Roger Lewis - 'Iain Dale's egotistical desire to be morally superior'

I think we can all agree that Madame Arcati is a proven champion of polysexuality (ie anything goes provided it's legal), so I was stricken - yes stricken - when I learnt that a celebrated Arcatiste had been accused of homophobia. The man in the dock is Roger Lewis (author of the classic Seasonal Suicide Notes - get for someone's Christmas. Now) and his accuser is someone called Iain Dale, a droning right-wing radio and TV opinionist who makes executive decisions in publishing.

I recall Mr Dale back in 2013 receiving a police caution after scuffling with a pensioner on Brighton seafront. Apparently, the old codger had dared to wave an anti-nuke banner in the vicinity of Mr Dale's author Damian McBride, prompting the sort of behaviour that Theresa May roundly condemns when the cameras are pointing at her and she's thinking of life beyond the Home Office.

Plainly Mr Dale has no keen ear for humour, camp or otherwise: indeed, to observe him on news chat shows, hangdog face composed in stoicism, is to re-experience Clement Freud but without the jokes (and beard). Then one day recently his eye fell upon Roger's review of a Dusty Springfield book in the Spectator. He was so appalled that he withdrew his company's book contract offer to Roger.

I emailed Roger with my commiserations, asking him what he made of all this. Here's his (slightly redacted) reply, from Austria:

"I wrote a perfectly fine piece on Dusty Springfield, inter alia making the joke that lezzos all have big chins the better to go bobbing for apples - and this cunt Iain Dale, a man of whom I had never previously heard, comes out of the woodwork accusing me of all sorts! And me the biographer of Charles Hawtrey and the world expert on camp comics!

"What I hate about the man is his egotistical desire to be morally superior - no sense of humour, hence of proportion, like those Welsh language fanatics I always poke fun at and who foam at the mouth when teased.

"XXX"

Iain Dale has responded on his blog

Roger Lewis: Oscar Aid and a smoking twat

You know I adore Roger Lewis, author of one of the funniest books in the English language, Seasonal Suicide Notes. It's the Basil Fawlty of modern literature. Nothing in it is sacred save the author's beautifully cherished reactions to the world, recorded in a comic stream of conscious uncoupling for all eternity (ie hello Oxfam book shop!). I told him the other day that I had a new book out, but with Roger he doesn't waste time on insincere expressions of good luck (he's not alone). He ignored my news and got down to business. The Daily Mail's best book reviewer wants me to put out an appeal to help his son Oscar. Madame Arcati, whose heart exceeds her capacity to find supportive friends, is only too happy to oblige.

First, my congratulations to gifted Oscar for winning a place at the Royal College of Art. You see, I react to others' news. Oscar starts there in the autumn. This is no mean accomplishment. Roger tells me that only 16 places were up for grabs against a tide of aspirant millions. Do watch Oscar's affecting degree movie below - John & Iris - which creatively blends reminiscence with interpretive animation.

But there's a problem - money!

Would someone out there, with perhaps a bulge in his or her pocket - a tent even - kindly consider sponsoring him or otherwise granting Oscar a sum so that he may complete his studies. Please email Madamearcati69@aol.com with your offer which I'll pass onto Roger.

As Roger explains: "Newspapers and magazines don't want to pay for my prose, and publishers now offer contracts without advances on royalties! So unless you are either a po-faced academic, with a nice fat salary and index-linked pension pot, or a TV celebrity producing ghosted memoir shite, that's it for books. Or Lewis' books. Nevertheless, in a Seasonal Suicide Notes sequel I want to do for 2015, it will be called I'LL JUST DIE & THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY."

Well, we don't want that! So please, people. Cough up - you don't really need that patio decking or that new Dutch pension plan.

In other news, I did enjoy Roger's Kafka essay in Craig Raine's Arete publication ("whatever an Arete is," Roger wonders aloud in his email to me). In it he writes of someone called Pinky June - some kind of porn star, I think - who "smokes cigarettes with her twat." He adds: "Pinky at least won’t get lung cancer in a hurry, inhaling in that fashion." 

Now that we're the wiser for that, do relish Oscar's film - and think seriously about how we can fund the poppet's studies:

Roger Lewis: 'What do you think of my son Oscar's movie?'

