Sarah Jane Morris sings Molly Parkin's 'Sally'

Sarah Jane Morris singing 'Sister Sally and Me'. Lyrics by Molly Parkin. Music by Simon Wallace. Filmed by Robert Chilcott. Total bliss - and a taste of things to come from the album, the stage show and the multi-media movie experience. You can see Moll in the video relishing Sarah Jane's stunning performance.

Molly Parkin: Erotic novel Love: All re-released - and then there's the movie!

Available at just £1.99

Style icon, artist and poet Molly Parkin has just re-released her huge 70s global bestselling erotic novel Love: All in kindle. Lovely portrait on the cover - she was 37 then and pregnant - 'That gave me a glow,' she tells me. 

The book can be bought for just £1.99 here.

Her publisher Piers Dudgeon (of Pilot Productions) has penned a wonderful foreword and afterword on Moll - and delicately plays down the TLS's excoriating denunciation of Love: All in 1974. 'Utterly lacking in style, wit and intelligence,' wrote some sad, forgotten reviewer before cataloguing the novel's literary sexual offences, which included a half rape by a homosexual and the enlargement of the heroine Myopia's anus by a French restaurateur.

Her then publisher Star was so delighted that the review was used to advertise the work. 'This led to massive sales as the "critique" - or rancid attack as I prefer to call it - just about described the entire plot and sexual shenanigans,' Moll says. 'It was my very first review and the chap (I assume) truly went to town.

'Love: All will soon be made into a film thanks in part to that TLS fuck-wit - if he is reading this, if he and his withered scrotum are still alive, having survived my own literary success, he's a cunt.'

The Love: All movie is now well in development. Robert Chilcott is directing. And Moll reveals that the hunt is on for the perfect unknown to play wantonly ambitious Myopia - 'The nationwide search will be like Selznick's quest for his Scarlett in Gone with the Wind,' adds Moll. 'No blondes or brown eyes need apply!

Former CPS lawyer Clifford Allison
 plays Myopia's father in Love: All

''Myopia must look a bit like me. Love: All will have an improvisational quality - sort of Warhol-meets-Woody Allen-meets Mike Leigh.' 

A contact address for aspiring Myopias will be published shortly.

Biba legend Barbara Hulanicki is designing the costumes; performance artist/sculptor and jewellery-maker Andrew Logan (founder of Alternative Miss World) is attached to the project as is celebrated artist Julie Verhoeven as creative designer. Musical director is the awesome composer and pianist Simon Wallace (whose musical TV credits include Ab Fab, French and Saunders and the Ruby Wax Show; and he collaborated with US lyricist Fran Landesman until her death in 2011). And not forgetting ex-lawyer Clifford Allison, formerly of the Crown Prosecution Service's Special Crime Division (now a nude model) - he will play Myopia's father.

Moll explains: 'Clifford is brilliantly witty and he will appear naked in the film - Myopia fellates her father.' 

And I have some other casting news. I shall be playing aspiring Prime Minister, Charles. Moll advises me: 'Charles likes to fuck Myopia three times in a row after or before partaking of gourmet nuggets from a Fortnum & Mason hamper in bed. So, the astrologer of The Lady magazine will be involved in quite torrid love scenes. 

'It's quite all right if you get an erection, sweetheart. Keira Knightley told me that actors wear a tight body stocking for such eventualities.'

With a soundtrack based around Molly's latest poems and lyrics, Love: All will make for a fascinating addition to film festivals the worldover.

Love: All is available for £1.99 in kindle edition. Click here to buy

Molly Parkin: New portrait by Paul Sakoilsky

The Dark Times: Portraits (Molly Parkin), Paul Sakoilsky, 6 March 2012

Love this new portrait of the fiancee by Paul Sakoilsky, editor-in-chief of The Dark Times - a non-publication composed of abandoned newspapers (free or paid-for) reconstructed from the usual trials of celebrity and bad news. For more on The Dark Times series, click here. To enlarge, click pic once.

Molly Parkin's 80th birthday party: 'No fucking corporates invited'

Molly Parkin between the legs of her own effigy which
 greeted guests at the Chelsea Arts Club entrance.
Photo by Tommy Candler

Swathed in a unique shoulder-to-floor scarlet creation, light glinting off a vast Andrew Logan mirror brooch (black nail varnish matching what she insisted was a 'glass not plastic' jet bracelet from Murano), Molly Parkin gazed down on a heaving crowd of party-guests and gave her advice to womenfolk, apropos men:  'Fuck 'em, don't marry 'em!'

