Sophie Parkin interview: The Colony, the stars and the sailor's cock

'Driberg also admitted to Christopher Hitchens in the Colony that he loved going into special committees in the House of Commons with semen still sticky at the corners of his mouth'

The late Sebastian Horsley at the door of his local

To order a copy of The Colony Room Club 1948-2008, visit Sophie Parkin's dedicated site, here

In 1948, Muriel Belcher founded the The Colony - the Soho private drinking den that became infamous for stellar misbehaviour over 60 years. In 2012, one of its patrons, Sophie Parkin, releases The Colony Room Club 1948-2008: A History of Bohemian Soho, which charts the secret life of a refuge that drew some of the most celebrated minds, talents and livers of the second half of the 20th Century (and Kate Moss) and tells a great many tales of unreported high jinks and debauchery. Parkin interviewed upwards of 50 surviving former Colony habitués for the book and has dug up a trove of fab photos.

Madame Arcati enjoyed a bout of intercourse with Sophie - those of a tender sensibility may want to pass on this interview...

Q: Sophie Parkin! You’ve written The Colony Room Club 1948-2008 – is anyone alive from that era who remembers anything?

SP: ‘Plenty of both I‘m glad to say,’ as Muriel said to Dan Farson when asking her about her sexual proclivities. Paul Johnson was a great interview as was the fruity and funny Sir Peregrine Worsthorne. Anne Valery (think Tenko) , Irma Kurtz - wonderful about John Hurt and Francis Bacon ('Last night I was stuck between a Ham and a Bacon') - and the definition of a bohemian bar. And once I reminded mother [Molly Parkin], a few indiscretions popped up around Tony Shaffer (playwright), Cedric Price (architect), Ernő Goldfinger and Robert Brownjohn, the designer of the first James Bond credits; oh, and John Bryce the producer of The Avengers in his Aqua car. All very 1960s.

Shove in the whipping guardsman story concerning Victor Spinetti and the Colony couple from Hampstead and it's almost a Joan Littlewood production. Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be – you’re telling me!

Q: ‘The Colony was a club for lushes and is best off gone. Incidence of liver cirrhosis will decline’. Discuss.

SP: Have you been to other clubs? Some of the ‘new wave' of fashionable clubs are so depressing and unfriendly you drink to forget you are there. They never organise beanos like the 'Come in Chapeau Party' 1968 to raise money for a disabled children’s Christmas party for kiddies with MS. Victor Lowndes kindly supplied the waitresses - Bunny Girls, Annie Ross and George 'wigglebum’ Melly provided the entertainment, poor kids! 

One day Jeffrey Bernard organised a trip to Ascot for the horse fanciers and got an open top double decker to stop outside whereby members got on through the first floor window. Bernard took all the bets and when the races ended mysteriously disappeared. 

The club wasn't just a place for lushes, it was for outsiders whether from the upper classes or the lower, Burroughs/Bacon/Freud or Sir Frederick Ashton, Trevor Howard, LS Lowry, Sir Robert Helpmann and Lady Rose McLaren. It was for the blossoming of great conversation whether with Keith Waterhouse; or Johnny Speight with Kate Moss as a bar maid or Daniel Craig with Joe Strummer on guitar and Todd Matshikiza on piano and Lisa Stansfield on vocals. 

Everyone played there on Sunday nights from The Hours, The Magic Numbers, Badly Drawn Boy to Alabama 3 and The View.

Ian Broad on Hampstead Heath

Q: Who’s the cunt who decided that the Club should be no more. I mean, if I Google ‘The Colony’ there is a website claiming the Colony still exists. Please explain.

SP: I don’t know why someone hasn’t taken that down. I don’t know who built it but Michael Wojas, who paid for it, has been dead for 2 years.

Perhaps it was the landlord Mr Ibrahim after Ian Board tried to strangle him; perhaps it was Michael who wanted the legend to die with him. The Colony however is less a place more a state of mind and when I open the Deal Arts Club from the huge funds of my book The Colony Room Club 1948-2008 it will transfer there. It will have to be a membership club - ordinary people on a day trip to the seaside might be offended by the full use of our language and the freedom of our thoughts.