I love this highly original, dreamy short film by Oscar Lewis - son of Seasonal Suicide Notes author and Daily Mail book reviewer Roger Lewis. Titled "John and Iris", it brings to life, in animated line drawings, the reminiscences of his grandparents (John and Iris Dickens) on 65-plus years together. Roger tells me: "Oscar has been working as Tom Hollander's production assistant on a film about Dylan Thomas, A Poet in New York, which is being shot on location in Cardiff. Now one of the reasons why I left South Wales for good as a youngster is that it wasn't in any shape or form Manhattan."

Jonathan King's whopping 'Christmas card': A review

I'd assumed that the physics-driven vogue for the atheistic faith would result in fewer festive communications. So many apparent friends have now replaced the Star of Bethlehem with Prof Brian Cox's inter-stellar Lego-like imaginings - which at least offer welcome savings in the winter fest family budget. 

But I was wrong. If anything, the Christmas greeting has become much more ambitious.

I first noticed this with writer Roger Lewis. Not content with just sending me (and dozens others) a card bearing glittery-cute Santa bears, he enclosed a round-robin, four-page account (single-spaced, A4) of his 2012 (lesbian porn sites being a feature).

Now Jonathan King has gone one better. Instead of a card, he has dispatched a fully illustrated, 227-page book. It's titled Three Months: 100 Glorious Sunny Days In the Summer of 2012: a 'snapshot' of his life largely abroad when he's not here addressing the Leveson Inquiry and dismissing it presciently as a 'waste of space'.

Three Months falls well within the Katie Price definition of biography - ie diary (with distinct serial possibilities). On p22 we learn that he's had lovers 'much prettier' than Brad Pitt (this memory arises over coffee and petits pains at the Carlton in Cannes), some time after his dear friend, the veteran newspaper interviewer Lynn Barber, has called him an 'egocentric bore' to his face. 

JK has of course weathered much greater insult and is still grinning as Britain's panto 'vile pervert'. A knighthood cannot be that far away. After all, April Ashley, who was once dismissed herself as a deviant monstrosity by our upstanding red-tops, is now an icon of transgender equality with her MBE ribboned in pink and grey. The ghost of John Profumo must surely concur.

Three Months is of course a relentless deluge of name-dropping - but King's en passant goss is worth all the ego-coddling. We learn, for instance, that he's working on a TV format for Simon Fuller (that'll please Cowell) and that he's not given up hopes of getting his hands on The Brits and Eurovision once again - the UK last won the latter under his ministration. Whenever he pops abroad he first has to tell the Marylebone cop shop whose boneheads are always 'nice and helpful'.

And his story on Peter Mandelson is so deliciously wicked that I delight in not repeating it.

JK's intellectual life is sustained by a bookishness that may surprise the tut-tutters of tabloid tat. Paul Bowles and Graham Greene share his journeys; and I was astonished to learn that he actually ploughs through the Booker finalist tomes. Frankly, I'd rather have anal sex with a traffic cone.

I could go on. But I have to remind myself. Three Months is meant only to be a Christmas card!

Roger Lewis at Christmas: Lesbian porn sites and Richard Ingrams

Roger Lewis

Such a delightful change from the usual death threats etc in the post to receive a Christmas card from premier Arcatiste (and Neptunian), Roger Lewis. Not just a card, but a letter. And not just a letter, but his monthly diary of 2012!

'I was concentrating very hard on a lesbian porn site when Richard Ingrams phoned and asked me to go to the Cheltenham Literary festival,' he writes for October. 'I was to represent the Oldie Magazine. My fee was £150....'

I'm afraid Mr Ingrams is off my Christmas card list ever since he failed to invite my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin to an Oldie party a few months back. I'm sure she won't mind me telling you that she'd met him at an Oldie literary munch-up and - well, I'd better not say too much. Suffice to say that someone's domestic problems (not Ingrams' I hasten to add) intruded. Crash, bang, wallop, hospital! I know what I know. And mean.

But back to Roger's wonderfully amusing letter - I do hope a newspaper prints it in its festive edition. Much better than one Christmas tradition I cannot abide - the cunting festive short story: if you laid out all the unread pages of newspaper Yuletide short stories end-to-end, you'd end up with the largest litter tray ever, fit for for all the pussies in Brobdingnag. For an example click here.

Roger informs one and all that though he has yet to sell his gorgeous Grade II-Listed Georgian gentilhommiere in Herefordshire (if you wish to buy, click here), he and family have moved into a charming terraced house in Rochester. And a September entry reveals that plans are afoot to turn his hysterical Seasonal Suicide Notes into a West End extravaganza. Alas, to play Roger, producers wish to cast Richard Griffiths who is '20 years older than me and weighs half a ton.'

