Are you a left-brainer or a right-brainer?

Quick test for you - which side of your brain do you use more, right or left? To find out with a simple at-a-glance test (is the model moving clockwise or anti-clockwise?), click here. (I'm a right-brainer apparently)

Norman Mailer: 'I think masturbation is bad ...

"I wouldn't say all people who masturbate are evil, probably I would even say that some of the best people in the world masturbate. But I am saying it is a miserable activity ... Masturbation is bombing. It's bombing oneself."
From An Impolite Interview with Paul Krassner, collected in Pieces and Pontifications.
RIP

Jonathan King wins right to appeal to Europe

Jonathan King has won his right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against his conviction for sex attacks on teenage boys. To read more click here. King on the appeal, click here.

Rhydian

... In a class of his own. The current series of The X Factor may as well end now.

Karl Lagerfeld and his odd bedtime habits

Tatler editor Geordie Greig's interview with Chanel's legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in the magazine's December issue is faintly fawning to say the least, and it left me a little confused on the matter of the subject's bedtime habits, described in regal detail.

We learn that Karl sleeps in a long white nightdress, in a room with no curtains, for seven hours every night, "like clockwork". But before Hypnos carts him off to oblivion, Karl reads "two pages in bed before the book falls on his face." Karl adds: "I then read in the early morning" even though, as Geordie relates immediately afterwards, "he is woken by light and hunger". That he reads rather than breakfasts first thing is an example to me of admirable masochism.

But let us think this routine through. So, Karl lies in bed, presumably on his back with the book in his hands held above his face. This then crashes onto his face as he nods off. Would this not wake him up? - I take it he's not under sedation. I suppose it depends on the weight of the tome. A slim novella by Ian McEwan or Susan Hill might not make much impression on unconsciousness, but what if it was a fat Nicholas Coleridge hardback novel or anything by Tolstoy? This would surely bring Karl around with a start, and squash his nose too.

Perhaps we should assume that Karl's steepled arms descend gently and smoothly as consciousness ebbs away - he is elegance personified, after all - like one of those rickety elevators in ancient department stores (Debenhams usually) heading south, so that the book enjoys a soft landing. But if awareness ebbs away then we must also assume that he does not actually read the two pages unless he means that his lights go out precisely at the moment he reaches the last word on the second page, Pavlov style. This is most unlikely. I fear that Mr Lagerfeld probably stops reading well before he has turned his first page as drowsiness sets in. Mystery novels must remain a mystery to him, if this is the case.

But even if we accept this two-page claim, are we then to believe that the King of Chic sleeps his seven hours and then awakes with a book spread-eagled upon his visage, like some vampiric bat seeking to infect a new recruit for Vlad? Can you imagine a more absurd sight, accompanied we may suppose by the slightest rumble of a snore beneath? Happily, as Geordie loyally explains: "[Karl] does not take himself too seriously."

Geordie's top 10 Lagerfeld arselicks from the Tatler interview

1 "Lagerfeld is a man of supreme sophistication, charm and power"
2 "And supreme taste"
3 "He massacres hypocrisy and cant"
4 "He is a man of supreme politeness and decorum"
5 "No other designer seems to inspire such adulation"
6 "Pretension is his bugbear"
7 "With a clear conscience, he sleeps long and easy"
8 "He doesn't do anything as banal as translated books" (because he reads in four languages)
9 "His workload is Herculean"
10 "He is courteous, charming, gentle and yet incisive"

To acquaint yourself with the master click here.

John Barrowman, his memoirs and anatomical pics

Torchwood and Doctor Who star John Barrowman has just completed his autobiography, Anything Goes, with the help of ghostwriter, sister Carole, I learn. It's due out next February or March from Michael O'Mara after his well-earned break in South Africa.

But what's this I hear of him taking pics of a huge part of his anatomy on the set of Torchwood, having the images blown up and then stuck up put on the wall of a certain Torchwood set? Perhaps the poppet will get in touch and explain himself.

Madame Arcati is a great fan of Mr Barrowman - he will become a global superstar through movies I predict - and is pleased to learn that the stitching in another area of his anatomy is holding firm.

Nesta Wyn Ellis replies to Lavinia ...

