Lady Colin Campbell decides to be merciful

Thank goodness Lady Colin Campbell has accepted ES Mag's apology for wrongly calling her a transsexual about a fortnight ago - see labels. My public appeal to Georgie - as we friends of Lady Colin call her - probably helped prevent litigation that could have proven to be costly for the supplement dedicated to the eugenics of wealth and status.

Molly Parkin: 'Are you OK, Madame?'

Molly and Sophie Parkin

Dear Madame
Mother dear wants to enquire after your health, how are you? She says you must have been ill not to have made it down to The Parkin Lot so far on a Tuesday. Hope our new sex talks might whet your appetite ... see our Daily Mail interview. All love health and joy to you, Sophie [Parkin] X

Dear Sophie
Thank you for your message which I'll put up on the site. I am very well but busy - I simply haven't found time to visit The Parkin Lot at the Green Carnation [in Greek St] yet though I have popped in at other times. How is it going? What are the clubbers like? - last time I visited I had my bottom pinched and on another occasion I watched Carole Malone laughing at a gay author describing porn that features disabled people. It's on my mobile phone, her cackling.
Love and kisses to Molly and you. MAx
PS -Click The Green Carnation

Granta's New Nature Writing: Read and discuss

Jason Cowley's Granta devotes its Summer 2008 issue to nature writing - not your Laurie Lee lyrical burbling, but a new kind that interests me. The only fiction featured in the edition, Phantom Pain, is by someone called Lydia Peelle. She sets out her literary green philosophy which in brief ... well, actually, she puts it rather well and doesn't need paraphrasing, and I'm lifting her words from Cowley's editor's letter:

'The new nature writing,’ she told me, ‘rather than being pastoral or descriptive or simply a natural history essay, has got to be couched in stories – whether fiction or non-fiction – where we as humans are present. Not only as observers, but as intrinsic elements. I feel this is important, because we’ve got to reconnect ourselves to our environment and fellow species in every way we can, every chance we have. In my thinking, it is the tradition of the false notion of separation that has caused us so many problems and led to so much environmental degradation. I believe that it is our great challenge in the twenty-first century to remake the connection. I think our lives depend on it.’
Granta's New Nature Writing

American Vogue not as fat as it was shock-horror

How pleasing it is to learn that the big fat waste of space called American Vogue has suffered a 7% decline in ad pages for its September issue – traditionally the fattest issue of the year. It boasts a mere 674 pages thanks to the so-called credit crunch. Surely it is time to sack Anna Wintour on the grounds of her age – nearly 60 now – and should you remind me I’m supposed to be anti-ageist may I remind you of her merciless pursuit of youth and of young staffers over the decades. She has lived by fashion long enough.

The deification of Wintour – the “glacial fashionista” – by idiotic hacks (usually female) never ceases to amaze me. She was caught recently wearing the same dress on two separate occasions in public. This was taken as a sign that the credit crunch had finally got a hold on the consumer zeitgeist. I suppose if she suddenly drops dead that will mean the Russians are coming. Fashion, after all, is the cardiograph of the international soul (quote made up for satirical purposes).

The thought of mortality (“Dear God, send me a nice thin coffin”) takes my mind to the excellent work of Scott King (alias CRASH), an ex-creative director of Sleazenation among other things. I loved his How I’d Sink American Vogue exhibition at New York gallery PS1. The cover shown here is one of his assassination attempts on the monstrous bible of fashion. The link takes you to others. Click here



by Scott King

Allison Pearson sued over '$700k Miramax deal'

Oh my God! A source points out to me that Miramax is suing the Mail's Glenda, Allison Pearson, for alleged breach of contract over an undelivered novel and it wants its $700,000 back. Leave my Allison alone. Whip round! Whip round! Click here

Theft! Atticus steals Arcati joke!

An Arcatiste points out that the Sunday Times' Atticus goss column stole my joke about David Miliband and his hope of returning from his hols B(b)rowner. Fancy pinching material from a humble blog without credit - I'm sending links to Murdoch and others for maximum humiliation purposes. Perhaps I should send a bill too. £1,000 should do it.

Press Gazette: What will the liars, chancers and buffoons read now?

I’m not too fussed that Press Gazette has gone monthly after 43 years as a weekly trade mag for hacks, though one is always sorry to hear of redundancies. It had bored me for years aside from Rob McGibbon’s excellent news-setting interviews when Piers Morgan co-owned it. And the Grey Cardigan was slightly amusing (only) on Liz fucking Jones.