Well, the less than beauteous Margaret Rutherford played me once and she did me no harm. That I know of.

There's still time to buy a Roger Lewis classic read - Amazon's page dedicated to his comic work is all you need visit. Click here.

Roger Lewis: Why Molly Parkin's not been invited to Michael Gove dinner at Garrick

Garrick Club (Area)
Venue of Roger Lewis Dinner

Dear Madame Arcati,

Thrilled about Noyle's [Molly Parkin's] Civil List Pension -- I think it is almost as much as £2,000 a year! We can all go to Sheekey's once a quarter on that!

My chum Paul Bailey is a Civil Lister, too, and much to his surprise the stipend was subject to tax. So maybe it won't be Sheekey's after all, but The Golden Egg, if the chain is still going.

Did I tell you that next Wednesday The Right Honourable Michael Gove MP is very kindly and generously hosting a dinner in my honour at The Garrick Club, what I am calling The Roger Lewis Memorial Dinner? The guests include Barry Cryer, Craig Brown, Herbert Kretzmer, Quentin Letts, Barbara Windsor, Duncan Fallowell (of course ) ... Francis Wheenie can't come because of his poorly back. Noyle couldn't be invited because you can't talk about having light bulbs and toothbrushes shoved up your twatty in The Garrick Club as it's against the rules.

I am also pleased to tell you that Mavis Nicholson and I have made it up -- we fell out when I told her I was on the dry and did she have any thoughts about what intoxicants I could get keen on instead, and she said ( in the pages of The Oldie ) that I reminded her of her sister, who was a hopeless alcoholic who was sectioned in the Powys County Asylum, where she caught the Alzheimer's ( off a lavatory seat ? ) and croaked. And I thought,Cheers, Mave ! Bloody hell ! Anyway we are now friends again.

Adoringly,

Roger

Roger Lewis letter: 'I want to be like the Major in Fawlty Towers'

Roger Lewis

The fabulous Roger Lewis has gone to the trouble of writing to Madame Arcati, drawn perhaps by my new red curtains. Where could he be?


Dear Madame Arcati,

Not a nibble on this place [Roger's gorgeous house in Herefordshire, recently profiled on Arcati - click link]. The property market seems paralysed. It's like Royston Vasey: You'll Never Leave.

Meanwhile, I am longing to move into The Walpole Bay Hotel, Margate, permanently, and be like the Major in Fawlty Towers. It is bliss. I think it must be the greatest hotel in England -- T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land on the sands adjacent, Tracey Emin uses it as her Margate pomme de terre, there is an old fashioned lift with a trellis gate, horn gramophones and sepia views ... (Have you been ?)

My pbk out any day.

Love,

Roger 

My Dearest Roger,

How lovely to hear from you - I am only sorry that the might of Madame Arcati, not even in the curtained glory of her redesign, has managed to pull in a buyer for your lovely Georgian Townhouse (5 bedrooms).

I have not been to Margate (yet) and the mention of The Emin is not encouraging - utterly common. I looked up the Walpole Bay Hotel's slick and snazzy website and I see that a Four Poster Room is priced at £115 per night (low season) - not unreasonable, though it is my practice to haggle like a collector of antiques and ask, 'What's your best price?' This is done advisedly on the phone prior to arrival. I feel that Kent could be calling.

In any case, and for reasons we cannot go into here, you are best off beside the seaside, with Neptune for company, your natal soulmate deity (twice over if I recall). Outside my seaside home window (south-facing natch) is a rig on the horizon which is about to plant a wind turbine. It's so exciting.

If we can't sell your home, then at least let's get people to buy the paperback of your wonderful latest book, What Am I Still Doing Here? which I believe is out in early May. I can't recommend it highly enough as a work of serious comic philosophy!

Love as ever

Your Madame

Roger Lewis letter: Freelance persecution and z-listers like Gyles Brandreth

Roger Lewis

Dear Madame Arcati,

Bugger me blue, but I have had an absolute sod of a week, and it is only Wednesday.

Twelve years ago I was getting £400 for a book review in the Sunday Express. I was told yesterday they are now cutting the fees to £200, which is the rate paid by the Daily Telegraph, where the freelance contributors are kept on 1970s rates (or 1870s rates) so that the proprietors can live in tax exile on Sark.

I was then offered as much as £30 to make four radio programmes with Dame Jan Morris about Wales, which I declined because it would mean death threats from the Plaid Cymru Taliban.

