John Blake's bringing out a Shilpa Shetty biography in March, I hear - some ex newspaper hack is probably flailing about in a ton of cuts as I write. I imagine the first draft of the opening paragraph - with Blake's annotation - will read something like this ....
"She was the Angelina Jolie of India, the toast of tout le [check the French stuff, is it right? - JB] Bombay [Mumbai, you prat - JB] and the star of [how many's that - check imdb.com - JB] films ... Little did this mega-star of the sub-continent [check Wikipedia - India] could have guessed the hell that awaited her in the shape of the Goody clan - Jade, Jackiey, Jack [didn't he fancy Danielle? - check - and did he wank really? - ask C4 for vid - JB] and the grandparents. By the end of the ?? [check - JB] days, Shilpa emerged from the Celebrity Big Brother house as the cynosure (yer wha'? - JB] of an international row about race and bullying. The glittery grub had metamorphosed into a dazzling global butterfly [fucking hell, he's after the Pulitzer - can't she at least be a caterpillar? - JB] and fluttered over Davina Mc - [go over this crap again and make it shiny - you've three days - oh, and have you fed the tropical fish? -JB].
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Duncan Fallowell: And now to Sodom ...
I am delighted to learn that the world's best writer-interviewer, Duncan Fallowell, is about to deliver to his agent the second book in his celebrity interviews trilogy, A La Recherche des Etoiles Perdues.
Titled Sodom & Gomorrah it's the rock 'n' roll/showbizzy/naughty one and includes not only his meetings with Tina Turner, Gilbert & George, Vivienne Westwood, Johnny Rotten, Lord Snowdon, Patricia Highsmith, Osbert Lancaster, Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren, et al, but also rentboys, female boxers, people who've changed their sexuality (as opposed to their sex!) and sundry other delights.
The third volume Portraits in a Distant Corridor will be more intellectual: personal encounters with writers, philosophers, historians and eccentrics, some of them born in the 19th Century. The first in the trilogy Twentieth Century Characters was published in 1994 (Vintage).
Titled Sodom & Gomorrah it's the rock 'n' roll/showbizzy/naughty one and includes not only his meetings with Tina Turner, Gilbert & George, Vivienne Westwood, Johnny Rotten, Lord Snowdon, Patricia Highsmith, Osbert Lancaster, Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren, et al, but also rentboys, female boxers, people who've changed their sexuality (as opposed to their sex!) and sundry other delights.
The third volume Portraits in a Distant Corridor will be more intellectual: personal encounters with writers, philosophers, historians and eccentrics, some of them born in the 19th Century. The first in the trilogy Twentieth Century Characters was published in 1994 (Vintage).
Mailer discovers the joys of homosex
The excellent New York magazine has a short piece on Norman Mailer and his homosex scenes in his new novel about Hitler’s childhood, The Castle in the Forest.
“Young ‘Adi’ has an older brother who puts ‘his happy blood-filled organ’ into the ‘yearning lips’ of an elderly beekeeper and whose buttocks ‘feel like the portals to a bounteously endowed temple.’” Yearning lips? Were they puckered or parted? Did he go phwoar. Details, Norm, details. And isn’t the blood-filled cock bit tortologous? What else would it be filled with? Diesel? And organ? COCK, Norman, COCK. Only Private Eye is an organ these days. The temple simile for the arse has a certain baroque fragrancy I suppose, but buggery is very hard work (I am told) so I should have opted for “bounteously endowed sweat shop". Yes, sweat shop, that’s it. He plainly hasn’t had his backside cherry popped yet, but at 84 never say never, Norm. Just don't forget the KY.
“So what’s changed? Was it firsthand research? ‘You have to cross the Rubicon to do that [and] I didn’t feel comfortable doing that,’ [Mailer] says. ‘But then I thought, Come on, it’s not that hard to imagine what it’s like’” Is there some safety in his age? ‘Oh, yes. When you’re younger, it takes more courage to be brave. You can lose so much. It’s enjoyable to be brave now, whereas when I was younger it was hairy and sweaty.’
