Monday, August 04, 2008

Julie Burchill's pal Chas Newkey-Burden, king of listerature

"It is a great and glorious tradition the world over - to vehemently state one thing and then do the exact opposite," begins the Amazon synopsis of Julie Burchill's latest book Not in My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy. In the light of my announcement of my death and now resurrection within a week, I know exactly what she means. She gives a splendid interview to the Guardian today, here we go. She only got £2k for the book serialisation in the Mail. I blame Gordon Bown and his four planets in the secretive, furtive 12th (Piscean) house. His baleful influence turns everyone into a skinflint. Forget about David Miliband. Too prissy.

However it is Julie's co-writer, a male hack called Chas Newkey-Burden, who on this occasion interests me more. He appears to be the Carol Vorderman of the stocking-filler tome, an auto-churner of disposable literature, or listerature. To take 2007 as an example, he produced: Arsenal: Premiership Player Profiles; The Reduced History of Dogs; Paris Hilton: Life on the Edge; Great Email Disasters; and The All-New Official Arsenal Miscellany.

I marvel at such industry. And he must be quite savvy to be a pal of La Burch. Earlier this year he became the instant biographer of Amy Winehouse. Ahead of us are Help! I'm Turning into My Dad and The Dog Directory: Facts, Figures and Profiles of Over 100 Breeds.

His name - Chas Newkey-Burden - seems marvellously throw-away, too. "Here lies Chas Newkey-Burden" - no, it doesn't sound right, does it? It's not a name for a tombstone etch. Chas suggests impatience to me, an irritation with anything long-winded; so he adopted a nice fleeting sound for a first name. Nothing too formal, like. I think I may have to interview this will-o'-the-wisp of modern publishing. I am fascinated by industrial dervishes. I must examine his horoscope if not his oeuvre.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Madame Arcati. Lady Colin Campbell to sue? Nicky Haslam snogged by a paedo?

Yes, I am back. My announcement last week of this blog's cessation was a rehearsal of death: I think it most important sometimes to live through an experience for a better understanding of oneself and others, don't you think? I now have a better sense of what it will be like when I am no longer here: I felt your pain, your loss; while I felt utterly free. It's a kind of Method living. Immersing oneself in the alternative visceral as a preparation for the real thing: for the imagination is no substitute. Thank you for taking part in my experiment. You did not disappoint me. Bitches. Now I have things to report ....

Lady Colin Campbell

I do hope Lady Colin Campbell - she allows me to call her Georgie - is not about to sue the estimable ES Magazine, the supplement to the London Evening Standard. In its briefing report on the mega-rich Lily Safra - who effectively injuncted Georgie's marvellous novel Empress Bianca on the grounds of possible libel - it describes Lady Colin as the "transsexual novelist". Oh dear, dear. No! Georgie is not a transsexual and over the years has collected quite a tidy sum in court pay-outs and other settlements. Georgie was merely born with some tiny biological anomaly now sorted out: she's all woman I can tell you.

But I beg Georgie not to sue ES. It is generally peopled by immature, inexperienced know-nothings who have rich daddies and mummies and they're employed just for their contacts and for their aura which the commoners hope is contagious. Show pity on these pathetic specimens who think only of dosh and what's posh. Settle for an apology and show how big you can be, Georgie. See, I have a heart.

Nicky Haslam

Now to Nicky Haslam. In the September edition of Vanity Fair, in which he grants a lengthy, deeply comic interview about his life, it is claimed that his memoirs, Redeeming Features, will be published by Knopf in October 2009. Is this really true? There's nothing to this effect on Amazon.com. Weidenfeld still claims on Amazon to be publishing Writing On The Wall in October (as a US import from the UK). I am very confused. Perhaps a know-all could advise. But Redeeming Features must exist because the VF writer appears to have read it.

In the interview Nicky portrays himself as a post-War Dorian Gray, a "devastatingly beautiful" young man who seduced, or was seduced by, Lord Henry Woottons all over the place. Early photos do not entirely bear out his self-appraisal: to be frank, the arrangement of his jaw, in particular, puts in mind more a fresh-faced Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall - the mouth area seemingly paralysed by a million strangulated vowels.