We're at Molly's 80th birthday bash. Friday night, Feb 3. She's addressing friends and liggers at London's legendary Chelsea Arts Club from a high-up balcony - her 'Mussolini moment'; or as she prefers, 'My Jesus on the Mount' impression. She loves that a newspaper recently made her 'theologian of the week' after she told the Indy on Sunday that Christ, like she, 'would have had sex with everyone' had he, like she, lived through the 60s.

The Jesus act ends when she lifts out her top denture, waggling it at the screaming crowd, and delivers the rest of her speech half-toothless. 'Well, I was afraid my teeth would fall out and break,' she told me later.

Molly outside the Chelsea Arts Club being
filmed by Robert Chilcott.
Photo by Duggie Fields

At least three hundred Boho-Soho-beau mo types crammed into the club's main hall to celebrate the birth of this, yes (awful word, I know), 'iconic' woman whose fashion style, beauty, wit and rumbustious life still inspire or astonish.

'I don't want any fucking corporates at this party,' she had said earlier in her room at the club. No suit zombies, no kerching hustlers. Just fellow artists, child-souls and 'people living their passion.' Three beautiful dresses were laid out on the double-bed - the scarlet one she wore later, a black one traced with scarlet and her 'gilded beauty outfit'; not forgetting the black swan ruffled or feathered ensemble with black turban she wore already. She'd got through all four self-stitched costumes by night's end.

In her honour, the club had decorated its outside walls with many monochrome portraits and cartoons of Molly by the artist Tony Common. She was particularly touched by a line montage of life in her birth place, Pontycymer, Wales. And over the main entrance stood a giant wooden Molly effigy 'so that people can walk through my legs and look up at my cunty,' as she put it.

Molly with daughter Sophie Parkin.
Photo: Tommy Candler

First, the apologies. Dame Judi Dench couldn't make it so sent teetotal Moll a magnum of champagne. Barry Humphies had just flown back to Australia and Mavis Nicholson had slipped on the ice. Twiggy was on her way but got held up by snow. Sian Phillips: just too exhausted. Andrew Logan was in India: he gifted her a beautiful brooch with a hologram eye the same colour as Moll's eyes: green-blue-grey, depending on the light. Zandra Rhodes, intriguingly, was held up by a person from Egypt. Bob Geldof - well, what happened, Bob?

But had he or any of the others turned up, would they have got in? The club's hall was chocka for most the evening. As was the makeshift smokers' tent 'for the cancer-seekers,' said Moll.

Marc Almond made it having just returned from New York. He looked astonishingly youthful and healthy - quite a contrast to the nonsense one hears following his bike crash years ago and claims that he never goes out. In fact he was recently spotted in the Colony. In his Soft Cell days he looked to Moll as his hair and makeup muse - he even lived with Moll in her Cheyne Walk house back in the 80s. 'He was like my understudy,' she says.

Another gifted sleb she discovered, or at least helped to fame when she was fashion ed of the Sunday Times, was Manolo Blahnik CBE who turned up in treble cashmere. Never less than exquisite, with hair so stiff you could pick a lock with it, he now describes himself as a 'factory boy' because he sits at a lathe to make his shoes. 'I have never been happier than to be one of the boys.' He gave Molly a letter which entitles her to select a pair of shoes as his birthday gift next time she visits one of his shops.

Another behemoth of fashion inspiration is Barbara Hulanicki OBE, founder of clothes store Biba. She'd flown over from the States for the do and wore her trademark shades. We didn't get to talk much but I did introduce her to The Lady's editor-in-chief, Rachel Johnson, who put in an admirable display of targeted socialising.

Once she had talked to Barbara, Rachel then insisted we seek out Moll. A few minutes later, seated birthday girl appeared to revive the Jesus act as Rachel knelt down before her in an act of slebby supplication and told he she looked 'hot' and gorgeous. I don't think Our Lord & Saviour could have hoped for a blessing anything like that.

I was also delighted to welcome Duncan Fallowell, friend of this blog, and once described rather mischievously by Gore Vidal as 'the canapes' on London's literary circuit. We managed a quick embrace before he was lost to others and a long night ahead. He was spotted gossing with Duggie Fields, accompanying a fabulous Italian girl in shocking pink and leopardskin, and then with Jenny Runacre, 'looking like a Russian countess - she gets better and better,' to quote Duncs.