Paris-based author and singer Nesta Wyn Ellis caught sight of a comment from commenter Lavinia and asked me to put up this response:

I have never heard of Lavinia, except that there is a rather nouveau riche pretentious wine chain here in Paris by this name. As for Lavinia's comment, the reason that I am not known in Paris is that I keep my life here a complete secret and my concerts, and social rendezvous, are entirely private and by invitation only.

Sorry "Lavinia" if you are one of the hoi polloi who never gets an invitation. My reason for coming to live in Paris was to keep my life entirely private and free of malicious comment in newspapers by freelance nonentities such as yourself, perhaps? As for Madame Arcati, she's a doll and a confidante and very much my valued friend.

Touché!

Best love,
Nesta

Del Toro to direct The Champions movie

Great news that Mexican movie director Guillermo Del Toro is to make the movie version of Sixties’ TV sci-fi show, The Champions. Remember it? It featured one beautiful man (Stuart Damon), one beautiful girl (Alexandra – I want to say Bastardo – but, no, I mean Bastedo) and then one not-so-beautiful man (William Gaunt): all playing agents endowed with supernatural gifts and working for some international outfit called Nemesis.

The ejaculatory, spraying city fountains in the opening credits sequence were the one thing that impressed my child’s eye; the paranormal bits of course I took to be entirely natural, what with me being a precocious and witchy Madame Arcati and all. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. I didn’t realise then just how dull life is for most wretches.

Del Toro is perfect for this project: a master of the schlock-free other-worldly. If you’ve not seen Pan’s Labyrinth yet, then get the DVD. It was my movie of the year last year; a literal fairy story set in Fascist Spain of 1944, featuring a most wonderful and sinister faun (pictured) among so many other underworld creatures – but none so dreadful as some of the pathological human beasts. Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone, set during the Spanish Civil War of ’39, is also hugely impressive: a creepy ghost film fusion of the political and fantastical and allegorical.

What Del Toro will make of The Champions - which he will write, direct and produce - I can’t guess. It has to be a big tentpole movie because of the promise of super-action, but I don’t doubt he will add many new things, make it adult but not at the expense of fun and just a teensy bit of profundity.

For more on the old The Champions click here.

Stereophonics' Kelly Jones: 'Din with Keyser Söze'

One of my darlingest sources sends me this delightful item from the excellent freebie Metro London newspaper. It's an interview with singer Kelly Jones of Stereophonics and one part goes like this:

Did Kevin Spacey know your songs?
Yeah, he did. We met when I did a gig for the Prince’s Trust at St James’s Palace. He took us out for dinner to Madame Jojos and the Met Bar; that was the first time we went there. The boys in the band thought he was after me…

Did you think he was?
No, as far as I was concerned, I was out for a drink with Keyser Söze. We didn’t become pals.

Heather Mills McCartney: Crime claim against Sun?

Glad to see Heather Mills McCartney has no regrets about her various attacks on the British press last week. On GMTV this morning she claimed that a Sun journalist had approached a man in Newcastle offering him money to make up a story against her - "It could be a criminal matter," she said, "we have a statement from the man." This is most interesting and I shall watch with interest.

I liked the fact she kept calm this time and didn't whinny on a top note to suggest an imminent blub - she's not one for tears is Heather. She also wished Macca well in his new relationship with "US millionairess" Nancy Shevell saying it was no one's business but his. Some ancient alleged Mafia link with her dad's company adds juiciness.

Sophie Dahl and those pesky gene-jeanies

Novelist and supermodel Sophie Dahl – or Dahling as some bitches like Arcati have a habit of saying – is all over the place right now with the release of her first full-length work of fiction, Playing with the Grown-ups. Whereas most writers must face the cruel fate of oblivion, Dahl’s more rarefied excruciation is the reverse of the common experience, hereditary celebrity and its remorseless trivialisation of her person and work.

It was the Indy editor Simon Kelner who encapsulated Sophie’s predicament with inadvertent and cruel efficiency in his GQ December Food column, following his delicious lunch with her (she had the smoked salmon and Jerusalem artichokes). He wrote: “For her career as a writer, the genes look good. As I watched her stride across the Aldwych after lunch, I thought the jeans don’t seem too bad either.”