Then my publishers said they are expecting my new book "Growing Up With Comedians" in April, even though I have been deathly ill and haven't been able to look at the manuscript for months. They'll get it in April 2013 if they are lucky.

If only I was a proper person with an ordinary job, I could be on the sick and on full salary for months -- instead of which: freelance persecution. The icing on the cake: I am being pestered by The One Show to make a 5 minute film about why I hate the touchy-feely tactile sentimentality that has come in, parents always hugging their children in public and so forth, and which I'd written about in the Mail. There is to be no fee, though there is a prospect of z-list celebrity status, like Gyles Brandreth.

Finally, unless I can put a stop to it, Mavis Nicholson is writing about my pancreatisis in her Oldie magazine agony aunt column, comparing me with her sister who died an alcoholic with Alzheimer's in a Welsh booby-hatch.

My diabetic nurse, Sister Tiggy, has put me on these new tablets that have turned my stools bright yellow. It's like I'm on my way to Oz.

Love,

Roge

My Dear Poppet

There's only one thing for it. I shall have to pore over your horoscope (but don't tell Duncan, who worships poetry). Do pass on my apologies to Mavis for wrongly reporting that she slipped on ice en route to Noyle's* birthday party [report below]. I am told she did not.

Love as ever

MA xx

*Dame Molly Parkin


Roger Lewis' fabulous books may be perused and bought here

Roger Lewis letter: 'I'm like an old crap in a Larkin poem'

Roger Lewis

Dear Madame Arcati,

As I'm still weak and feeble -- like an old crap in a Larkin poem suddenly -- I had to miss Molly "Noyle" Parkin's party. Clearly it was as magnificent as Truman Capote's Black & White Ball. I am spreading the rumour that that wasn't Rachel Johnson talking to all and sundry about codpieces but Janette Krankie.

Further to my illness, when I wrote about everything for the Mail, I received fourteen nice cards from old ladies, who clearly form my fan base. The cards that weren't adorned with frolicking kittens and puppies had jolly pictures of teddy bears.

I also received a mad unsigned message from a fan who scrawled in red biro, "I hate your guts just like everybody else. Pity you didn't die and do the world a favour you cunt." No address, alas (though I suspect Cornwall ) -- but that won't impede my chums in forensics, who will track this person down so that I can pay him (or her) a little visit in person. The thought of a little light violence has perked me up no end.

Yours,

NIL BY MOUTH ROGER LEWIS

Darling Roger

Thank you for your restorative missive. Old ladies are a tough breed and adept at projecting healing energies while balanced on crumbling knees in pews. The person in Cornwall is I feel a young atheist who has been corrupted by the twin evils of Professors Dawkins and Cox and is, as I write, filling his (yes, his) face with cashews in front of a stolen flat screen TV. He probably views you as some sort of religious figure. Jess Yates redivivus, perhaps.

I always aim to enlighten.

Love and projected healing energies,

MA x

Roger Lewis' wonderful and funny second memoir What Am I Still Doing Here? can be ordered here

Susan Penhaligon poetry: The Ashes - in memory of actor Richard Warwick

Susan Penhaligon

Madame Arcati debuted (post-Coward rehearsal) as warrior. These days, this site is a salon of the precious talents - a refuge from the tyranny of media criminality and the tiresome reflexes of tenured hacks (I have yet to see one decent media cock-cocker or cunt-cunter at the Leveson inquiry - do you now see the playground prejudices at work? The recycling of stereotypes in real-life real-time?).

But enough of transitory fashion. The passing delusions. One of the talents the Madame Arcati salon adores is actor Susan Penhaligon. I have already showcased her poetry (click here to read); and I'm honoured to publish yet another example of her work - I ho hope publishers are paying attention.


The Ashes was written in memory of actor Richard Warwick (1945-1997). Susan tells me: 'He played my husband in A Fine Romance. Tragically he died of Aids. He was one of my best friends.'

The Ashes

Into the spider's web and stone of

Cheltenham

past the Daffodil cinema,

into the sleet

towards your favourite place,

on the day we left you for the

boatman.

Down familiar roads,

maps drawn heavy in the mind,

the lines of childhood unsmudged,

your brother rattling memories on

speed -

where the tree house formed

an ark in the Yew tree,

a hidey hole by the Holly bush,

in 61 the flooded fields iced over

for you to skate the Cotswolds.