Molly outside the Chelsea Arts Club. Tony
Common drawing. Photo: Tommy Candler

Cosmo's veteran agony aunt Irma Kurtz also sticks in  my memory because we discussed astrology. She told me she's a double Virgo with (I think) Capricorn Moon (or was it Libra?). Awfully down-to-earth. Mysticism does not interest her: as a humanist/atheist, she's taken with the idea that animal energies explain so much of what passes for psychism. But when I pointed out that I do not know most of my astrological clients, she agreed that was a hard one to explain away.

I could carry on name-dropping but won't. Everyone agreed it was a contender for party of the year - Duncan described it as 'anarchic'. I loved the Marlborough-educated  former barrister and public prosecutor Clifford who gave up his life of lawyering to become a nude male model for the likes of Lucien Freud after being impressed by the free spirited lives of Moll and her sometime late lover George Melly.

I know Moll was utterly delighted by the guests and their many gifts, including cash. 'The central heating boiler broke down at the weekend so the money was useful to keep me warm,' she said.

She added of life at 80: 'I'm at the pinnacle of refinement after a time in the gutter and pleasuring meat porters. I know spiritual contentment.'

Moll is now planning her 90th birthday party.

Molly Parkin: Orgies, Nefertiti, Blahnik - all on BBC Wales

You have six days left to watch BBC Wales' Great Lives on Molly Parkin, directed sublimely by Robert Chilcott - click here, iPlayer. (Because of 'adult' themes you have to assure the web site you're over 16)

Molly recollects the orgies she choreographed at New York's Chelsea Hotel (I think) - most self-empowering. Great archive TV footage moments to savour - don't miss daughter Sophie ordering the groceries as a young thing or Moll sparring with some old TV goat who suggests her novels are porn. Steve Strange looks fiercely quaint in what looks like a gorgeously chintzy-tinkly hotel tea room in Wales; and I had no idea Manolo Blahnik owes his career to Moll. Where would the shoe be now without him and her?

I can be spotted as the astrologer at some point likening her to Nefertiti, but don't blink.

Watchers of exotics can wallow in her variously outlandish get-ups over the years, all the more striking set against the timeless male interviewer suits: visual code for TV's essential conservatism. Did you see Ant and Dec in their dark suits on Britain's Got Talent last night? They could be hosting Pebble Mill At One with Moll pissed back in the 70s - that's in the doc, too (minus Ant and Dec).

Great Lives is a wonderful snapshot reprise of an extraordinary life; and I look forward to a longer edit so I can see more of me and Moll (sorry, Moll and me).

Molly Parkin - Great Lives show scheduled on BBC One Wales

Followers of my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin should know that BBC One Wales broadcasts a bio of her next Monday, May 30.

Great Lives: Molly Parkin is presented by former Minister of Culture, Kim Howells, and includes contributions from many other living legends such as Steve Strange (running a B&B in Wales I believe), Andrew Logan, Madame Arcati (minus her normal costume) and others.

I'm hoping they run the show on iPlayer; and if you have Sky, look out for it there. More details here.

I believe a longer version of the show is being prepared. And I've advised the director of the above, Robert Chilcott, to put out a nine hour DVD of Moll's peregrinations, including our visit to Croatia in 2009.

Robert must have 100 miles of footage. Think The Only Way is Essex, Roberto!

PS - Robert has sent me the complete list of contributors to the show:

Victor Olliver
Irma Kurtz
Barbara Hulanicki
Ian Shaw
Darren Coffield
Malcolm Hart
Judy Strafford (art school friend)
Manolo Blahnik
Michael Horowitz
Steve Strange
Stuart Lyon (Mollys former agent)

Molly Parkin on Desert Island Discs

Portrait by Darren Coffield

If you missed Molly Parkin on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs this morning, here's a chance to catch up. She's described as the 'grande dame of Bohemian living' and talks vividly of her life.

Click here.

PS Following the show, her memoir Welcome To Mollywood rocketed up the Amazon Biography sales chart. Even Madame experienced a surge with over 4000 extra visitors to the various posts on Moll (see labels).

Review: Welcome to Mollywood by Molly Parkin: Dodging the conventional cunts

Moll. Picture by Anthony Lycett

Back in the summer of 2009, Molly, a few of her family members and I spent a wonderful week or so together in torrid Croatia being filmed by Robert Chilcott for a fly-on-the-wall TV show (see labels for dispatches). One afternoon Robert mentioned in passing to me that Moll had written a memoir - including a sensational chapter on Elizabeth Taylor - but had now set it aside as other interests crowded in. Over the coming weeks we both encouraged her to find a publisher: and so 15 months later here it is at last - Welcome to Mollywood.