Goodness, anyone would think he was contemplating a suicide bombing. Many years ago Norm said he could never have queer sex because it would destabilise the masculine-feminine see-saw on the fulcrum of his creativity, or something like that. What he meant was he didn’t want to turn into a nancy boy and not write big butch books anymore. Norm's always worn his COCK on his sleeve. He also had odd ideas about having a specific quota of orgasms in a lifetime and these were not to be wasted, though maybe that had more to do with the importance of fecundity. Waste not want not. I love these made-up superstitions: the building blocks of all religion. In his old years Norm appears to have loosened up a bit though whether he had to write a novel about Adi and his brother’s organ in a beekeeper's yearning gob to demonstrate this remains to be seen.
Many early reviews are favourable. “Mailer paints an icy and convincing portrait of the dictator as a young sociopath, both prissy and sadistic, simultaneously sentimental and stupendously cruel.” - EW.com
“The new book is lascivious, grandiose, cosmically critical (finding something Teutonic in technology and touting it as the Devil's own handiwork) and cantankerous, filled with grandstanding pronouncements on the nature of evil.” - The New York Times.
“Young ‘Adi’ has an older brother who puts ‘his happy blood-filled organ’ into the ‘yearning lips’ of an elderly beekeeper and whose buttocks ‘feel like the portals to a bounteously endowed temple.’” Yearning lips? Were they puckered or parted? Did he go phwoar. Details, Norm, details. And isn’t the blood-filled cock bit tortologous? What else would it be filled with? Diesel? And organ? COCK, Norman, COCK. Only Private Eye is an organ these days. The temple simile for the arse has a certain baroque fragrancy I suppose, but buggery is very hard work (I am told) so I should have opted for “bounteously endowed sweat shop". Yes, sweat shop, that’s it. He plainly hasn’t had his backside cherry popped yet, but at 84 never say never, Norm. Just don't forget the KY.
“So what’s changed? Was it firsthand research? ‘You have to cross the Rubicon to do that [and] I didn’t feel comfortable doing that,’ [Mailer] says. ‘But then I thought, Come on, it’s not that hard to imagine what it’s like’” Is there some safety in his age? ‘Oh, yes. When you’re younger, it takes more courage to be brave. You can lose so much. It’s enjoyable to be brave now, whereas when I was younger it was hairy and sweaty.’
Goodness, anyone would think he was contemplating a suicide bombing. Many years ago Norm said he could never have queer sex because it would destabilise the masculine-feminine see-saw on the fulcrum of his creativity, or something like that. What he meant was he didn’t want to turn into a nancy boy and not write big butch books anymore. Norm's always worn his COCK on his sleeve. He also had odd ideas about having a specific quota of orgasms in a lifetime and these were not to be wasted, though maybe that had more to do with the importance of fecundity. Waste not want not. I love these made-up superstitions: the building blocks of all religion. In his old years Norm appears to have loosened up a bit though whether he had to write a novel about Adi and his brother’s organ in a beekeeper's yearning gob to demonstrate this remains to be seen.
Many early reviews are favourable. “Mailer paints an icy and convincing portrait of the dictator as a young sociopath, both prissy and sadistic, simultaneously sentimental and stupendously cruel.” - EW.com
“The new book is lascivious, grandiose, cosmically critical (finding something Teutonic in technology and touting it as the Devil's own handiwork) and cantankerous, filled with grandstanding pronouncements on the nature of evil.” - The New York Times.
Monday, January 29, 2007
New Bean film downs in France
I hear that Rowan Atkinson's latest - and mercifully last - Mr Bean film, Mr Bean Goes to France, has been pulled back from release, and completely new scenes are being shot on location in London this week. Movie executives felt that the original opening sequences were not strong enough, and demanded that they were restructured. The film was originally titled "Mr Bean's Holiday". Its release date has been delayed from spring/early summer to early autumn.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Kurt Cobain: the late junky
"The stupid fucking British press have swallowed the lie that I suffer from narcolepsy." Kurt Cobain, Journals.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
The rise of the showbiz carbon traders
Cynically put, carbon trading is about buying your green credentials. Rich polluters get to pay their proxies - ie the disadvantaged - to clean up the planet. Rich polluters continue to emit as much carbon as ever, but on paper they're cleaner because someone else somewhere else (usually a lot poorer) is doing the carbon-busting for the rich polluters' money. Sounds tidy, but how accurate are the carbon stats?