We ford the mud-filled, wet-filled

fields,

the Severn banks collapsed,

a racing, river road

collapsing trees and sky and us,

us three,

the friend, the lover, the brother,

our faces wet with flooding.

We stand before the Elephant tree

and pour you out,

from our palms where we held you

we pour you out

like spice, like adding salt,

we put you to the liquid earth

in the flooded wetlands of your

childhood.

And through the rising deep,

across the seascape fields,

the waters covered the face of

the earth

and the Ark sailed on towards us.

(Copyright © Susan Penhaligon 2012)

Roger Lewis: Very fat ladies and their gunts

Britain's wittiest writer Roger Lewis has written again - I thought I'd share our correspondence with his gagging-for-it public. The 'Paris Connaught' he mentions below is a commenter to his last letter, should you wonder....


Dear Madame A,
Who is "Paris Connaught"? And if it is a "nasty little site" what is she doing accessing it? Paris Travelodge more like.
It's like Groucho Marx, who complained to some magazine in high dudgeon and moral indignation, and said any more of it "and I will be compelled to cancel my subscription."
Molly Noyle Parkin sends me "jokes" with rude words. I have taken to addressing her as Noyle, which is probably Welsh for the vadge.
Talking of which -- I have just discovered from my new doctor friends in The Royal Cornwall Hospital that the part in very very fat women between the overflowing belly and the vast bulging thighs is known by the profession as the "gunt".
It has almost been worth my while nearly dropping dead to know this. I offer it as my New Year present to you.
Always,
Roger Lewis

XXX 

My Darling Roger

Only this afternoon, Moll and I were gossing about you - and she sent me a delightful joke of yours. I don't know who Paris Connaught could be: the oddest people pass by en route to the porn sites. At least the bint - a word I love - is not Paris Premier Inn From £29 A Night.

I have never heard of the word 'gunt' and thank you for it. I wonder whether Fern Britton or Dawn French are familiar with it. Do you think their diet doctors fingered their gunts? Questions, questions.

Love, respect (but save me from 'Love and Light')

Your MA x

(I'm bunging all of this up. Francis Wheen 'liked' your last letter on my Facebook page, btw. A lovely poppet. Pity about the atheism)

Roger Lewis: Pancreatitis and being taken for Sir Roger Moore CBE

Roger Lewis

Fans of Roger Lewis were most concerned to hear he was at death's door over Christmas with pancreatitis. Happily, Britain's funniest writer was refused an astral tunnel visa and is now back home convalescing. In response to my solicitude, he wrote me the following:

Dear Madame Arcati,

Home at last, where I creep about the chimney corner in a brocade dressing gown like John Hurt doing Beckett's Krapp.

Pancreatitis. Not recommended. My fault for ignoring the diabetes symptoms. But still. 1 in 3 die of what I had -- and once I was on the IV morphine drip, death seemed quite a nice option. (As it still does) 

Because I have been patched up by the docs only to have to face fucking bills, fucking invoices, fucking VAT and fucking income tax demands and fucking trying to make fucking ends fucking meet in that fucking freelance way.

I think that's all part of what made me ill: 30 years of doing what I do and mostly all I get are inadequate and irresponsible reviews and (save for yourself and a handful of discerning others ) scant recognition.

Thrilled you seem to like the new book, What Am I Still Doing Here? - darker and madder (and better) than Seasonal Suicide Notes. If I ever do a 3rd volume I have the title ready: "I'll Just Die And Then You'll Be Sorry."

I'll go down in history for at least being Ronald Searle's final patron -- his cover the last thing he ever did.

One funny thing happened this week. I got these fulsome ("Darling Roger") emails from veteran film director Bryan Forbes, whom I only know very vaguely -- from my Peter Sellers research days. Turns out he thought he was communicating with Roger Moore. He (Bryan) only twigged when he asked with justified bepuzzlement "What were you doing in hospital in Truro over Christmas?" As indeed, what would 007 Sir Roger Moore CBE be doing in Truro over Christmas, or at any time?

The boiler has gone kaput this morning. On the whole I'd rather be back in the High Dependency Ward.

Gluckliches neues jahr !

ROGER

The Standard's Londoner's Diary picked up this story. Click here)

Roger Lewis book party: Adult nappies, posh gits and names galore, darling

Perfect

Party reports from guests Molly Parkin, Jonathan King and Duncan Fallowell. And a letter from host Roger Lewis on his glorious celebration.