I came up with the title, partly inspired by the idea of a high bohemian Mollywood theme park based on her extraordinary life - turban-shaped bumper cars, haunted houses of very peculiar happenings (who else but Molly would could lose her dentures to kleptomaniac mice?); The Colony Soho drinking den reconstructed and peopled with boozing android versions of Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard, Dan Farson, Muriel Belcher, Moll herself and other monstres sacrés of lowlife high life; fashion catwalks a-swirl with 90-year-old models (hello Lady Astor) and 20 year-old boys with semis; basement clubs for the recitation of bawdy poetry and filthy jokes followed by wild dancing; ashrams for meditation and incense sniffing; nightclub art galleries staffed by ambitious fellationists (hello Croatia)....

And a psychic pagoda for a working cyborg of ... Madame Arcati herself, as played by Moll's unlikely early fashion muse Margaret Rutherford in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit. Your future to be told.

At the entrance to this imaginarium of din and raffish incongruity would be a message, the same words to be found on p171 of Mollywood, of the people she might have encountered in her alternative fantasy careers as corporate boss or parliamentary Speaker: 'I didn't want to move amongst such a boring set of conventional cunts.'

Among writers, poets, painters, actors, fashion queens and (oddly) barristers she has found refuge from the conventional cunts all her adult life: and even among the last, she will detect the pulse of a hidden fellow sensitive across a long room, or distant on the internet. Wisely, her publisher Beautiful Books has not attempted to restore order where whim, caprice, impulse, inspiration, addiction even, reign. Anecdotes of famous lovers and friends, stories of bankruptcy, alcoholism and victory, are interrupted by long sideshows and nattery hitchhikers in a funny, readable stream-of-consciousness. There's no question Moll can be daffy as a duck. Then she'll shock you with a sudden laser of insight, just when you thought she had a screw loose.

Which reminds me, Molly on Radio 4's Loose Ends with Clive Anderson the other day. The one-time (yes!) barrister host plainly found some of her stories hard to believe, such as spanking barrister John Mortimer's arse or nearly losing her cherry to Louis Armstrong or fucking a 23-year-old surfer boy at the age of 73. 'I don't do pinches of salt,' responded Moll before taking her plastic denture out to studio gasps. All I can say is that her version of our friendship and relationship is intuitively true as well as subtly told. Between the raucous broad brush strokes of her life narration is some very fine miniature work.

Gossers hoping for nuggets about the Sunday Times or Nova, or about the soapy detail of her marriages, will have nothing to repeat at the garden fence. Huge life events are pole-vaulted in a sentence while matters of eccentric interest to her hog the book in pages of comedy and character. Mollywood is a distillation of a life nowhere near its end, but there's enough killer detail to fill a wanker's imagination. What exactly did she do with those entire rugby teams away from their mammies?

Oh yes, one for Christmas, dearies (and the late George Melly sends his love).

Welcome to Mollywood, buy here

Turf Feinz movie: Dance can beat the gangsta crap?

Everyone's making movies it seems. Molly Parkin's being shadowed by Robert Chilcott for a BBC show and a fly-on-the-wall, Duncan Fallowell's directing films (see post below), Madame Arcati is to be filmed next month in Hove. And now writer Farah Damji has produced and directed a short movie called Letz Dance about Turf Feinz, a group of black American gang members from Oakland, near San Francisco, pioneering a new type of street dance with a social purpose. 

When the Huffington Post published a piece on them a fortnight ago, their dance video went viral and has received over 1.4m YouTube views to date. The hope is that by raising their profile, and inspiring other dance groups to form, more creative approaches can be developed to counter gang-related street crime - here in the UK and the US.

In short, turf dancers want to reclaim the streets (and I hope make way for little old ladies such as myself who may be unnerved at the sight of sexy, lithe cockers throwing out their arms and legs on street corners to funny music).

Farah's film includes an interview with the blogger and poet Tristan Hazell who talks about turf (an acronym for taking up room on the floor) dance, the beauty of Turf Feinz and the power to change a world. Watch Farah's movie here.

Croatia: Cock-cunting professor gets a Molly mangling

See Croatian photo album in postings below
l to r: Film director Robert Chilcott, actress Carson Parkin-Fairley, Molly Parkin and some tag-along. Photo: Jadran Babič of Slobodna Dalmacija. Click images for full size.

Poor Professor S! Out of humanity I shall not publish his name. But yesterday he was fed into the Molly Parkin sausage machine and spewed out as mangled mince; or dumped like a turd at the water's edge on the Croatian island of Brač. Even now I inwardly cringe at his operatic humiliation. But the tale has to be told.