A good example of this kind of transaction is the recent reported deal between the global showbiz Creative Artists' Agency (which represents such A-listers as Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep) and Robin Birley's Envirotrade.
Creditably, Envirotrade is encouraging farmers in Nhambita, Mozambique, to grow trees for sustainable cutting. To this end the organisation supplies the trees and equipment for nothing. The carbon that these trees absorb is then traded (ie quantified, valued as "carbon credits", and sold) and the profits shared with the farmers.
But is it possible to calculate accurately the carbon removal?
I ask because I can't make much sense of Birley's figures. In ES magazine last Friday be boasts that he has just sold 30,000 tons of carbon offset to CAA for $300,000. Yet in September 2006 he told the Daily Mail: "I have just sold 25,000 tons of carbon credits, worth $125,000, to the American showbiz agency Creative Artists." Was the deal re-negotiated then? Did the trees prove to be more effective, hence the 5,000 tons surge? We're not told.
Perhaps something has got lost in translation. The figures are substantially different. But if carbon offset deals of this kind are to earn credibility, the numbers must be discrete and scientific; not guesstimates or airy-fairy approximates. If carbon trading is intended to re-oxygenate our planet we'd better know exactly the amount of carbon reduction per offset, if rich nations don't intend to do anything about their own actual carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, CAA is now "carbon neutral" for a year, according to Birley, even if its projects continue to choke us. It was movie director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) who got CAA into environmentalism. For his apocalyptic movie The Day After Tomorrow Emmerich spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his own pocket in carbon offsets to compensate for the environmental impact of the production of the film. This influenced CAA to sign up to Bill Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative and pledging itself to carbon neutrality.
Lots of good intentions here, but to my mind carbon trading is just another fudge, just another putting-off of the day when rich nations have to wake up to the fact that carbon reduction starts at home, not just over there. It's cool tokenism in order to keep things as they are while appearing to do something.
For this is the true scale of the problem: around 24,000 million tons of man-made carbon dioxide are released into the global atmosphere every year, equivalent to about 6,500 million tons of carbon (2002, UN). For the complete list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions, click this link.
A good example of this kind of transaction is the recent reported deal between the global showbiz Creative Artists' Agency (which represents such A-listers as Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep) and Robin Birley's Envirotrade.
Creditably, Envirotrade is encouraging farmers in Nhambita, Mozambique, to grow trees for sustainable cutting. To this end the organisation supplies the trees and equipment for nothing. The carbon that these trees absorb is then traded (ie quantified, valued as "carbon credits", and sold) and the profits shared with the farmers.
But is it possible to calculate accurately the carbon removal?
I ask because I can't make much sense of Birley's figures. In ES magazine last Friday be boasts that he has just sold 30,000 tons of carbon offset to CAA for $300,000. Yet in September 2006 he told the Daily Mail: "I have just sold 25,000 tons of carbon credits, worth $125,000, to the American showbiz agency Creative Artists." Was the deal re-negotiated then? Did the trees prove to be more effective, hence the 5,000 tons surge? We're not told.
Perhaps something has got lost in translation. The figures are substantially different. But if carbon offset deals of this kind are to earn credibility, the numbers must be discrete and scientific; not guesstimates or airy-fairy approximates. If carbon trading is intended to re-oxygenate our planet we'd better know exactly the amount of carbon reduction per offset, if rich nations don't intend to do anything about their own actual carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, CAA is now "carbon neutral" for a year, according to Birley, even if its projects continue to choke us. It was movie director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) who got CAA into environmentalism. For his apocalyptic movie The Day After Tomorrow Emmerich spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his own pocket in carbon offsets to compensate for the environmental impact of the production of the film. This influenced CAA to sign up to Bill Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative and pledging itself to carbon neutrality.
Lots of good intentions here, but to my mind carbon trading is just another fudge, just another putting-off of the day when rich nations have to wake up to the fact that carbon reduction starts at home, not just over there. It's cool tokenism in order to keep things as they are while appearing to do something.