Perhaps his most troubling anecdote has to do with a certain tutor he had as a child who used to "gently" snog him. No age is given for this initiation but he must have been pre-pubertal. "The physical nature never went beyond kissing" claims Nicky. Yet is it too much to conjecture that the tutor might have experienced an erection while kissing the little boy and walked out of Nicky's house with a tent in his crotch before a bout of furious wanking? I think Rebekah Wade may need to take a retrospective interest in this abuse. But among the upper classes such an aberration is plainly tolerated while the tabloids strike poses of horror.

Nicky has never much cared for sex: he is I think a romantic. But do read the interview. It's far superior to that embarrassing Madonna interview VF ran earlier in the year. The writer of that must have thought he was in the running for the Pulitzer now that Norman's dead. There's too much big literary cockedness about.

The Future
I shall not be updating as regularly as before; I may opt for occasional longer reports such as this if only to piss off internet surfers looking for nugget prose. Such busy loafers annoy me.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Madame Arcati gets on her bike. Bye bye


This is my 1005th post and my last for now. I am sure there is a counselling service somewhere for those bereaved by the resting of a blog, but take heart: like a silent volcano, Madame Arcati is not necessarily dead but could be dormant. Just think Krakatoa or Vesuvius: you never know when either may erupt again. An innocent goatherd loitering about this site may yet find him/herself blown into the sky as Mt Arcati suddenly spews out her magma-poison in response to another hypocrite editor or dodgy showbiz dahling ...

Of course the site remains here, her cinder cone a monstrous phallic silhouette at dusk. Think of all those posts to read or re-read! Kevin Spacey, Duncan Fallowell, Molly Parkin, Stephanie Mastini, Jonathan King, Susan Hill, Ms Baroque, Rupert Murdoch, Fish and Nicky Haslam, Robert Tewdwr Moss, Allison Pearson, Rupert Everett, Precious Williams and Jon Snow, celebrity cocks ... so many more - frenemies and all - topics and contributors. And thousands of glorious comments from the likes of the mysterious Duralex and other masked smarties -fresh comments will go up indefinitely, and you can write to me privately if you wish or need to.

In the two-plus years of my existence, from July 4, 2006 to now, this site had 1,033,081 pageviews and 468,079 visits, with most callers from the US and then the UK, followed by Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland and Spain. People from 197 countries visited the site - though I assume the one visit from Vatican City was a papal accident. I think I can safely say that Madame Arcati has proven to be more popular than certain mainstream publications and their websites.

And on that happy note, bye bye. For now.

(And as if to sum up Madame Arcati's cock-cocking, cunt-cunting preoccupations, I am indebted to Stella Polari for bringing to my attention The Maccabees' delightful Toothpaste Kisses - a polysexual frolic)

And my thanks to the incomparable Margaret Rutherford whose Madame Arcati in Coward's Blithe Spirit (1945) changed my life. Why wasn't she made a dame? (Where's Christopher Lee's knighthood btw?) Rutherford was all the things I love - deeply gifted, ugly, always old and one of the avatars of the peculiar. Even as a teen I had a fetish for creped skin. If you don't know her, here's an intro ....

Friday, July 25, 2008

Gordon and Andrew Brown plot UK's nuclear future

A few weeks ago I wrote that President Sarkozy's visit to the UK with his go-getting wife Carla Bruni was really about a plan to export France's nuclear reactor hardware here. The Sarkozys are the pretty face of our humming, tumoured future.

Now French company EDF (Electricité de France) is said to be close to buying British Energy in a partnership with Centrica for £12 billion. The British government is quietly in favour of the takeover - no doubt all those nods and winks of Gordon to Sarky have done nothing for his nervous tics.

And let us not forget, Gordon's brother Andrew is Head of Corporate Communications at EDF Energy. What a stink!

Rest assured, in this democracy we won't be asked whether we should rely on nuclear power. It'll just happen. EDF runs 58 reactors in France on 19 sites. It has already said it wants to build at least four reactors in the UK.

Meanwhile, 100 EDF workers have just been contaminated by a radioactive leak at a complex near Avignon. A "review" has been ordered.