Now, if we assume most members of the Colony were/are drunken reprobates with casually vacant genitalia, who will threaten to sue you? There's a pretty tale or two to tell. 

Foreign Correspondent Dick West swears it didn’t happen to him but that an Australian reporter went up to interview Tom Driberg MP. The Colony he thought would be a Gentlemen’s Club. He was greeted at the door by Muriel and asked to be directed to Mr Driberg, ‘He’s the one in the corner with his hand round that sailor's cock.’ Driberg liked a man in uniform. 

But he also liked a working class man - Geoffrey Wheatcroft apologised to Driberg at the Colony for putting a picture of Driberg, Lord Boothby and the Kray twins in a compromising photo in a book by his publishers. Driberg said mournfully, ‘It’s just it’ll stop me getting into clubs’. Not the Colony. As Muriel drily noted: ‘He never worried about it when Ronnie’s cock was in his mouth.’ 

Driberg also admitted to Christopher Hitchens in the Colony that he loved going into special committees in the House of Commons with semen still sticky at the corners of his mouth.

It wasn't only homosexual activity, however. Christine Keeler and Stephen Ward were often at the bar (is it true Lloyd Webber is making a musical of it all?). Paul Johnson said she was very dreary, though Ward used to like to have dog collars and leads on girls he took to pubs and he didn’t drink more than an orange juice. A decade later, Peter Langan - the famous Brasserie owner - could often be found of an afternoon delighting middle-aged ladies by crawling around the banquette and putting his head up their skirts and (as George Melly put it) 'yodelling in the canyon.'

But why did Peter choose to wear those white linen suits? The follow-through stains showed up something awful.

Q: You were a member of the Colony. Were your genitalia casually vacant? Don’t you say to your wonderful mother Moll: ‘How could you have exposed me to such a place, with all those ghastly drunks slavering over each other!’

SP: It was a wonderful place; you must be a tiny bit jealous? I am eternally grateful to both my Ma and Pa for taking me in there and I was proud to be a member but it was odd seeing people like Jude Law or Stella McCartney in there at the end.

As to my vacant or otherwise purse I shall quote Irma Kurtz, agony aunt of Cosmopolitan -“The Colony wasn’t a pick-up joint. If you fell in love or lust, that was nice, but it was beside the point. Bohemian behaviour meant that you didn’t share the same restrictions and morality. Now everybody sleeps with anybody from Hendon to Highbury. Sleeping with someone because you want to doesn’t mean anything now.” Quite.

The Colony enjoys free promo

Q: What were Muriel’s teeth like? Was she lesbotic? I think you say somewhere she was only a bit lesbotic. Ian Board was definitely lesbotic – didn’t he throw Francis Bacon out once and said he was a useless painter or something?

SP: Never. Everybody was frightened of Francis; he had such a huge presence, and a charisma bigger than Nelson’s Column. 

Muriel was known as a Portuguese Jewish lesbian from Birmingham whose parents owned the Alexandra Theatre – all total bollocks. Along with the fact that The Colony was named after her Jamaican girlfriend Carmel. Carmel, aka the Fox, wasn’t about when Mu first took over the club; it had been a club for old colonials. Paul Johnson was taken there first in 1947, pre it being Muriel’s, with Jimmy and Teddy Goldsmith - and they were on the lookout for Benzedrine – it was all the rage then. She definitely had a soft spot for pretty boys and good-looking women. Ian liked leather-clad men who would beat him.

Do you want a picture of him as a male model on Hampstead Heath? [Yes please, see above - MA]

Q: Is it true Will Self was a habitué? I believe he was particularly kind to persons behind the bar. Yet he now claims the Colony was a hideous place – didn’t he satirise it in Liver? I can’t recall the title but there was a liver in it. 

SP: I don’t know if that is satire. I know all the Private Eye lot like Peter Cook went in the Colony and he opened up The Establishment where Lenny Bruce performed in London - and Terry Southern.

I thought satire was meant to be funny? Anyway, Self was (so he tells me) in love with the barman Ben Tranin, but that’s his story to satirise or otherwise. It's strange how people's drug of choice separates them. I personally can’t stand popping pills or puffing weed or shooting up, which tends to kill many more people who do it than the percentage of people who drink and die of liver disease. He insists everyone died of cirrhosis of the liver, but Wojas was a druggy more than a drinker, and Ian’s liver was fine. Unfortunately cancer of the lungs killed him. He liked a fag.