'Roger was wearing sandals. The last person I remember wearing sandals at his own book launch was Jeremy Sandford, circa 1985.' So reports Duncan Fallowell, one of many notable guests at Roger Lewis' launch party for What Am I Still Doing Here?, his fabulous and funny autobiographical follow-up to acclaimed Seasonal Suicide Notes.

Madame Arcati couldn't make it, of course. but she had not one, not two, but three famous appointed ambassadors dispatched to the Chris Beetles Ltd event on Tuesday (Oct 18) evening in London's SW1: the blessed Duncan (a biped concordance on party lore), the divine fiancee Molly Parkin and last and never least - oh yes - Jonathan King, lately the recipient of an apology from the BBC DG Mark Thompson himself.

Molly Parkin portrait by
Darren Coffield

JK tells me: 'My dear friend Lynn Barber just e-m'd me to say Duncan Fallowell was terribly keen to meet me because of our mutual friend Arcati! I'd have liked to have seen him with his clothes on.'

He adds: 'Molly Parkin looked gorgeous and took most of the attention in a room which ranged from Richard Littlejohn and Quentin Letts through Barry Cryer to Lynn Barber and Valerie Grove. Literally anyone who is anyone in London literary society was there and most had read about the BBC apology on Madame Arcati's site, so I spent the time fielding journalist questions. But the main puzzle was - how does Arcati know everything? I'm sorry to say I revealed the existence of the crystal ball, the cards and the stars.'

Isn't he adorable? OK, if you're a tabloid cunt he isn't adorable.

Duncan Fallowell

Molly Parkin reports: 'The party was full of posh gits - literary, artistic and fashion types I normally avoid - and loads of old Colony people, and Gyles Brandreth and (film director) Joe McGrath (82 now!) who worked a lot with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. Even Clair Woodward, the Arts & Ents Editor of the Sunday Express, was there. Men at the party kept on coming up to me and saying, "I want to shake your hand so I can say I shook the hand of Molly Parkin."'

A little confusion attended the opening minutes of the do. 'We couldn't get in initially and it was already 6.20 pm,' says Moll. 'Then a funny little girl opened the door; a bit of a cock-up. It was in a gallery of sorts with loads of water colours on the wall; the party was split over three separate areas.' Duncan adds: 'It was such a weird basement of cramped chambers.'

Moll continues: 'I met that wonderful journalist on the Independent Matthew Bell who was there with a difficult girl - he told me Duncan was trying to get my attention - it was terribly crowded. By the time I was free he'd gone - Roger wasn't happy about that. Roger said, "Duncan's prematurely disappeared."'

Moll paraded in a self-made tall magenta turban which excited the interest of author and journalist Valerie Grove - 'What have you stuffed the turban with?' she asked after calling it a 'fantastic hat'. Moll replied: 'Adult nappies.' Poor Val gave a disgusted 'Oh' and hoped the nappies had not been used first.

Jonathan King

Moll confides to Madame Arcati: 'Actually, the nappies were not used but I had bought some after someone told me about incontinence in the elderly. I'm not incontinent but I wanted to see if they work. So I put one on and went for a piddle - and not a drop leaked out. So next time I go to the theatre or cinema I'm going to wear a nappy and I can have a piddle without getting up. Nappies make great padding for turbans.'

And as for Duncan's early exit... he explains: 'I had to leave Roger's launch to go on to the Keats-Shelley party at Carlton House Terrace - followed by dinner at the Academy Club.

'But I then caught up with Roger around 11 pm at the Groucho where he was staying with his wife [Anna] and 3 sons - they'd been for a slap-up at Rule's. There were more drunks in the Groucho than in the Academy which must be a first. And so the Groucho was strangely quiet, several out cold slumped in armchairs. Roger on the other hand was just warming up and waving a glass of champagne around in the air and chatting up the pianist.'

Moll pays tribute to the surprising youthfulness of their 50-something host Roger and the 'beauty' of his sons. Duncan adds: 'I asked Roger, "Where did you find your handsome barman?" He replied "That's Sebastian". I didn't recognise his youngest son who last time I saw him some years ago was a hippy in embryo.'

How annoying! Madame Arcati regrets not attending this party. And yet she feels she walked among Roger Lewis' guests after all, in three persons, one nappied.

What Am I Still Doing Here? can be bought here.

Oh, and a letter from Roger Lewis himself....

Dear Madame Arcati,

Yes -- a great do. Barry Cryer said, "It's your book come to life!"