The Screws, hubris and Max Mosley

On the day Max Mosley wins his "Nazi orgy" case against the News of the World and forces it to cough up £60k plus costs for invasion of his privacy, the paper publishes a most unfortunate ad in the Press Gazette. "Mosley's not the only one getting a spanking" the ad announces above the word "DOMINATION" stamped over the back of a tart in her dominatrix gear. The spanking is of the paper's pathetic tabloid rivals, not the one it received at the hands of Mosley: the ad would have gone to bed, as it were, before court judgement day. This must be one of the best examples of tabloid hubris I have ever come across - most delightful indeed. Of course editor Colin Myler will go shortly - blaming European laws for his spanking (a pathetic attempt to play up to his Euro-phobe boss Murdoch, 103) was most foolish as he effectively cast his paper as a LOSER against evolution.

I don't think that ad will be repeated somehow.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Oh no! Another Nicholas Coleridge novel

I convoked my The Arcati Trees Society (TARTS) recently and proposed that we pray for all the lovely beeches, oaks and whatnot due to be felled for Nicholas Coleridge’s next novel, The Second Deadly Sin, which awaits an unwelcome birth on March 19, 2009.

This baggy paean to yet more wealth and snobbery - the démodé theme of his oeuvre - will be bulked to a colossal 544 pages: could it be that a sylvan idyll the size of Sherwood Forest maybe turned to desert to satisfy the literary ambitions of Condé Nast UK's managing director; who is also vice-president, Condé Nast International (and the World’s Worst Novelist)?

TARTS is praying every Tuesday at 18.00 BST (local times vary, natch) for five minutes in an international effort to save these doomed trees: such a mystical plea must surely have some effect. If you wish to join us as a honorary TARTS member, then simply get on your knees (you should be well practised at that), open your moist mouth and say these words repeatedly: “Trees, please, Sucellus” (pronounced Soo-kell-oas) – Sucellus is the Gaelic god of forests, among other things – after visualising the words "The Seven Deadly Sins" just the once. Make a mantra of this phrase, and you will not only experience universal joy, but be doing something useful about your carbon footprint.

If that's too much effort then at least acquaint yourselves with how Coleridge promotes his books - see labels. He's a right scamp is Nicky.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The Dark Knight: A film that's missing a fart

The Dark Knight lives up to the hype so far as Heath Ledger is concerned – a thrilling performance of a nihilistic zombie entirely detached from Batman’s comic origins.

But in other respects the film slowly drains you with its relentless explosions, navel-gazing, sadistic fetishes and thwacks and pows sound effects. When Two-Face emerges as a Joker sub-strand you’re faced with two raving psycho villains delivering rival climaxes: the result is too much of a muchness lasting about 30 minutes after the two hour point.

There’s no humour as such: if only someone had broken wind or something, just to debunk the tiresome arrogance. There's not enough farting in movies generally; but I'm pleased that The Joker doesn't brush his teeth: that fact alone has I think subliminally impressed the North Americans and lent credibility to the tone of anarchy. Perhaps the sight of The Joker in a nurse’s get up and wig is faintly amusing. But as Sir Michael Caine, 75, said at the Dorchester press conference yesterday, the cast on this movie were like a repertory company: definitive, memorable performances, dahling, were the order of the day.

And at times there’s a sense of island actors entire of themselves forgetting their part in what is supposed to be a continent. Hamming is an insufficient word in itself for what’s on display here. I shall coin a new word: Hacting. The Dark Knight is overloaded with hactors catching glimpses of themselves in mirror shards and shiny buttons. Yes, hacting – ham acting at its worst.

Ledger really does act – like a loony. Throw an Oscar in his coffin.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Grace Jones. Corporate Cannibal

Madame Arcati's 1000th post
Intriguing track from Grace's new album Hurricane due out October 27 from Wall of Sound. This Corporate Cannibal video is a stand-out, very HR Giger-ish.

View also Stor Dubine's The Jones Aesthetic at his site below, based on his paintings inspired by the diva whom he describes as "a horribly beautiful woman".
Stor Dubine site
The World of Grace Jones

Friday, July 18, 2008

Lovely dope smells at Irvine Welsh boat party.

