. I made her my woman of the year. The link should indirectly take you to the site where you can view her engaged in various sex acts, including a copious money-shot. Click here.

4. Saddest exclusive ran on June 17 when I announced the death of Sebastian Horsley. A few journalists thought I'd made it up. A mutual friend tipped me off instead of running to the newspapers. I think Sebastian would have approved. I'm still getting over the photo of him having sex with an amputee - I wonder if I should put it up. Click here.

5. Another surprisingly popular read was my post "Rachel Johnson's A Diary Of The Lady: Masterly at the authorial hand-job". Rachel, editor of the old cunties' weekly The Lady, wrote me a fan letter informing me that Madame Arcati had a page in her book. How expertly she plays the ego. It was only correct that I review the tome, click here. Her book is a Madame Arcati favourite bathroom read along with Albert Speer's memoirs and a bio of Anna Wintour.

6. Most cynical post of the year was "Justin Bieber's penis: a post-modernist approach to blogging". I'd read that the tiny virgin megastar was one of the most searched names on Google so I Arcatised him to draw in a new generation seeking celebrity cock. They will have been disappointed but enlightened of irony, blogging, journalism and celebrity obsession. Click here.

7. "Reward Showbiz™: The 10 most pointless celebrity books and TV shows" proved a lure. So many TV shows and books are created simply to reward celebrity, just ask Joanna Lumley or Michael Palin. So this spawned yet another sleb list. Click here. Sorry.

8. Kate Reardon's appointment as Tatler editor introduced me to the concept of a spinning vagina. I offer this piece as an antidote to churnalism - the writing-up of PR announcements in our newspapers. Click here.

9. Duncan Fallowell gifted me a wonderful anecdote about the fashion designer Valentino; something about his elaborate relationship with the wind. Click here.

10. Permanent fiancee Molly Parkin published her Mollywood memoirs this year, and included in them a sweet, true reminiscence about the two of us. I'm sorry her family don't take us seriously: but that's what families are for, to look out for one. Read my review, Dodging the Conventional Cunts: click here. Do follow the labels on Molly: her interview with me on cocks and spirituality could change your life. In February 2011 all of Moll's erotic novels are reissued by Beautiful Books - they're as freshly witty, sexy and funny as the day they were born.

And on that note, have an austerity-free 2011 under the most miserable and wretched of governments. x

*Shouldn't he have got a knighthood, hon.?

Iain Dale blog announces its murder: Old Etonians held as suspects

As expected, the Iain Dale blog has announced its demise. A nano-second's silence, please. The right-wing Mr D denies he's shutting up shop because the Tories are in power; and attributes his disenchantment with blogging to its damaging effect on his business and whatnot. This may be partly true, but actually the obvious and crassest main reason should not be blithely discounted.

He lost his mojo because the Tories are in power.

While Blair lied through his teeth and Brown impotently sulked and raged, Dale had a cause. The alternative to New Labour had to be preferred at the very least, and Dale was tenacious in the fight. He was an excellent Tory propagandist blogger in opposition. His raison d'etre: to get the Tories into power. And now that the smooth, suave, patronising Old Etonian plutocracy holds sway... oh, dear. Even Dale must see the calamity ahead.

An eroded NHS, a hostile disillusioned student population, local services ravaged, mass redundancies, a war on the poor, sick and incapable, quid pro quo plural privatisations of social services for Tory donors - well, you know all this and the rest. Even rickets is making a comeback.

Could you imagine the Dale blog thriving on a diet of friendly Tory tales amid the government's crazy slash and burn realities? A successful political blog will by its nature ply against power or else just be a fan site - BBC blogs excluded. Dale doesn't strike me as the power fan site type. So off he goes to his LBC radio show and his publishing company to consolidate his ker-ching thing. Wise.

He ran out of a blogging script for the party he will continue to support from the sidelines. Not for him reader withering scorn as he attempted to defend the trustafarian Old Etonians lecturing the rest of us that getting something for nothing is not open to all. In style terms, I'm sure he sensed the vulgarity of his Westminster pals.

A nano-second's pause, please, for a hollow laugh. Meanwhile, will Guido be next?

Mark McGowan: 'Beware people with short arms!'

I had vowed not to give further promotion to performance artist Mark McGowan's videos after his ghastly support for the Tories* at the last election. Fancy being a nihilist notice-moi-ist (moist?) who thinks Old Etonians can run a modern multi-cultural democracy (as if!): even our benign anarchists nowadays are no better than Julian - Downton Abbey - Fellowes or Louis - 'Wag-ner' - Walsh.