The Professor had dreamt of an idyllic day celebrating the work of a Croatian painter: a charming woman in a lovely dress. And who better to invite along as honoured guests to partake in this appreciation on Brač than the famous artist Molly Parkin and her entourage (now including newly arrived daughter Sophie and husband Jan)? The Ghetto Club's Sonja had phoned our hotel to tell us that the promised six-seater taxi had not been booked so we must get cracking and phone for two taxis to get our party to the harbour at Split within the hour. "I have a surprise for Molly!" Molly's granddaughter Carson had barely finished washing her hair and she was bundled into a car. So the group mood was already faintly toxic.

The surprise! Kočani Orkestar greet Molly. Click each image for full size. Photos by MA


The harbour surprise was Gypsy brass band Kočani Orkestar with Sonja at the head, clapping. A very generous and charming gesture. Molly was utterly delighted, dancing to their music as they trailed us to the ferry before the 50 minute trip to Brač. "I'm a Gypsy, you know," she chided on the boat when her entourage proved churlish about the racket. "You're all killjoys!" And the mood turned darker when it dawned we were not about to meet Croatia's cultural elite here but to be treated to a walking cultural tour of the island: or "traipsing" as Molly called it. "I don't do traipsing," she declared to the Prof. We refused to traipse: instead I noticed a sign in the grass showing a dog with an erection and took a pic of Molly posing behind it. The Prof looked most put out. Someone explained that the erection was actually doggy poo and is not encouraged in public places.

We anchored ourselves in a waterside bar in front of a noisy church as the art lovers traipsed on. By now Molly had learnt that the Prof was not gay. "I have two sons," he revealed, unwisely. Molly said to me, "I've lost interest in him now. I much prefer gay men around me to talk about art, much more interesting. I can't have him wittering on in my ear."

The promised al fresco dinner in the marina failed to sweeten things. Though we were invited guests we were told we'd have to pay for anything that wasn't the local plonk, the anchovies or some fish paste (and what looked like Christmas cake). The very idea! The Professor snuck up to Molly and said, "I have a lady who wants to meet you. She is a motel. " "A motel?" asked Molly. "Yes, a motel - a moh-dell. She was a model in the 60s."

This prompted a rebuke. "Please, Professor, would you please stop giving me a history of everyone who wants to meet me." Not taking a hint he pushed on and described at length another fan who desired to supplicate at Molly's open toes. Molly exploded. "You can give that kind of bullshit to your art students but not to me. Please stop. If someone wants to meet me just bring them over."

We all exploded when the Prof informed us that the ferry was running late. We wouldn't be leaving before 22.45, which meant we wouldn't get back to the Ghetto in Split before midnight where the Parkin Lot was booked to perform. We refused to view the artist's paintings, we all wanted to leave. Now. "You can't!" said the Prof. When Carson noticed private water taxis available for hire he said, "They take two hours!"


Photo: Jadran Babič

In fact not. Jan and I secured a water taxi and at around 9.30pm Molly and entourage took off into the Adriatic night and were back in about 50 minutes. The moonlit journey was pure bliss, bumpier than the ferry, part African Queen. We all felt awful about Professor S: I shall never forget the bewilderment etched on his face as he probably rehearsed what he'd say to his fellow art lovers - and featured artist - by way of excuse.

If he's reading this - sorry! Lesson: Get the itinerary blessed first.

Oh, and that dog with an erection (click for full size). Photo by MA

Molly Parkin and Arcati in Croatia: Photo Album

A selection of pics from Croatia all by Madame Arcati. See guide index below. Click each image once for full size.
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Index: click each image once for full size
1 Ghetto femme
2 Ghetto homme
3 One of Ghetto's bars
4 Ghetto: Molly intros Madame Arcati night
5 Ghetto staffer: Would you Adame & Eve it? Monika of the club shows MA her etchings
6 Sophie Parkin with mother at Le Méridien Hotel, just outside Split
7 At Split Harbour: Gypsy brass band Kočani Orkestar greets Moll (band pics in post above). Ghetto's Sonya in shades peering at me. Fly-on-the-wall Robert Chilcott films Moll embracing a member of her public
8 Professor S with Moll on ferry to Brač before the "misunderstanding"
9 Meanwhile back at Ghetto: an angelic 'tache
10 "Falling In Love Again": One of a number of new erotic paintings by Molly Parkin at the Ghetto Gallery, Split
11 "Honeymoon" by Molly Parkin. At Ghetto Gallery, Split
12 Ghetto: Rose - our fave bar mixologist
13 Ghetto: l-r: Monika, Rose, Sonya (NB red kerchief) and friend Lilly
14 Ghetto: Molly becomes part of interior furnishings (or vice versa?)
15 Ghetto: Arcati night clubbers. Man in background owns island in Australia
16 And finally for now: my marina view from my room at Le Méridien

Croatia: Handbag vandalism, a Russian princess and Spielberg's electricity

After the great success of the Madame Arcati night at the Ghetto Club here I think I'll become a DJ or something. I plainly have a talent for orchestrating a mood, and foreign parts are better suited to my temperament.