For this is the true scale of the problem: around 24,000 million tons of man-made carbon dioxide are released into the global atmosphere every year, equivalent to about 6,500 million tons of carbon (2002, UN). For the complete list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions, click this link.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Naomi Watts buys up doggy dinner
I have never quite got over a claim in the Guardian back in 2003 that the actress Naomi Watts’ pet dog had to be hospitalised after wolfing down a pile of marijuana left lying around. She denied it claiming that the beast suffered from narcolepsy. How I laughed.
Now I learn from a reliable source that she’s done a good turn for the canine race. While in Beijing filming The Painted Veil recently, she spotted a shop full of caged dogs. Told that they were due to be shot and sold as an accompaniment to pot noodles, she bought up the entire stock and had them flown back to the States for care and keeping. There, you don't have to become an international ambassador for UNICEF to be rich and caring.
In The Painted Veil, generous dog lover Naomi plays a character called … Kitty.
Now I learn from a reliable source that she’s done a good turn for the canine race. While in Beijing filming The Painted Veil recently, she spotted a shop full of caged dogs. Told that they were due to be shot and sold as an accompaniment to pot noodles, she bought up the entire stock and had them flown back to the States for care and keeping. There, you don't have to become an international ambassador for UNICEF to be rich and caring.
In The Painted Veil, generous dog lover Naomi plays a character called … Kitty.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Jade Goody: Act Against Bullying response
Hi Madame Arcati
Thank you for your email. We have been slightly inundated with emails on this subject so apologies in not replying sooner to your response. I have now issued a statement on my own website which I hope will clear up the situation regarding Jade and the organisation I founded Act Against Bullying. As a result we are receiving some very touching responses.
www.louiseburfittdons.com
With best wishes.
Louise Burfitt-Dons
Thank you for your email. We have been slightly inundated with emails on this subject so apologies in not replying sooner to your response. I have now issued a statement on my own website which I hope will clear up the situation regarding Jade and the organisation I founded Act Against Bullying. As a result we are receiving some very touching responses.
www.louiseburfittdons.com
With best wishes.
Louise Burfitt-Dons
Twiggy's ire at 'Stumpy' fire
I am very sorry to learn that the sainted Twiggy - her virginal nimbus has not quite deserted her - is the subject of a horrible attack by the ghastly, cosmetically upholstered she-elephant called Janice Dickinson.
Their contretemps arises from Dickinson's sacking as a judge from America's Next Top Model, a reality show about to be broadcast on Living TV. She describes herself as the US's first supermodel and boasts to have appeared on 37 Vogue covers. Her impersonation of Simon Cowell's sharp tongue to model contenders was a little too much for the fashionistas and so sweet Twiggy was recruited to bathe the show in positivity.
Evidently Dickinson didn't welcome this development and has now taken to referring to Twigs as "Stumpy" - thought to be a reference to her lack of height among catwalk giantesses. Word has got back to Twiggy who is most aggrieved, I learn.
Incidentally, Dickinson's publisher used to be Judith Regan, recently fired by the Old Testicle Murdoch from ReganBooks for the OJ Simpson debacle. Both fired for misconduct: birds of a feather, etc. And I relish this exchange between Dickinson and The Book Standard's Chuck Shelton from last May - they were discussing Dickinson's book Check, Please! and the perils of dealing with Regan ....
CS: I’m looking at this subtitle [to Check, Please!] —“How to Pick Up Boys . . . and Dump Them When You’re Done.”
JD: Well, I didn’t add that. That was not me at all. That’s all Judith. That should have been taken out. That’s her take on what my book is about —
CS: Well, you better talk to her —
JD: I wanted her to take that off —
CS: I’m looking at the cover. Maybe she will. I’ve got the galley copy right here.
JD: She has to. It’s a galley. It’s not on it.
CS: You have to tell her then.
JD: I have told her. She doesn’t listen.
Their contretemps arises from Dickinson's sacking as a judge from America's Next Top Model, a reality show about to be broadcast on Living TV. She describes herself as the US's first supermodel and boasts to have appeared on 37 Vogue covers. Her impersonation of Simon Cowell's sharp tongue to model contenders was a little too much for the fashionistas and so sweet Twiggy was recruited to bathe the show in positivity.
Evidently Dickinson didn't welcome this development and has now taken to referring to Twigs as "Stumpy" - thought to be a reference to her lack of height among catwalk giantesses. Word has got back to Twiggy who is most aggrieved, I learn.