But Mark's latest movie, 'We are being controlled by the internet' (click here) has at least wit.  We see the silly poppet prone on his bed mucking about on the internet and offering us a series of Alf Garnett-y reaction shots to the online bedlam. Obama's a jackass, lizard-hating David Icke's admirable (such is the level of satire)... and we are warned: beware people with short arms. I am most disappointed that he does not mention Madame Arcati, though I do not have short arms. He should at least have mentioned Daniel Radcliffe's cock or Sheila Vogel-Coupe's 81-year-old snatch as part of the Arcati online mental stew. I mean, who cares if Britney Spears is short?

How very remiss. How very Old Etonian of him.

*Mark now claims in comments that he did not support the Tories. Likewise, may be this posting is satire in kind.

Austerity Britain: Cameron's cuppa and Hitler's soup

Would the PM fancy this model?

The Old Etonian political editor of the UK-based American tabloid The Sun, Tom Newton Dunn, exclusively reveals that David Cameron has 'banned tea and coffee being served to No10 mandarins at their desks to save taxpayers' money' in austerity Britain.

An 'insider' (surely not Tory boss spinner Andy Coulson) is quoted as saying: 'The PM is determined that he and his staff should not be enjoying luxuries while the rest of the country is having to make do with less. He wants to prove we really are all in this together.'

However the message is somewhat sullied by this exception: 'But the Prime Minister will still be served at his desk - as his time is deemed too precious to waste queuing.'

Now, don't laugh! There's far too much cynicism abroad (I mean, at home). We should accept that our multi-millionaire PM's heart is in the right place. And his gesture is not unique in the annals of leaders' presentational sensitivity.

Quite by chance I am reading Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich. On p179 he writes: 'When, at the instance of the party, word was sent out that all households in Germany should eat a one-dish meal on Sundays, thereby promoting guns instead of butter, only a tureen of soup was served at Hitler's table too.' When the number of his lunchtime guests shrank in consequence, Hitler remarked sarcastically 'about the spirit of sacrifice among his associates....'

Goodness knows what the Führer would have made of Cameron's aversion to brew-queuing. Can't someone buy the Old Etonian a teasmade?

Zac Goldsmith: Saving the world on one cigar at a time?

Observers of the new Tory MP for Richmond Park, mega-wealthy Eton reject, former non-dom and recent divorcé, Zac Goldsmith, have long been amused by his championing of green causes while he puffs on scraggy roll-ups.

Still, at least he's not some ghastly holier-than-thou prig. When you're said to be worth an estimated £300m, and are young, tall and handsome, and the brother to Jemima Khan, it's as well to flaunt your human weaknesses, if only to neutralise the bitter envy of paupies.

Perhaps partly to this end, I understand Zac used regularly to drive from his home in Richmond to Jermyn Street to buy a single cigar at Davidoff of London. His preference was to shop when the 'glittery' store had the Closed sign up, in the manner of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana at Harrods.

My well-connected informant reports that when it was suggested to Zac that he might want to buy a box of cigars in order to save on the petrol he appeared underwhelmed. This I think not unreasonable on health if not environmental grounds. It is entirely possible that he could not trust himself with a whole box in a 24-hour period. Was it not Mark Twain who once said, 'I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.'?

How much Zac's enforced rationing reduced his carbon footprint I cannot imagine, but the more mathematical among you with time on your hands may fancy the challenge.

Of course my spy may have just dreamt all of this up on the grounds of envy. In these times of neo-Old Etonian English governance, class warriors are enjoying an alarming resurgence.

Mark McGowan's 10,000 prostrations to David Cameron

Mark McGowan plans to prostrate himself 10,000 times in front of a "large photographic image of Conservative leader David Cameron on (election day) May 6th, 2010, opposite number 10 Downing Street."

He explains: "The prostrations can be seen as a sign of reverence to a noble man, David Cameron, the man who can lead this country out of the problems we are in. It should take me about two-and-a-half days to complete, I will start at 10am on Thursday 6th May and finish on Saturday 8th May, by which time this country will see a new leader. Gordon Brown, the Labour party and champagne socialism is over."

So, over to champagne Toryism instead. Except of course you can't get into Downing St these days without an invitation and the police won't allow him to loiter about outside for long. I just hope Mark doesn't end up with sciatica.

Joanna Lumley: Labour's last card against this goddess of AOL torture

The government is of course very foolish to upset Joanna - "Ayo Gurkhali!" - Lumley (again) over the Gurkhas. On Monday (or today if you're reading this on Monday; or yesterday if Tuesday, etc) she will single-handedly hammer the last nail into the Labour coffin. I had hoped Labour would scrape home but I see now all is lost, thanks to Joanna.