Before the frenzy we viewed Molly P's new paintings in the club's upstairs gallery: an experience in bold abstract expressionist erotica swirls. When I return to the UK I'll put up some images for you to scrutinise.

The club itself is a labyrinthine and multi-floored warren of kitschy art and hidden dark places and decorated bars. The owner, Sonia, is a Russian princess, I am told. She wore a folded silk red polka dot kerchief in her back pocket and led the handclapping of things that pleased her: a curious habit which I really like. She is a Queen of Gothic in her deviant leathers and I can't imagine what goes on in the early hours. One of her staff Monika showed me her Adam and Eve homage to Rubens: I think being an artist is a condition of employment there.

I'm not going to waste my time describing Split - just Google the guides for the fucking adjectives. Molly wanted a green handbag so she selected one at a market near the club and I bought it for her. She then asked for a pair of scissors and vandalised the bag by cutting away a strap which left a hole in the side of it. So I bought her another bag, yellow this time, which had caught her eye. Earlier, in the taxi to Ghetto, we had argued about my Dignitas piece. "That was the most disgraceful piece you've ever written," she said as a fan of the place in Switzerland. Eventually I said I would assist her suicide by throwing her out of the car. That seemed to resolve our differences.

Back at the Meridien, I got up to speed on the goss. Steven Spielberg recently stopped by in his yacht for an electricity top-up from the hotel mains. He paid with his platinum. Then there was rapper Little Kim whose management wanted her booked suites repainted all in black. However they settled just for black towels when presented with the estimated costs. I liked the story of the Moroccan princess whose armada descended on the hotel demanding the presidential suite. The occupants were booted out and compensated with a luxury yacht at a cost to the hotel of 35,000 Euros a week. Then there was the Russian oligarch who wanted the presidential suite and wouldn't accept no for an answer. Even when he offered to pay the occupant guests three times the hotel rate he was rebuffed. Tom Cruise is left unmolested though the locals comment on his lack of height. When Molly took a walk on the prom in her robes, the torpid sun sizzlers came to life and clapped.

Today, Croatia's cultural elite are paying court to her with a cruise to the island of Brach (Brač) and then a visit to the Ghetto for a gawp at the paintings followed by a party there. She and her entourage are staying in Croatia till Tuesday but I have to fly back tomorrow. I shall have more to say and will put up photos.

Arcati in Croatia: Molly Parkin, Boris Johnson and Luxury Labia

Le Méridien Lav, Split

Breakfast with Molly Parkin is a singular experience. In her flowing toga-like purple robes and matching turban, she's poking Tracy's breasts and asking 'Are they real?' Tracy's from San Francisco, was once a banker (she foresaw the credit crunch - 'It was obvious'), and she wants to put on the Parkin Lot at a club there. I think the Parkins are going global. Right now we're in Croatia and I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing here.

I flew in yesterday and to mark the event I brought a rare rain storm. It's an odd experience being filmed all the time: when I said to a greeting Molly at the airport 'I love your balls' - a reference to her necklace - I suddenly visualised how that might come across on TV thanks to Robert Chilcott's fly-on-the-wall camera. Later, at the seaside Méridien Hotel just outside Split she told me she's working on a new poem, Luxury Labia, an anthropological piece on the revealing white tight trousers of young women here who 'are showcasing their fannies to men'. I recall the phrase 'camel toes'.

Today we're doing interviews for Croatian newspaper Free Dalmatia and a photoshoot at midday and then tonight we're off to the Ghetto Club to film a TV show there - should be a busy night as it's a national holiday today. Cosmo and more tomorrow.

Meantime Molly sent Boris Johnson this note:

"Hi Boris, this is Molly Parkin, currently performing Parkin Lot on tour (formerly in residence at The Green Carnation, Greek Street) and exhibiting my paintings in Split, Croatia. Also writing poetry for my upcoming poetry performances - with Mike Horowitz (OBE), 100 Club, October 8th.