Q: I see your book is published by you. Don’t tell me the cunts who run publishing didn’t sense a bestseller in their midst. What’s wrong with these hairy-eared swine? What were you supposed to do – re-title it ‘Harry Potter Goes Tits Up At The Colony’?

SP: Or arse up and heads down - I‘d like to have seen the book jacket in WH Smith. Actually we are publishing it ourselves because it’s the only way to make any money from publishing. Authors advances have shrunk to the size of a cock in the North Pole. And having spent 2 years of my valuable life on this precious tome I didn’t want to be paid peanuts and then see it sink from lack of proper marketing. It’s a great and glorious book not just about sex - there’s some culture in there too. As Muriel said about Peter O’Toole, if he’d been any prettier they’d have had to call it Florence of Arabia.

Q: Do you consume muesli before you write? Do you wear shades as you ply the keyboard? There are many aspiring writers out there hanging onto these bio details. 

SP: I like a nice piece of sourdough smeared with apricot jam before I set to. Would I encourage anyone else to spend 2 years on a history of the Colony? No, don’t bother - I’ve already done it, there’s nothing left to tell….

Q: Sophie, darling. You're a joy and a credit to all loose-livers, so to speak. Good luck with your glorious book.

To order a copy or two of The Colony Room Club 1948-2008: A History of Bohemian Soho by Sophie Parkin, visit her dedicated site. Click here. 


In a separate post, I report on the Arts Club - boasting a membership engrossed in London arts culture -  snootily declining Sophie's offer to talk about the Colony and her book - it's 'not suitable'. Click here.

Madame Arcati's Top 10 Sexiest Posts of 2010!

Kevin Spacey CBE: bio post is No 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheila Vogel-Coupe's X Factor: Oh my God, her sex movie!

Dame Cecilia and friend

My woman of the year 2010, Sheila Vogel-Coupe (aka prostitute Grand Dame Cecilia Bird, aka actress Ruby Tuesday), 81, really does love vigorous sex, judging by her performance in this free excerpt from a porno (to be found via the site address in the picture - but be warned, the material is extremely graphic.)

Her performance is much more entertaining than that of her granddaughter Katie Waissel on The X Factor. Perhaps Simon Cowell might care to comment.

And let me know what you think of Sheila's performance.

Madame Arcati - does she have a cock? Click here

Sheila Vogel-Coupe: Mature Courtesans website - the review

Sheila Vogel-Coupe

I am astonished at the thousands of new readers who have stormed into Madame Arcati all because of my little post on Sheila Vogel-Coupe. She's in the Sun today, blissfully unashamed to be a practising prostitute at the age of 81. But I am appalled that her disrespectful X Factor wannabe and Frodo lookalike granddaughter, Katie Waissel, was 'vile and vicious' towards her on the phone after singing Help! last Saturday. Help? She can fuck off, dearie.

Anyhow, all this talk of Sheila has drawn me to the Mature Courtesans website where until recently she advertised her person. The madam of this establishment is one Helga who apparently has 'gone away' for now - and I must say Helga's business is a tribute to the kind of fine manners we should expect in these times of Old Etonian governance, even if her grasp on grammar and syntax is not.

'I only cater for gentlemen who prefer the delights of a mature companion,' she announces candidly. Her ladies (aged 35+ up to their 80s) she calls 'entertainers' or 'companions'. Gentlemen must be 'clean and appetising', the sort that might want to take a courtesan to Ascot. Clients are encouraged to bring 'surprise gifts': if they intend to cancel they're invited to be a 'considerate and well-bred gentleman' and call or text.

Most of the Vintage Vamps on display speak several languages and all would not look out of place on a Fred Olsen cruise liner. Bella Martin, for instance, is in her 70s and is described as 'a new star arrived on the Horizon of the Escort Universe', speaks English and French and discusses current affairs. The backdrop to her various picture poses looks distinctly Chelsea Harboury. Like all her colleagues she dislikes a 'Lack of personal Hygiene, Manners, Drunks & Drug-Users.' Not bankers, too?

