Felix Dennis: 'I spent $100m on whores and drugs'

Sensational video interview by Rob McGibbon with the God of Debauch (and magazine publisher) Felix Dennis on Access Interviews. When Dennis is not confessing to unloading $100m on whores and drugs over 12 years he's slagging off the movie Hippie Hippie Shake (out this year), starring Sienna Miller, supposedly about the hedonistic times of those (including Dennis) involved in the Oz magazine trial. I love his comment about Working Title that's made the movie - it trades on being a credible indie studio but is ultimately owned by General Electric - and accuses co-founder of the studio Tim Bevan of "selling out". What should Germaine Greer not have been doing in 1971 ("I have the photograph - ha ha ha")? View here.

Anthony Blond - the Marks & Sparks sea Venus

Dear Madame,

I thought the following might amuse you.

Your devoted reader.

Anthony Blond, the publisher and son of a manufacturer of underwear for Marks & Spencer, who sadly died recently, was an unwelcome house guest of a late friend of mine at his summer house on Fire Island. Blond arrived in a seaplane wearing a white suit, accompanied by a pimpled male youth. Blond stepped out onto the seaplane’s float, fell off the float face down into the sea. He emerged from the sea like Venus. Without missing a beat he said, “These Marks & Spencer shrink-proof suits are really wonderful, aren’t they?”

'Newspaper blogs are worthless'

Dear Madame Arcati

A friend of mine recently left a message on Ben Brogan's Daily Mail blog pointing out that journalists ought to ring the people they write about to check stories. The point is that Brogan and co don't do basic journalism, and they ought to, when they're blogging rather than reporting for the print papers. Needless to say this didn't get put up (it went to Brogan himself for approval, if the Mail still employs the blogging structure it used to). If you look at Brogan's blog you will see several recent stories have what are essentially corrections appended to them, all of which would have been saved by simple journalism. It boils down to the fact that the blog, and others like it, are just worthless.

Anon

Tony Parsons: 'Mmm, I just lerve guns. Yum yum'

The hideous Tony Parsons pens a paean to guns in British GQ. “The first time you hear gunfire is like losing your virginity, but without the sex,” he writes. Excitingly he finds himself caught up in a “violent coup in Southeast Asia”. Bang, bang. In a tropical place (as opposed to British streets) “there is no denying the glamour of guns”. Thinking of his big butch soldier daddy who fought at Monte Cassino he reflects: “My father always thought me a lesser man than he because I had never heard that sound [gunfire]. And he was right. I have no doubt at all that he was right. We are forever lesser men than those who have heard the guns because we have not been tested.”

I should have thought that marriage to the goddess Julie Burchill would have sufficiently tested his sentimental sense of masculinity, hewn from comic books and John Wayne movies and the midget Norman Mailer and his big-cocked sense of his own big cockedness, now just another husk of nothing. Masculinity as defined by Parsons can only be sustained at the expense of others: it draws its energy parasitically from dreamt challenges made flesh. Someone else must lose something for masculinity to feel fulfilled. At its lowest it is expressed in domestic violence. At its most handsome, it resembles George W Bush. The sense of redundancy it trails behind itself is explored in a huge literature of bitter and disappointed experience, so easily forgotten by copycat sons of copycat men who wank in front of mirrors.

Come on Tony, throw a sheet over the triptych and give your over-used cock a rest.

Nelson Mandela in London for his 90th

Nelson Mandela is celebrating his 90th birthday at a Hyde Park rock concert on June 27, organised by his 46664 Aids/HIV charity. To pre-register for tickets click here. I suppose bloody Bono will be there. Mandela's actual birthday is on July 18.

Myleene Klass has a Rupert moment

That versatile violinist-cum-TV personality Myleene Klass had a nasty, Rupert Everett moment when she opened her school leaving book once upon a time. She tells me: "There was one guy at school who was mental - everyone else signed my leaving book but he cut off some of his pubes and stuck them in my book. I think he might remember me!"

Some Monkey business from The Guardian

The Guardian's mischievous Monkey media goss column says that one of the unlikeliest stories on the internet was that Heat editor Mark Frith was moving to Mojo. It was of course Arcati that authored that rumour based on a conversation overheard (by an Arcati spy) between two Emap suits in a London coffee shop. We now know that Frith is leaving Heat but not going to Mojo. So you could say that Arcati was 50% right while the Guardian was 100% nowhere. I know the paper checked out my original story and was told by Emap that Frith wasn't moving. You can have churnalism by omission ...

Ming Campbell on Bush and the Guantánamo charade

I fear that Menzies "Ming" Campbell (the UK’s former Lib Dem leader for the benefit of my majority overseas readers) is not sufficiently unbalanced to produce a bestselling memoirs. Decency is the enemy of sales. His My Autobiography, out March 10, however is at least a lightly whipped soufflé of a read and froths along unencumbered by intriguing solipsism or lucrative vengeance. He is in danger of being thought of as an honourable politician. One imagines good stories were extracted from him in the dentist's chair.

One in particular interested me - it's not new but worth repeating. In November 2003 he and Charles Kennedy met with President George W Bush at Buckingham Palace. They debated Guantánamo Bay, and when the Scotties said that Brits were in illegal detention there Bush made the “throwaway remark: ‘As far as we are concerned, if the British government wants the British detainees back again, they can have them. Just send us the airline tickets.’"

I love Bush's way with words. To buy Campbell's book, click here.

NME Awards - just ever so slightly chaotic

Last week's NME Awards were sooooooo much better than The Brits (the latter had three more Osbournes than was strictly necessary, I felt). But the NMEs could have been a bit better organised. I’ve just found out that poppet journalist Paul Stokes couldn’t get access to the NME Big Gig at the O2 straight afterwards (starred Manics, Kaisers, Klaxons) and was part of the Awards hoopla. Paul Stokes is, er, the NME’s news editor.

Cock-cunter reviews cock-cocker's New Zealand book

It's about cocks and cunts really, this book review, and the relative merits of cock-cocking as against cock-cunting. A lot of the former is "sleazy". A lot of the latter is presumably a good time. Click here for the larky review in the Sunday Telegraph of Duncan Fallowell's Going as Far as I Can - click here to buy. The reviewer Rory MacLean is a travel writer I'd never heard of hitherto, but here's his website. "Rory ... lives in Dorset with Katrin, their son Finn and Tess ... " Who's Tess?

Miss Lola: the woman who became a man who became ...

Katherine Dalton was once a straight blonde model. But the green-eyed beauty, who also appeared in pop videos, felt that she was a gay man trapped in a woman's body. She would go to gay clubs and sometimes sleep with gay men. She then spent £30,000 on a gender realignment op and became Adrian. He is now a gay man with a boyfriend. And Adrian has now launched himself on the stage ... as a drag act, Miss Lola. Part of Adrian's story can be found here, the rest I know.

Stephanie Mastini - send your healing thoughts to her

My friend Stephanie Mastini - Kevin Spacey's former sister-in-law - is having surgery on Monday. My thoughts are with her. She writes: "I am very scared and stressed but I am strong and have so many more adventures to experience and my book to finish ... not to mention all the paintings! Don't forget me ... love, Steph x."

How could we forget you, Steph! See her blog - a friend of hers has penned a song in her honour, click here.