Incidentally, Dickinson's publisher used to be Judith Regan, recently fired by the Old Testicle Murdoch from ReganBooks for the OJ Simpson debacle. Both fired for misconduct: birds of a feather, etc. And I relish this exchange between Dickinson and The Book Standard's Chuck Shelton from last May - they were discussing Dickinson's book Check, Please! and the perils of dealing with Regan ....
CS: I’m looking at this subtitle [to Check, Please!] —“How to Pick Up Boys . . . and Dump Them When You’re Done.”
JD: Well, I didn’t add that. That was not me at all. That’s all Judith. That should have been taken out. That’s her take on what my book is about —
CS: Well, you better talk to her —
JD: I wanted her to take that off —
CS: I’m looking at the cover. Maybe she will. I’ve got the galley copy right here.
JD: She has to. It’s a galley. It’s not on it.
CS: You have to tell her then.
JD: I have told her. She doesn’t listen.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Prospect magazine honours Arcati
Madame Arcati is most flattered to arouse the cerebral curiosity of Prospect magazine (February edition - follow this link).
While to quote from the item might be viewed as a form of auto-eroticism, I can’t imagine that I am "causing consternation in celebrityland for [my] well-informed indiscretions." My real identity is the matter of some speculation, it reports, but it doesn’t occur to the publication that Madame Arcati could quite possibly have slipped into this world in the usual fashion - placental moist and bawling - with her name etched on her forehead. Admittedly, Madame is an odd first name but we all have our cross to bear.
Writer Duncan Fallowell – see his interview below – is quoted as saying that "[Arcati] is great fun, sort of the News of the World getting off with the TLS at a drag ball." Kindness of this order is such a rare thing …
While to quote from the item might be viewed as a form of auto-eroticism, I can’t imagine that I am "causing consternation in celebrityland for [my] well-informed indiscretions." My real identity is the matter of some speculation, it reports, but it doesn’t occur to the publication that Madame Arcati could quite possibly have slipped into this world in the usual fashion - placental moist and bawling - with her name etched on her forehead. Admittedly, Madame is an odd first name but we all have our cross to bear.
Writer Duncan Fallowell – see his interview below – is quoted as saying that "[Arcati] is great fun, sort of the News of the World getting off with the TLS at a drag ball." Kindness of this order is such a rare thing …
Sue Douglas: Near-death accident changes all
OK, I’m fallible. I get it wrong occasionally. I recently wrote a rather mean piece about Sue Douglas, former deputy editor of the Sunday Times and former “president” of Conde Nast’s New Business division. Now I learn, from an interview in the London Evening Standard, that she nearly lost her life in a horse riding accident eight months ago. She suffered damage to her brain and optic nerve - she’s on the mend, thank goodness, but still has double vision.
She said: “I've got my memory back which is a relief but [the accident] has changed me. In fact I think, I hope, I'm a much nicer person than I was ... Before, when people came to me and they were ill or unhappy, I'd give them pretty short shrift. Now I would listen and try to understand more.
“You know, I set out on a beautiful day to ride my horse. That's all I did and it nearly cost me my life. I have found that very frightening. But it has given me a wider understanding of my whole life and that's a good thing in the end, isn't it?”
My comments on her husband Niall Ferguson and his Henry Kissinger project stand, however.
She said: “I've got my memory back which is a relief but [the accident] has changed me. In fact I think, I hope, I'm a much nicer person than I was ... Before, when people came to me and they were ill or unhappy, I'd give them pretty short shrift. Now I would listen and try to understand more.
“You know, I set out on a beautiful day to ride my horse. That's all I did and it nearly cost me my life. I have found that very frightening. But it has given me a wider understanding of my whole life and that's a good thing in the end, isn't it?”
My comments on her husband Niall Ferguson and his Henry Kissinger project stand, however.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
J Randy Taraborrelli: Chronicler of the bitch divas
J Randy Taraborrelli. What a name! I could write an essay just on that name alone (but I’ll keep it brief).
First there’s that mysterious J initial (so American, though initials tend to the midway of monickers, usually) and that thought takes me to The Great Gatsby and its hero Jay – the man who came from nowhere, who has found himself somewhere, whose soul is elsewhere. Is that Mr T? Probably not, but that’s the way my brain’s working today.