I particularly like the look of Lady B, 69, who 'has been working as a bunny girl', is partial to champagne and is 'bi-curious'.

Mature Courtesans' purple wallpaper puts in mind the rich decor of an Alfred Tayor male brothel of the sort Oscar Wilde patronised: and the rich use of euphemism (one pays for a companion's time) is entirely 19th century. All that's missing is opium fume. Well, I say 19th Century, yet British law rather compels this kind of nonsense. All ver' Old Etonian-friendly.

Oh my God, Sheila's sex movie!

Oh my God, Madame Arcati on her fetishes. Click here

Sheila Vogel-Coupe: Madame Arcati's woman of the year 2010

The Grand Dame

The news that X-Factor wannabe Katie Waissel's granny is an 81-year-old 'escort' filled me with joy yesterday. I was soooo impressed.

'Pensioner Sheila Vogel-Coupe offers sex as a "vintage vamp" under the name of Grand Dame Cecilia Bird and boasts she has clients in their twenties,' screamed the News of the World in their story wittily headlined 'Gum and get it'. The Sun calls her the '£250-an-hour crinkly tart' today in its customary cheapo recap of its sister paper's exclusives. The slag who wrote the Screws piece, Stephen Moyes, should get some special treatment for this delicious exposé - though of course karmically he's got something coming to him. Oh yes.

I must say the Grand Dame looks nothing like her age and demonstrates a wit and canniness young hacks on tabloids can only dream about. She has found the wherewithal to buy her 'sheltered accommodation' flat - so the housing association can't throw her out - and she shortly embarks on a trip to Italy. She dresses elegantly, loathes tattoos, drinks fine red wines and probably uses an expensive mouthwash.

I do hope the new-found notoriety doesn't upset Sheila too much. Once the relatives have got over it they'll quietly marvel at her fashionable entrepreneurial spirit. Katie should feel proud of her gran. I can only wish for such a relative.

Rather than moping about all day waiting for care assistants to sit her on a commode or blocking up her GP's waiting room with imagined complaints or generally being lonely because she put all her life into her kids/partner/pets before they died/scarpered, Sheila entertains frustrated men in need of intelligent conversation, charming company and a harmless ejaculation while cradled in her arms.

Quite frankly this woman should be made a dame. Except she's already a Grand Dame.

Review of the Mature Courtesans website where Sheila once advertised. Click here

Oh my God, Sheila's sex movie!

Exclusive: Sebastian Horsley dead

I have just heard, am shocked.

My understanding is that he died either at a party or afterwards, last night or this morning.

Apparently.

PR has confirmed to a source.

To Sebastian, I was Madame Antarctica.

'I am for ever poised between Savile Row and Death Row'

Vicky Gold and Mark McGowan are over so she's going out with Sebastian Horsley. Now.

Apparently.

Mark and Vicky in happier times.

Quentin Crisp and Arnold Schwarzenegger: When they met on a date

An Arcatiste in the post two below asks where he or she can read about Duncan Fallowell's mad lunch at San Lorenzo with his companions Quentin Crisp and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Duncan replies: "Yes, it's in my collection 20th Century Characters published by Vintage, now out of print, but available secondhand on Amazon. Perhaps I should post it on my site since it has a wildness about it you don't come across in journalism today. Richard Davenport-Hines cites that particular lunch as one of the greats in his book on Proust at the Majestic. Even then the Governor of California was an unstoppable force of charm and ambition." To buy click here

Sebastian Horsley: 'Obama's another white in the Black House'

Brothel-meister Sebastian Horsley delights me with his take on President Obama: "He's no more black than you or me. Everyone's coloured, or you wouldn't be able to see them. He's half-black half-white. Must be confusing for the cunt. Doesn't know whether to rob you or shoot you. Don't be fooled. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics. He's just another white at the Black House." For more of his especial dystopian perspective, click here at the excellent Spoonfed site. Sebastian's MySpace site: click here.

Only if Obama allows members of the CIA to be prosecuted for torture will I even begin to think he is substantively different from the anti-Christ Bush Jr.

Would you like to be Madame Arcati's guest-cunty?