Ah, yes the genes and the jeans. Never mind about the book! Every profile and interview rehearses the genealogy: Sophie’s mother is Tessa, the daughter of Roald and actress Patricia Neal; and her father is Julian Holloway, son of actor Stanley Holloway. Not just all this but Sophie was the inspiration for the Sophie character in Roald’s The BFG! Poor Sophie! It’s not her fault that she sounds like a walking ad for a benign form of Eugenics – popular in some areas of the media, broadsheets and glossy mags especially.

Her natal stardom leads to a kind of social determinism: her Wikipedia entry announces simply that she was “discovered by Isabella Blow on a London street at the age of 18.” Oh, OK. Just like that. Like you do. Crisp abbreviation lends a Mosaic quality to the tale; it was meant to be. It was ordained by ongoing, ambient success.

Then there are the jeans, the other thread – so to speak – of Sophie’s story (ie, the other big excuse not to discuss her fiction) which takes us back to her supermodel days – she did the Vogue cover for November, by the way – and at some point lately pint-sized jazz star Jamie Cullum gets a name-check (see pics of little man and tall woman). The lines of glittery detail are snorted up with tremendous relish – tragically to be repeated for Sophie’s entire life and in her obits - and, oh, she’s written a book!

To add to the distraction is the fact that she’s represented in the UK by that literary party Zelig, Ed Victor, the big agent man ever in search of the next buzz, buzz, buzz. You think: Yes, I see the sparkle, I can smell the sparklers' fume; yes, I concede the superior genes and jeans, but can any literary talent withstand such irrelevant heft? Wouldn’t even a very serious talent be compromised by sooooooooooo much trivia? Discuss.

Of course what one must do is read Sophie’s book to separate the genes from the jeans. Actually, I can’t be bothered because the hype puts me off. I did however read a short extract from Playing with the Grown-ups on Bloomsbury’s website: this establishes that she can write. But if I didn’t know it was the work of Sophie Dahl, would I be bothered? Would any publisher/journalist really be bothered? The question is the answer.

But this shouldn’t be read as a put-down of Sophie's writing talent – even “smart end of average” is a compliment on this site. If she wants to discover whether she can be taken seriously as a writer, my unsolicited advice to her is this: Dump star-fucking Ed, dump the family history (make all interviews contingent on no mention of Roald, Pat, Tessa, Jamie et al), refuse any picture poses and ban all model illustrations and insist that 90% of the interview is just about the work in hand. Only then will you know whether it’s your book, your genes or your jeans that’s the real point of interest.

To read the extract from Sophie's novel, click here.

Heather! Get yourself on Ross pronto!

The PR Mark Borkowski gives sensible advice to Heather Mills McCartney in today's Guardian after shaking his head at her TV antics of last week. He even tries to explain to her the "emotional roles" celebrities play in the wretched lives of the public. First, stars provide a "mythical narrative that the fan can follow and identify with" (very true, as my studies of Spacey fans have revealed). Second, stars can "function as an empty screen on to which fans can project their dreams." He adds: "The slightest deviation from these prescribed roles provokes enormous rage." In other words, she should have just put up with the press shit because, let's face it, we want her to be Cruella.

Mr Borkowski is one of our shrewder PRs - Madame Arcati might yet put him on a retainer! But there is one way in which a celebrity can tear away the binds of media central casting. It's called self-parody. Send yourself up - surprise your public with a display of comic self-knowingness - and a whole new life may await you.

The trick is to get yourself on a show where you can be mercilessly sent up, thereby burying the old myth. The show has to be pretty hot - ie very cool - to achieve image conversion. Until recently anything associated with Ricky Gervais might have done the trick - ask Les Dennis who has not looked back since he appeared in Gervais' Extras in a piece of self-crucifying irony. The Simpsons is also a great place to shape-shift the PR: get yourself cartoonised, have yourself slotted into a zeitgeist narrative animation, and the public will look upon you with eyes afresh (except it didn't really work for Blair - he was too far gone by the time of his 'tooning).

Talk shows may help, but you have to be careful. A spot on Graham Norton might just do the trick if you can withstand his porno theatre of cruelty. Jonathan Ross is a better bet since he still cleverly sides with the stars while taking the gentle piss, loudly. If Heather could be persuaded to swallow the bitter pills of his scabrous humour - "So, Heather, what was it about a pop icon billionaire that appealed to you," etc etc - and if she could just hold her face together in a pose of amused tolerance, well, perhaps even the Sun might lay off. Eventually.