Luckily, the Booker Prize dinner siphoned off the dreck.

A highlight for me (in addition to your Molly) was the presence of Biddy Baxter! It was as if Dame Sybil Thorndike had turned up. She said: "Did you get a Blue Peter Badge" and I said, "No I bloody well did not!"

Also, we had Lord Archer, who unsportingly refused to exchange Belmarsh tales with young Jonathan King.

Judi Bowker

But also sneaking in -- the divine Judi Bowker. That's right, that vision of loveliness from Black Beauty and Clash of the Titans, where she was last seen lashed to a rock being menaced by Laurence Olivier. She was also blonde and gorgeous in The Shooting Party, with James Mason. But best of all -- Brother Sun, Sister Moon, where Zeffirelli got all these English lads to Tuscany and tried to, well, you can guess the rest.

We also had Eric Potts, the world's greatest pantomime dame -- this Christmas he's doing panto in Wimbledon, but with Barry Humphries. How can that work? Dame Edna as one of the Ugly Sisters ?

Perhaps Chris Beetles was still mourning his chum Rob Buckman, the celebrity doctor, who died on a plane heading for Toronto last week, but he was so gloomy, Rachel Johnson went up to him and said: "Are you Hungarian?"

Beetles shut the lights off at 8 sharp and 30 seconds later we were all on the street. A humorous sight, Gyles Brandreth, Barry Cryer, Stephen Frears, Joe McGrath, Molly Parkin, Francis Wheen and documentary-maker Tony "All You Need Is Love" Palmer tottering up the spiral stairs, from this dungeon where we'd been boozing. Everyone hung around for so long on the pavement, I thought, Christ, I'd better write another book so we can carry on celebrating.

A cab then drew up at the kerb, and executive editors from the Daily Mail piled out. A mob from the Sunday Express squared up to them, as if about to have a fight out of a Western.

Myself, Lady Lewis and the 3 little Lewises then went to Rules. The rest is as Duncan described, including my orthopaedic sandals for my diabetic foot.

Love,

ROGER

Jonathan King autobiography hits the No 1 spot in Amazon's Kindle chart

I am delighted to see that Jonathan King's autobiography 65 My Life So Far hit No1 on the Amazon Kindle pop culture chart. This is amazing given the near-universal attempt to edit our tastes by our nation's media by ignoring the intriguing tome. Thanks to Madame Arcati's review and that of Roger Lewis in The Lady, however, and a little PR by the author himself, and... well, success!

You don't have to be signed up to the JK Fan Club to appreciate his priceless anecdotes about bisexual John Lennon and sooo many other stars he worked and (well) hung out with. Despite the BBC's best efforts to delete him from public record there's no denying his huge contribution to pop culture, for better or worse.

Madame's review can be read here. To buy the e-book, click here.

Roger Lewis: 'Lesbian' Agatha Christie, death threats and a new book

What Am I Still Doing Here? My Years As Me by Roger Lewis.
Cover by Ronald Searle, 91

I had no idea that Roger Lewis had wondered aloud (in the Mail) whether Agatha Christie was a lesbian. The very mention of dread sexual practice in conjunction with one of the treasures of English heritage and TV sleepathon drama was enough to elicit death threats, presumably from a few of the cock-cunting or cunting-cock readers of Britain's leading family qualitab.

As a seasoned recipient of past death threats myself, mainly from anonymous journalists and other people purporting to be writers, I am familiar with the exquisite pleasure that greets such communications of terminal promise. One just knows that such incited fury will probably activate a cancer in one's crazed aspiring killer, a few years down the line.

Anyhow, Christiegate is one of his many experiences exhumed and dramatised  in new memoir (or 'self-portrait') What Am I Still Doing Here? I have not read it so I can't say it's brilliant. Yet. But I can say that his last memoir Seasonal Suicide Notes made my Christmas 2009: the book is a darkly comic and mischievous counterblast to the otherwise infernal jolliness of the genre. It reads like a rave at a crematorium. Roger tells me the new book is 'far madder and darker' - this I can believe. I can't wait to review it.

I'm only sorry that Lewis' publisher Coronet has seen fit to use a customised testimonial from Stephen Fry: ordinarily I would avoid anything this simperingly wet lump of ubiquity recommends. But on this occasion I shall make an exception.

What Am I Still Doing Here? is published on October 13. To buy click here.

Oxford Poetry Professorship race - blazing row at health club!