Ever a slave to fashion, and what with Steven Spielberg guest-editing Empire next month and Alastair Campbell guest-godding at the New Statesman, I think it is time that this blog had its own guest-cunty to run things for a week. Here's my wish list (but feel free to apply for consideration of this prestigious placement via comments with your thematic proposals):

Sandi Toksvig: I think she should be everything really: Doctor Who, Fern Britton's replacement, even the next Superman. There is nothing this woman cannot do, and certainly Madame Arcati would be the beneficiary of her all-knowingness, her all-talentedness.
Sandi is my candy


Katie Price: She's great value because of her genius for feuds. Despite her best endeavours to fail, she succeeds at everything she tackles, even humbling the likes of the egregious Julie Myerson with her books sales. Plus she looks moist.

Jason Cowley: He'd be great because the first thing he'd do is find a guest-guest-cunty. This way Alastair Campbell might get his mitts on Madame Arcati and call for a new war against someone.

Kevin Spacey: A man of kwalli-tay for sure, as his current ad for American Airlines confirms. What that man doesn't know about the poshest seats isn't worth knowing, and of course he's a connoisseur of dynastic genius as well as of rich women with sexy chauffeurs. Him as guest-cunty would be like a delightful sip of absinthe over a leather bound copy of Debrett's. Keyser Saucy!

Sebastian Horsley: Readers would soon be up there on Seb's Best Brothels Guide and his etiquette rules on asking a prostitute for a 3 squirts for 2 discount. He's most amusing, most inflammatory.

Sebastian, my whore

Sharon Stone: A personal fave, she'd fill the blog with extracts from her unpublished short stories and red carpet pics of herself from the world's major film festivals - attendance of which being her principal career right now. But could I afford her and would she make special demands (such as daily deliveries of scented Interflora bouquets to her Madame Arcati Prose Suite at Claridge's)?

Verne Troyer: A wit, an observer, a philosopher. A naked pic would be compulsory. Erect.

Christopher Lee: A fund of thespian anecdotes, but never mind. This would be an opportunity for him to respond to the scandal of his missing knighthood and slag off the Queen and PM.
"Sir" Christopher

Will Self: Enlarge your vocabulary with one of the wisest men on the planet. And like Katie Price, he's quite carnivorous and gets into feuds. Will I ever forget what he once said about one of Julie Burchill's exes, the gun-loving he-man, Tony Parsons?

Julie Burchill: Speaking of whom, can you imagine? I can only dream....

Duncan all over

Duncan Fallowell: My darling would expose you to polymathy with comic edging. His would be a mystery tour of music, mayhem, literature, obscure art exhibitions in Auckland and torrid encounters with intense, attractive persons (in Russia).

Sebastian Horsley: 'I'll marry him on Christmas Day'

Gosh, suddenly I'm the patron saint of escorts! Well, they're better company than ghastly hacks, that's for sure. Now, Sebastian Horsley. He has many friends, I see, and one in particular, Belle, got in touch and I said to her: C'mon, talk to me about him, tell us about Sebastian, the man who says he's visited over 1,000 prostitutes and is a Will Self old chum. So this is what happened ...

Belle, how long have you known Sebastian? Where did you meet him? What was the thing that sparked the friendship?

I met Sebastian in September at an Arts & Literary festival called Gold 08 which took place in Shoreditch. Myself and a friend had recently read his fantastic book, Dandy in the Underworld (named after the Marc Bolan tune) and had spoken to Sebastian a couple of times through cyberspace, so when we heard he was doing a talk at the event, we felt it extremely necessary to go and meet the man himself!

After his talk, which we seriously enjoyed (I think that some others in the room were a touch shocked, and definitely did not get some of the topics he was describing ... a bit like on This Morning!) the three of us sat chatting away on the steps of Shoreditch Town Hall for a while, discussing all things from his book, to Bolan, our musical tastes, films, London, Manchester.

What did you talk about when you first met?

See previous answer.

Is it a platonic relationship?

He is of the male species. I am of the opposite. So yes. Sebastian?

Who does more talking, you or he?

Both? Although I never know when to shut up. Only when gagged!

How often do you see him? Is it mainly remote eg phone, email?