As I write she is, as Lady Penelope once was, an untouchable national treasure, the embodiment of the upper class geist that is about to repossess the Brits for the umpteenth time through the 19th Etonian PM (to-be) aka the half-wit former PR David Cameron.

Foreigners should understand that the Brits like the taste of upper class asshole: it's part of the ingrained cuisine (pause to spit out hair strands, inter alia, unsweetened by absence of bidet). They adore modulated vowels for it plays to the national Capricornian desire for hereditary privilege and power as expressed in sound and deportment and approved antecedents (cue: spires).

There is however one card left for Labour to play against the Nepalese goddess Joanna. It's called the AOL card. For years, Joanna's voice has been used to annoy AOL subscribers with an unwelcome welcoming message and the lie "You've got email". It's a lie because AOL users are blighted with this message whether they have email or not. Worse, she is the voice of "You've got company (bang)". It is another lie. The subscriber does not have any online company. It is just a noise-message intended to piss one off as the odd unfortunate ejaculates over the keyboard.

Somebody at AOL actually sat down one day and said, 'Oh, let's see how we can really piss off our customers. Great! Get Joanna Lumley to tell them over and over again that they have company (bang)'. It was marketing by irritation, as practised by those confuse.com TV ads, and others. The intention is to batter you into brand-recognition compliance through torture, a sort of extraordinary rendition for the sofa- (or swivel chaired-) bound.

Of course the goddess hadn't a clue she was just a tongue puppet for these wicked corporate shenanigans. She read the messages off a sheet and collected her substantial cheque. She gave no thought to the possibility that her voice would become one of the most detested sounds on the internet. Like the late Leni Riefenstahl, she is the creative incidental to the cultural foulness. For a goddess, Joanna is peculiarly stupid.

Joanna should be publicly reviled by Labour as a modern-day Lord Haw-Haw, as the expression of something noxious, whether witting or not. She should have foreseen this horror. There is not a day that passes by that I do not wish this ghastly woman some dreadful end for the earache and the headache and the ultimate heartache.

How to turn her off

English Mentors: Flogging Brideshead dreams to the foreign rich

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

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

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

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

Eton College: No more strangulation games at £29k a year Tory school, I trust

Prince William models the Eton look*

All this talk of a political "class war" in the build-up to the next general election (because the next Tory government will be largely Old Etonian in character) draws me to Eton College, celebrating its 570th birthday in 2010. Its lucid website describes a most excellent nursery for those fated by God - or at least by parental wealth - to lead us.

The fee per boy boarder per year is £28,851, plus extras for music tuition, "tradesmen's bills", etc. Assuming a boarder stays at Eton for five years (from ages 13-18), that will set back his parents by at least £144,255 at current charges, probably more in practice. Anyone who harbours fears that Eton is a haven of classlessness - David Cameron is after all known as "Dave" - is reassured that "the house system provides excellent opportunities for boys to discover their leadership skills in their final two years in the school."

Eton's most recent Ofsted report, of October 9, 2009, judged the school to be "outstanding". However a close reading of this document reveals at least two areas of concern. The first: "There is a lack of suitable safeguards on some windows." What could this mean? If I were shelling out £144,255 on my brat's education, I'd want to know about the windows. One trusts they are double-glazed at the very least. Iron bars optional.

Even more troubling is the section on severe allergies. Somewhat illiterately, the inspector writes: "In one house, whilst staff were aware of the risk to health, did not sufficiently monitor foods brought into the house that is a serious threat to a boarders well being." Perhaps this would read a little better as:  "In one house, foods which were brought in and which posed a serious threat to a boarder's well-being, were not sufficiently monitored, despite staff awareness of risk to health." One expects better of an Ofsted inspector.

The report rhapsodises on Eton's procedures against misconduct and misrule. Just as well. As recently as 1999 a Berkshire inquest heard how up to 10 Eton boys indulged in "fainting games" - thrill-seeking near-strangulations - after a pupil was found tragically hanged at the college. No satsumas were involved. A 14-year-old boy told the inquest: "You sit on a bed and someone produces a dressing gown cord and it is wrapped around your neck. One or two friends will pull it until you feel dizzy and faint for a few minutes. The attraction was that it was something different - it made you feel abnormal."

One can only hope Eton has eliminated entirely exotic subterranean activities of this sort - though I am sure future Old Etonian memoirs will paint a very different picture from that prettily framed by Ofsted in 2009.

*At 13, William was sent to Eton College, close to Windsor, a choice well-suited to a boy with a public future, not least because his new classmates would be as well-connected and as well-heeled as he: the Prince would not even be the only boy with a private detective." The Royal Report.