Then there’s the Randy bit – oh yes. A man who writes shagadelic books as big as Mr T’s has got to have a lot of go in him. This is a man who has oceans of surplus energy. His books need shrink-wrapping just to keep your lap dry.
And finally, the climactic, the polysyllabic Italian opera: Ta-ra-bo-rrell-i. It’s the sort of name the Kevin Kline loon Otto might have enunciated over and over again for seduction purposes in A Fish Called Wanda. No one else is called Taraborrelli. It’s a brand designed to trip the tongue-tied. And the brand is: Big BIG pop biographies. So big that just buying a copy presents a health and safety issue. BIG because they’re chock-full with revelation, exclusivity, high carat goss. And BIG because Mr T doesn’t write about small people – just about some of the biggest bitch divas on this planet.
Madonna, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson (honorary bitch), Cher, Elizabeth Taylor ... shall I go on? His current Diana Ross: An Unauthorised Biography is just out. I caught up with Mr T for brief intercourse.
Greetings Mr T! You’re the world’s top popular biographer – any message to your nearest rival Kitty Kelley?
Just one word: WHO???
Miss Ross did not deign to speak to you for your latest book. Does she hate you? Have you heard of any ructions arising from the book in the Ross Empire?
I did draw from interviews I conducted from Miss Ross years ago. I first interviewed her way back in 1972. Sure hope she doesn't hate me...but great divas will be great divas!
How many people did you speak to for the latest Unauthorised on Ross and how many for all the books you've written on her? How many researchers do you have?
Hundreds of people... more than I can remember if I had to total the sources for all three books, from the members of the Supremes, to Diana's mother and father and siblings and... all of the Motown stars... many, many people. I have five researchers who help me conduct interviews and then transcribe the tapes. But I write the books myself...
How long does it take you to write a bio blockbuster?
Usually about two years... but I always have more than one book in the pipeline at a time. I was writing Diana Ross at the same time I was working on Elizabeth Taylor, for instance.
Give me one reason why I shouldn’t propose marriage to you …
Because if I accepted, you'd then have to put up with me!
Cher, Madonna, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson et al: who’s your favourite among that lot and why?
Miss Ross, always. Why? Because she's Miss Ross, for goodness sake!
Do you hold back more than you put in to your books - perhaps for legal reasons?
Oh yes, of course. And also because I think you don't have to write everything you know, just what helps tell the specific story you're trying to tell.
Where’s home?, please give us a brief description of it. And what did you have for breakfast this morning?
I live in the Hollywood Hills in a big ol' castle I bought from one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's a great home, and I love it. For breakfast? Cheerios, baby!
How young were you when you realised what your life purpose is? What’s the best education to become a biographer?
I was about 10 when I knew I wanted to be a writer. The best education to become a biographer is to live your life to the fullest. And fall in and out of love a few times. Only then can you understand another person's experience.
You seem drawn to divas or les monstres sacres – why why why?
Because they live BIG lives. They love hard, they lose hard... they fall hard... and when they come back -- and they always come back!-- they do it with a vengeance.
The country with the worst press is …. (and why)
America, I'm afraid. We've become very... unpopular, I'm afraid.
Tell us your worst defamation/libel/threat of libel experience with a diva
Madonna once came up to me backstage at someone else's concert and said, 'Now you've done it, and I've had it with you.' Then, she turned and walked away. To this day, I have no idea what she was talking about!
Who’s your next “victim” and why?
It's a secret. There are so few great subjects left, I'd have to divulge his -- or her -- name. (Of course, it's a "her.") It will be my 14th book!
Will Michael Jackson ever make a comeback do you think? Can he be as big again? Did he like your book on him?
He did like my book about him. I think that if MJ wants to make a comeback -- if he truly wants it -- he can do it. I'm not sure he has that fire in his belly, though. And without it? Can't happen.
Your advice to Mr and Mrs Beckham (if any)
Duck!
Thank you Mr T. Here you are a hero.
And thank YOU. I'll be sure to include you in my next acknowledgments. :-)
http://jrandytaraborrelli.com/
First there’s that mysterious J initial (so American, though initials tend to the midway of monickers, usually) and that thought takes me to The Great Gatsby and its hero Jay – the man who came from nowhere, who has found himself somewhere, whose soul is elsewhere. Is that Mr T? Probably not, but that’s the way my brain’s working today.