Great Party for Irvine Welsh and his new novel Crime last night despite an autumn July sky. We boarded the Golden Flame at Westminster Pier and cruised east to Canary Wharf. Oh, there's The Angel pub where Profumo used to booze with Keeler. The Express building, a dark blue-ribbed affair, is most enchanting - a pity Richard Desmond calls a few of his staff fat cunts. But I hear they now have a gorgeous staff restaurant on the top floor so he can't be all bad. The FT glass block looks cheap and nasty but must afford great river views if you're the paper's pompous editor. Sarah Waters - Tipping The Velvet - was with her luscious girlfriend, though they got to look bored by the Miami Vice theme and noisy disco. Writer Tim Lott didn't pause to disembark at the end either.

Welsh was attired in red shirt, black jacket, Prada black shoes, straw hat. Most of his friends were of the wideboy variety - "Makes a change from being glassed" was one comment I picked up. "Well, at least we've got a barrister in the family now" was another. The air was pungent with dope and passively I got quite spaced out. No speech, just posters for the book. Even the PRs failed to make themselves known. And no cunting literary eds so far as I could tell. A perfect party.

Did I see Irvine trying to dance to Talking Heads? I must have imagined it. Crime will be turned into a movie.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

EF Benson and his entirely queer family

Further to the Mapp and Lucia posting just below this, Lee Randall, Assistant Editor (Magazines & Arts) of The Scotsman writes in:

I seem to recall reading in an intro to one of Benson's lesser (ie not M/L) books - which is at home or I'd have the reference to hand -- that NOT ONE of the Benson siblings ever had sexual congress with a member of the opposite sex. Can't recall the details, but think in addition to EF's being gay, he had a gay sister and possibly a celibate brother in the clergy.

Fascinating family!
x

Mapp and Lucia gets the 007 treatment!

Hello, Madame Arcati

You will probably recall that EF Benson (“Fred” to his friends), the creator of the immortal “Mapp and Lucia” series, is now being hailed as a major gay writer. He managed to pull of the seemingly impossible; at a time when homosexuality was a serious criminal offence he lived openly with two different men and yet still entertained members of the royal family to lunch! This conflict is reflected in his books, which feature among other things a lesbian couple, a gay toy-boy chauffeur, a Duchess with a fetish for beards and (only Benson could think of this) a non-practising bi-sexual.

Just as Sebastian Faulks has done for James Bond, I have done for Mapp and Lucia. With the blessing of Benson’s estate I have written a brand new Mapp and Lucia book. Entitled Major Benjy it is published by Troubador in the UK, the US and Canada on 1 September. I do hope that this is the sort of item you would be prepared to cover (no pun intended). Without giving away the plot, you can rest assured that the book fully reflects all the sexual quirks of the originals.

Best wishes,

Guy Fraser-Sampson

My new website is now online at http://www.guyfs.com/
Get the latest on Major Benjy at http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=627

Monday, July 14, 2008

Sarah Ferguson releases Worm from captivity

I see the Duchess of York’s debut novel has been delayed until next year. What was called Hartmoor now bears the title Wingfield and was due out on September 4 this year – Amazon may want to update itself on the title at least.

As I related some time back her “co-writer” of this historical tome is the wonderfully named Laura Van Wormer whose oeuvre includes books on Dallas - a perfect qualification for working with the Ferg as she once lived in a house dubbed Southyork. On her website Laura quotes the Fergiana on their novel – “Think Jane Austen meets 24”. Mmm. Perhaps Frankenstein Revisited would be more appropriate.

Laura takes the opportunity to explain to her public that her other books are out of print because she’s been consumed by Wingfield – for four years! And yet I swear I have seen the Ferg all over the place in this time – berating the Mail’s Allison Pearson on TV, dating the Findus fish fingers proprietor who has just bought her a £130K car, etc etc. When did she find time to write as assiduously as the Worm?

“I am only this very day re-emerging in the world and must see if my family and friends even remember what I was like when I was around!” writes Laura. Anyone would think she’d just been released from captivity after abduction by the FARC. (FERG?)

I’m sure there must be a movie in it.