Michael Horovitz - 'Very, very angry'

The race for the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University (and its stipend of £6,901 pa) has provoked a blazing row between author Duncan Fallowell and a contender for the prestigious post, poet Michael Horovitz, I learn. The ding-dong, prompted it seems by the caustic humour of one of Horovitz's rivals for the Oxford job, the mischievous Roger Lewis, took place very recently in a Notting Hill health club.

Duncan Fallowell - after his swim?

Duncan tells me: 'Horovitz verbally assaulted me in my health club for encouraging Roger - Roger wrote something mildly mocking about Horovitz in The Times apparently and Horovitz said, "I'm very very angry and it's all your fault!" And I knew nothing whatsoever about it. Mike overstepped the mark - I go to my health club to escape all that shit and relax in the beautiful swimming pool.'

So what did Lewis write in The Times? It must have been his piece of May 15 in which he set out his stall for the poetry professorship, titled 'Say No to Pompous Professors - Vote for Lewis', that caused offence. In it Lewis describes Horovitz, 75, and another heavyweight candidate, the poet Geoffrey Hill, 77, as 'nice old codgers', and their work as 'serious-minded to the point of pain and obscure of purpose.'

He added: 'Asked by a journalist what my campaign strategy might be, I said I’ll jump out from behind a bush in Hill’s garden and the bathroom door in Horovitz’s hut and shout “Boo”.'

Roger Lewis - gunning for Horovitz

Aside from his health club rant at Fallowell, Horovitz hit back at Lewis in a Guardian piece on May 28. He suggested Lewis 'waxed extremely unlyrical in trumpeting [his] pitch for the job' in the Times and nominated him for a 'Services to Dumbing Down award.' Boys, boys!

Vote for Roger Lewis to be Oxford's next Professor of Poetry!

Esteemed Arcatiste, legendary memoirist and wit, Roger Lewis, has been nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. Oxford grads such as Duncan Fallowell (can a knighthood be that far away?) Lynn Barber (a damehood?), Rachel "The Lady" Johnson (the sack?), and many Bright Young Things (pah!) in publishing / the media/ journalism, have rallied to his cause, God bless them.

Oxonians need to (a) register to vote by June 4th and (b) actually vote. Polls open on May 21st and close on June 16th. This can all be done online - click here. This is a new departure for Roger; I just hope he is not robbed of his comic ingenuity in the process. I shall be most displeased. Very.

In the past people had to turn up in person in Oxford, so the dons always had it all sewn up, the tarts. Madame Arcati won't be thwarted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas books: Madame Arcati's supremely discriminating gift guide

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

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

Tomes for the Tights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomes for the Cheese Grater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sophie Parkin: JRJ and Madame Arcati's books for Christmas

Dear Madame A,

I was reading one of Roger Lewis' pieces in the Spectator online about Betty Box. I am not allowed to read his book Seasonal Suicide Notes as in true Molly fashion mother has already told me that's my Christmas present. He asks if anyone has ever written a biography of actor, James Robertson Justice. Surely he should do that and my mother Molly Parkin could enlighten him with the juicy details of their liaison in the 50's when they met in The Swallow club off Piccadilly when she was a teacher, and he was her svengali.

Just a suggestion.

Sophie Parkin

PS. May we have your suggestions for best books for Christmas presents?

Darling Sophie

How sweet of you. I've actually cancelled Christmas this year for various reasons. But because the mood takes me - two Full Moons in Gemini this month - I shall put together two book gift guides: One for the stocking, one for the cheese grater. Grating a useless book is a marvellous way to relax and the result can be scooped up and sold as hamster litter or set to some made up ecological purpose in a carbon trade off with a fake princess scammer in Burkina Faso.

As to Roger writing the bio of James Robertson Justice, he (Roger) tells me "I have a piece on the glorious James R-J in my forthcoming Growing Up With Comedians book." I should say a book on JRJ came out last year, titled unpromisingly What's the Bleeding Time? (see book cover above) with a foreword by someone called HRH the Duke of Edinburg (sic). If the Duke is reading this perhaps he could confirm he gave an honorary doctorate to the Countess of Shannon, alias the global mystic guru Almine.

Love to one and all, MA xx

Oh, and here's Roger Lewis ...

Dear Madame

A plea. Can we have a change from that (rather old I fear) photo of D Fallowell showing off his assets? It is getting to appear oftener than Andrew Neill and the foreign girl in Private Eye. Everytime I peep at your great website I get my eye knocked out.

Yours,

ROGER