Then there’s the Randy bit – oh yes. A man who writes shagadelic books as big as Mr T’s has got to have a lot of go in him. This is a man who has oceans of surplus energy. His books need shrink-wrapping just to keep your lap dry.
And finally, the climactic, the polysyllabic Italian opera: Ta-ra-bo-rrell-i. It’s the sort of name the Kevin Kline loon Otto might have enunciated over and over again for seduction purposes in A Fish Called Wanda. No one else is called Taraborrelli. It’s a brand designed to trip the tongue-tied. And the brand is: Big BIG pop biographies. So big that just buying a copy presents a health and safety issue. BIG because they’re chock-full with revelation, exclusivity, high carat goss. And BIG because Mr T doesn’t write about small people – just about some of the biggest bitch divas on this planet.
Madonna, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson (honorary bitch), Cher, Elizabeth Taylor ... shall I go on? His current Diana Ross: An Unauthorised Biography is just out. I caught up with Mr T for brief intercourse.
Greetings Mr T! You’re the world’s top popular biographer – any message to your nearest rival Kitty Kelley?
Just one word: WHO???
Miss Ross did not deign to speak to you for your latest book. Does she hate you? Have you heard of any ructions arising from the book in the Ross Empire?
I did draw from interviews I conducted from Miss Ross years ago. I first interviewed her way back in 1972. Sure hope she doesn't hate me...but great divas will be great divas!
How many people did you speak to for the latest Unauthorised on Ross and how many for all the books you've written on her? How many researchers do you have?
Hundreds of people... more than I can remember if I had to total the sources for all three books, from the members of the Supremes, to Diana's mother and father and siblings and... all of the Motown stars... many, many people. I have five researchers who help me conduct interviews and then transcribe the tapes. But I write the books myself...
How long does it take you to write a bio blockbuster?
Usually about two years... but I always have more than one book in the pipeline at a time. I was writing Diana Ross at the same time I was working on Elizabeth Taylor, for instance.
Give me one reason why I shouldn’t propose marriage to you …
Because if I accepted, you'd then have to put up with me!
Cher, Madonna, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson et al: who’s your favourite among that lot and why?
Miss Ross, always. Why? Because she's Miss Ross, for goodness sake!
Do you hold back more than you put in to your books - perhaps for legal reasons?
Oh yes, of course. And also because I think you don't have to write everything you know, just what helps tell the specific story you're trying to tell.
Where’s home?, please give us a brief description of it. And what did you have for breakfast this morning?
I live in the Hollywood Hills in a big ol' castle I bought from one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's a great home, and I love it. For breakfast? Cheerios, baby!
How young were you when you realised what your life purpose is? What’s the best education to become a biographer?
I was about 10 when I knew I wanted to be a writer. The best education to become a biographer is to live your life to the fullest. And fall in and out of love a few times. Only then can you understand another person's experience.
You seem drawn to divas or les monstres sacres – why why why?
Because they live BIG lives. They love hard, they lose hard... they fall hard... and when they come back -- and they always come back!-- they do it with a vengeance.
The country with the worst press is …. (and why)
America, I'm afraid. We've become very... unpopular, I'm afraid.
Tell us your worst defamation/libel/threat of libel experience with a diva
Madonna once came up to me backstage at someone else's concert and said, 'Now you've done it, and I've had it with you.' Then, she turned and walked away. To this day, I have no idea what she was talking about!
Who’s your next “victim” and why?
It's a secret. There are so few great subjects left, I'd have to divulge his -- or her -- name. (Of course, it's a "her.") It will be my 14th book!
Will Michael Jackson ever make a comeback do you think? Can he be as big again? Did he like your book on him?
He did like my book about him. I think that if MJ wants to make a comeback -- if he truly wants it -- he can do it. I'm not sure he has that fire in his belly, though. And without it? Can't happen.
Your advice to Mr and Mrs Beckham (if any)
Duck!
Thank you Mr T. Here you are a hero.
And thank YOU. I'll be sure to include you in my next acknowledgments. :-)
http://jrandytaraborrelli.com/
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