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

Click poster once to enlarge

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

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

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

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

Southbank Centre Ticket Office:

0844 847 9910 / Book online

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

Lady Colin Campbell, Kitty Kelley and the truth about Queen's birth story

Lady Colin Campbell in a Windsor sandwich

It gives me great pleasure to bring to your attention the latest work of Lady Colin Campbell ('Georgie' to her friends) - The Untold Story of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Dynasty Press is its publisher (and of which she is a director); and because Lady Colin is a notable figure, she can look forward to heaps of publicity.

On which last point my attention is drawn to the Daily Mail. Earlier this month, the paper whipped up a little fuss over Lady Colin's claim in her book that the Queen and Princess Margaret were conceived by artificial insemination. The story was told with a faint tremor of the shock-horrors, as if the idea had been dreamt up in someone's pretty head for the first time.

In fact this tale made its debut abroad back in 1997, in Kitty Kelley's still-banned book The Royals. I have a copy of it which the late Sheridan Morley illegally secreted to me in a brown paper wrap. On page 23, darling Kitty - a true digger of gilt-coated dirt - relates that the Duke of York could not impregnate his wife - the Duchess (later the Queen Mum) is quoted as joking, 'The Duke is not heir-conditioned.'

Alas his brother, the sometime King Edward VIII (aka David; and Duke of Windsor), also suffered from the condition attributed to 'nervousness' or 'a slight problem with his... willy.'

Kitty writes: 'Finally, on the advice of her [the Duchess'] doctor, Lane Phillips, she and her husband submitted to the unorthodox science of artificial insemination. The arduous procedure of mechanically injecting his sperm into her uterus finally enabled her to get pregnant.'

As to the many other claims in Lady Colin's book (the Mail is a good starting point, click here), I cannot comment; though it is well to remember that she anticipated quite a number of Andrew Morton's tales about Diana and Charles in the early '90s. I recall that a few of the more craven and pathetic royal hagiographers denounced Lady Colin then as they do now as a fantasist.

What people won't say or do to put bread on the table.

The Untold Story of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - to buy click here

Jubilee, 1977: Borgia Ginz reborn as Simon Cowell, and other comings

I do hope Derek Jarman's Jubilee figures peripherally large in the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Released in 1977 in response to the Silver Jubilee, it body-snatched Punk in its depiction of sleep-walking UK, and today still looks more thematically contemporary than anything else listed on Imdb.com, if you're seeking a celluloid facsimile of street and cultural realities.

Is not Borgia Ginz (played sublimely by Jack Birkett), who sneers that people forgot to lead their lives as they 'watched my endless movie', our very own Simon Cowell-Rupert Murdoch cross-breed media magnate pop mogul?

'I sucked, and I sucked and I sucked....'

In the movie, Queen Elizabeth I time-travels 400 years into the latter part of the 20th Century on the 'wings' of Ariel, summoned up by astrologer John Dee. But enough explication. I don't want to ruin it. It is by far the best British movie ever. And that's it.

A taste of things to come....



Borgia's gospel according to Simon Cowell....