"I voted for you, I put you in office. I like your hair very much, and your Bertie Wooster-ish demeanour. The first fucking time I've ever supported a Tory! I hail from the Welsh Valleys, where Churchill sent in the troops against my family at the miners strike.

"This one is written with you in mind. I am the voice of the people! "

FILLING IN THE FORM

Partner? Co-habiting? Extra income?
Full employment? Part-time employment? Conglomerate employment?
Are you running a business? Are you contemplating opening a business?
Have you recently sold a business? If so, how many?
Did you declare this sale?

Have you recently bartered any personal items?
Furs? And Jewelry? Socks and Shoes? Hats and Bags?
Or auctioned on eBay?
Domestic paraphernalia? Tables? Chairs? Carpets? Curtains?
Kitchen equipment? Cups and Saucers? Soup Bowls? Basins?
Juicers? Blenders? Pots and pans?

Do you own property? Have you inherited property?
Do you anticipate inheriting property? Or marrying a person of property?
If so, how many properties?
Are there tenants? And how many?

Are you likely to benefit from a financial windfall?
Family Bereavement? Inheritance From a Friend? A Win on the Lottery?
Is Gambling a Major Addiction? And Lady Luck a personal acquaintance?
Have you ever been declared Bankrupt? If so, how many times?

Do you indulge in Sexual Favours for financial gain?
Pleasure? Or Profit?
How much for Fellatio? Full Fuck Back and Front?

Ad infinitum................................................................................................

What they didn't ask was
The width of my smile?
The warmth of embrace?
The acts of forgiveness?
The profound links of friendship?
The depths of my love?

And all the other things to my
Credit

Croatia: The Pulp secret of Molly Parkin's film director

I recently interviewed film director Robert Chilcott who's making the Molly Parkin biopic and is currently with her in Split, Croatia, for a Molly fly-on-the-wall doc, among other things. Following our chat - which embraced Molly's enema punishments - a number of you expressed a desire to rent your womb out to him so I thought you might be interested in seeing him in a another guise, sending up Jarvis Cocker and his band Pulp. He was a fragile 24 when he did this. I took against self-important Cocker after he stormed Michael Jackson's Earth Song set at the Brit Awards: I can still see Cocker's hideous daddy-long-legs limbs flying all over the place: I would have shot him dead had I a gun at that moment. Fortunately we're both alive to watch this show. Meantime Arcati's arrival is awaited.

Beyond Biba, Winston Churchill's mistress and Garbo's peeing

I didn't realise Winston Churchill - the warrior PM, not subsequent copies - had a mistress. Is this public knowledge? Poor Clemmie. Perhaps volumes have been written about this; Google will remain virgin on this one. I can't be bothered to research. Her name was Eleanor and she lived Chelsea way. You want to know more? Please, let's respect people's private lives. Madame Arcati disapproves of rummaging about in celebs' dustbins. How unhygienic!

This story was told me last night when I attended a screening of Beyond Biba: A Portrait of Barbara Hulanicki at the Kensington Roof Gardens. Barbara, in her trademark shades, was over from Miami and I was there with my fiancee Molly Parkin and her biopic film director Robert Chilcott. "This is my fiance," Moll said, introducing me to her old mate Barbara. "Oh Molly, another fiance!" An ordinary person might have felt flattened by such a response. Me? I was flattered to have found my place on such a glittery assembly line of love: eternal engagement has much to recommend it, and no prenup or late night phone excuse is necessary.

Beyond Biba is a fascinating reminder of Hulanicki's influence on fashion, architecture, interior design, music. Of the last, her Roxy Music connection is mystifyingly overlooked as is her early championing of iconic American singer stars. By far the best bits are her salty conversations with Moll who recalled Garbo and her mannish approach to urination. Greta would ask where the little boys' room was and then leave the seat up. You have to wonder.

Sight & Sound editor Nick James gave me an excellently sharp appraisal of Beyond Biba - I think he's planning to write a piece about fashion movies, what with The September Issue due out soon. Moll, Robert and I then retired to the Chelsea Arts Club where over dinner our talk returned to Winnie and Eleanor, Croatian plots, the bitch Anna Wintour and the perils of big cocks and buggery.