Since meeting Sebastian in September, we have hooked up once which was a couple of weeks ago. I visited Horsley Towers with another friend, then we went out for afternoon tea in Soho. I hope to be in London again in the coming weeks so maybe then, who knows!

Apart from that, we mainly chat via email as I live in Manchester.

Would you describe Sebastian as happy, content, unhappy, troubled, all of the above in a healthy balance?

N/A - Don't really think I can answer this as I don't know him 'that well' at present.

Tell me something of yourself?

I recently turned 26, which according to Sebastian is quite an 'offensive' age ha ha! I currently reside in Manchester and work in radio.

What's your view of his whoring?

I find it quite interesting to be honest. Until I read Sebastian's book, I hadn't really thought about it, but it all kind of makes sense, I mean most of the things that go on in the world, whether wacky or 'the norm' make some kind of sense and can be understood one way or another. Myself and most people who I know are a bit crazy and certainly not average, so I am very much a believer in that as long as you are not harming anyone, you should be able to do what you like and what makes you happy.

You bought him nail varnish recently. What's the precise colour?

I'm a huge fan of nail polishes and not so long ago came across the Barry M range. Now I have tried nearly every make possible, including the likes of Chanel, but I find these have the most amazing colours and don't chip as quickly as other brands, which I'd say is pretty damn good! I think that Sebastian would have been wearing either the Red Glitter on its own, or Bright Red, topped with Red Glitter. Didn't it look fabulous? - I think it even got a comment from Jack Dee post the This Morning interview!

What do you both talk about mainly now? Is Gordon Brown a subject likely to feature?

Anything and everything.

Are you in love with him?

Why of course! I do not think it is possible not to be. I've heard that every woman who meets Sebastian falls at his feet ... I did ... I actually then went on to fall down the aforementioned steps at Shoreditch Town Hall.

Will you spend Christmas together? If not, where?

Yes. We will be married on Christmas Day, then divorce on Boxing Day. What a way to celebrate!

Sebastian Horsley: 'Fancy a fuck, Madame?'

Sebastian writes ...
Oh I'm so clever, I wish I could sleep with myself. Fancy a fuck Madame Antarctica? Or would you mind lying down while I have one?
Sebastian Horsley x

My Dear Sebastian,
How our sexual interlude transpires is a mere matter of detail. But I am having a bromance with Julie Burchill, and I'm thinking of a betrothal to Molly Parkin - it's not that I'm a starfucker or name-dropper, but one has to factor in all other considerations as my Moon is in Pisces. Though I have noted your aperçu: "People who believe in astrology were born under the wrong star sign." Still, Madame welcomes all-comers if they're interesting ....
MAx
PS And you are.
Duncan Fallowell naked

Sebastian Horsley: Fancy me not knowing of him

I didn't know of artist Sebastian Horsley's existence until I caught sight of him on This Morning talking about his visits to 1000-plus prostitutes. The nancers were talking about some idiot new law the busybody Home Sec wants to bring in which proposes to hang and quarter men who are into commercial cock-cunting, and there was Aunty Denise, 97, clucking away as Sebastian said he relished breaking the law. "Visiting all those prostitutes must have addled your brain," she barked, chins swaying like Capt Mainwaring's saggy testicles. To which he stuck his tongue out at her when she wasn't looking.

His nails were painted red, his eyes mascaraed. His collars had the wingspan of a golden eagle. I knew he'd be trouble when his off-camera audible sighs filled the air as the nancers said what they imagined their mothers, fathers or other restriction figure wanted to hear. It's not Sebastian's fault if Phillip Schofield confines his cock to the marital comfort zone. We really must stop trying to impose our comfort zones on other people: sex workers need taken care of, not nannying nancers and their corrupted Christian Reader's Digest approach to life.

I see now that Sebastian wrote a book earlier this year which passed me by, Dandy in the Underworld. Apparently he has spent £100,000 on commercial cock-cunting and another £100,000 on crack cocaine. The coke I can believe, the cock-cunting I'm not so sure about: I would need to assess the kind of prostitutes we are talking about here: male, female, tranny. I suppose I'll have to read the book to find out. He also underwent a voluntary crucifixion. Yet he lived to tell the tale.

Here he is, Sebastian Horsley's Guide to Whoring ...