Short film on Hulanicki

Michael Jackson's skin: An exhibition in Croatia

Michael Jackson's skin, or "skin"

First, Molly Parkin's off to Split in Croatia next month with her art exhibition. Now I hear stunt-meister Mark McGowan is off to Split, too: he'll be exhibiting a piece of Michael Jackson's skin at the Ghetto Gallery from July 18, 2009, at 21.00. "The Body and Soul of Michael Jackson" will also include a video projection, a small drawing and McGowan wrapped in a white shroud, representing the dead body of Michael Jackson. McGowan says, "I expect people will cry, it will be very moving, I got the piece of skin from a memorabilia collector. Some people have asked how do I know it is real. But there are lots of relics from dead saints, for example, and people do not question, you must believe it's real. I was told that Michael's chiropodist was the contact." For more info call Sonia @ the Ghetto Gallery 0915667000

Molly Parkin biopic: 'When I disagreed, Molly bent me over and gave me an enema'

Robert Chilcott

The Molly Parkin biopic is well under way - I caught up with its young director Robert Chilcott to see how the project's coming along. And what it's like working with the legendary Moll...

Robert Chilcott! You're making the Molly Parkin biopic! Is it a big screen feature or TV flick? What's it called and has it a theme?

It’s a small film for a big screen. Its working title is, quite simply, Molly. We started out with the seven deadly sins – lust and gluttony ultimately prevail. Its themes are, I guess, sex and death. It’s a family film

And tell us where you are with it. You went to Cannes with the project in May - what happened?

The earth moved. We discovered the meaning of existence. There were orgies and satanic rituals every night. Sorry, the reality is this is a boring answer. We have a script. We have some interest from a French company, and from the Welsh. Someone else is sourcing the finance.

Did you visit the porno Hot d'Or fest? - usually that's on at the same time.

It is. But there was no need – the normal Cannes Marché is sleazy and pornographic enough as it is, full of plenty of human cocks and cunts.

Did you write the script? What was it like working with Molly? Did you ever argue?

We went to various dive bars and cafes over several months. Molly acted out nostalgic scenes of sex, booze and psychological violence. I took notes. Arguing is a waste of energy. Every time I disagreed with something, Molly bent me over and gave me an enema (I think there may be a scene like that in the script). It was a perfect working relationship, very cleansing.

And Molly's granddaughter Carson is playing Molly. What's she like and tell us about other cast members.

Carson's screen test

We’ve done a screen test with Carson and she’s amazing, very natural, understated – perfect screen presence. We’ll probably use some current Soho flibbertigibbets for other supporting characters. Whoever’s right really, whether they’re professional actors or society dropouts – a mixture of both.

Is this your first movie? Tell us about you (I know you're from Wales but why do I want to say you're Spanish and call you Roberto?)

I’m from a little village called San Portablo, a peasant village at the bottom of a mountain. Molly is from the top – she’s the medicine woman that heals the afflicted. I’ve made some shorts. This is the first feature movie, yes.

Our eyes met across the Green Carnation bar (though Molly's turban blocked the view). Tell us the most shocking thing you saw or heard of at that pit of iniquity.

The price of the drinks.

How are you handling the sex? - in the film I mean. Molly's had a lot of that. Will this be like Von Trier's Afterlife with full-on humping? Will someone be playing Louis Armstrong and John Mortimer, among others?

I doubt we’ll have testicles bobbing in slow motion, but you never know. There’ll certainly be humping, but I guess it’s up to the actors whether they want to show their rods or twotties. It would have to be played straight.

There’s a scene in the early 80s where Molly is being spit-roasted by two public schoolboys in the back of a car. She takes a moment to squeeze cheese and has an accident – well you don’t need any close-ups or funny camera angles for that. You just show it. It needs no aesthetic embellishment. Some may find it amusing, others may be repulsed – it’s up to the audience to decide. Of course, that’s an extreme example.

There will some tender love scenes, of course. Armstrong and Mortimer are not in the current version of the script. Bo Diddly is in it. There are parties with the Studio 54 lot, an S&M party for Mommie Dearest with everyone dressed as Joan Crawford beating their daughters with coat hangers. Lots of famous people appear, many of them non-speaking parts, background scenery, so I guess we’ll have to contact Stars in their Eyes for lookalikes. The only person likely to play themselves would be you.

I'll talk with my agent, darling. Which in your view is the best film ever? Do you want to make a career in movies?

Filmmaking is not a career. It’s a distraction from real life, a last resort.

And finally, Roberto, if you were given $50m to make a movie once the Molly pic is out, what project would you do?

I’d buy an island, become a recluse and go feral. You don’t need $50 million to make a movie.

Robert, I wish you all the best with Molly, I just know it's going to be great. And I insist on doing a cameo: I could be some strange shadowy figure dressed in plaid, mounted on an old bike.