Though PG dutifully covered the various categories of journalism waywardly, it was clearly too enamoured of national newspapers and their ghastly, pompous, prematurely aged staffers. Did you ever read much about the personalities on Sky Text, Psychic News, Woman & Home or Reader’s Digest? Are there any? Whole areas of journalism were virtually ignored while the publication cheekily sought subscriptions from them. Its British Press Awards excluded most of its catchment readership from nomination: so I have to laugh when one of its former editors, Ian Reeves, whinges in the Guardian today about how the papers let his mag down. The only reason why PG obsessed about the nationals was because most of its reporters were hoping to win the attention of a Fleet St editor for career purposes. Oh yes you were.

This didn’t stop the mag though from boring us with its regional press coverage (cue bad haircuts, bad skin, bad teeth, abnormal scrotal bulges), its media commentariat reviews (inclusive of four old bitter farts so far as I could see) and an interminable how-to section for aspiring journalists – like, who gives a diddlysquat anyway? Everyone knows journalism is for chancers, liars and buffoons.

But I do think Morgan should pay the Grey Cardigan the £2k he’s owed.

AA Gill - in need of a squirt

Someone said I should have a look at the new, "re-designed", Sunday Times. So I have done. No difference much. The throw-aways (ie the specialist section sheets) have a bit more title blocky colour and white space and for that the Guardian has clearly been a part-inspiration. The print's a bit different, but so what? Nip 'n' tuck, dearie. Nip 'n' tuck. Most of all, the same tired writers lead the way, potpourris long over-due a reinvigorating squirt of fresh oils as they stale in their salaried cellophane.

Ah, AA Gill. Last week he reviewed The Tudors but rather wasted his wit on Sam Neill (eg "His presence makes this Tudorassic Park") by failing to notice that he's not actually in the new series. Hence Gill's pre-emptive excuse-making this week to cover himself - "Last week, I thought he was acting; apparently, he was already dead," he jests for the sofa'd chucklers (pause for fart-in-sofa sound). He didn't realise that the catch-up sequences were not teasers, suggesting that Gill's eye was everywhere but on the story, the history, what's in front of his nose. It's just that he's a lazy, veteran Sunday Times TV critic - let's say a living heritage writer - who gets to watch his TV on DVD, and why not have a go at innocuous Neill for some blind critiquing? The late Victor Lewis-Smith did something similar with Denis Norden once, but with very funny results.

Oddly, Gill's editor didn't notice, nor the subs, nor anyone much. Makes you wonder whether anyone is reading Gill's sparkling shit apart from me.

Nicky Haslam: Queen says No; his horoscope's a surprise

Sadly the Queen declined Nicky Haslam's invitation to attend his unofficial 69th birthday party on October 16 at Parkstead House - he tells my unpaid agent Fish (portrait below) that he has had HM's polite kiss-off framed. This is a coda to his current Vanity Fair interview in which he wonders aloud about having her over along with the 800 on his guest list. But perhaps he was unwise to add: "The trouble is, if Charles and Camilla come, you've got to have the sniffing dogs, and the security. That's a bore. But it would be fun, wouldn't it? I think she likes a jolly, the Queen." Far too familiar and revealing of HM's inner drives.

Parkstead House, on the edge of Richmond Park

Let's have a glimpse at Nicky's horoscope. Nicky was born on September 27, 1939, in Buckinghamshire: I don't have his clock time of birth so I can't calculate his ascendant. He's a very interesting Libran in that his Moon's in Pisces: improbable as it may seem this will tend to make him deeper than he appears. This combo always promises an advanced creativity; very occasionally, delusion. You never have an easy life with this Moon.

Libra draws him to aesthetics, to ideas of beauty; the Moon in such a philosophical or spiritual sign will make him fundamentally indifferent to what others think even though paradoxically he gives the impression of snobbishness and preoccupation with status. I should have thought that in his personal relationships separating the dream from reality was his life-long challenge.

The Sun in his 4th house (Cancer dominated) emphasises the importance of his family name - Cancer is associated with ideas of what is "home" - and this placement usually brings late maturity recognition. It's as well to bear in mind that only recently has he been treated a little more seriously as a writer and public figure: go back a bit and you just have a airy-fairy party pseud name-dropping his fellow guests and decor clients.

Venus in his 4th house (Cancer again) tells me - even if I didn't know this is Haslam's chart - of a life dedicated to socialising. Country interests are pronounced. His Saturn in the 11th house adds to the paradox: he may call 10,000 people "friends" but in reality he has very few. His basic nature is quite serious and selective. His Moon in the 9th house opens him up to spiritual ideas so that his few actual friends see and hear a very different Haslam. His face in repose is not a happy one.

Goodness. The things one learns through the irrational arts. His prejudice against cuff-links worn during daylight hours, however, remains utterly ridiculous.

The artist Fish

Robert Tewdwr Moss. Book 'reissued'. And a séance

Regular Arcatistes will know of Robert Tewdwr Moss - see labels if you don't. I now learn that his classic travel book about Syria, Cleopatra's Wedding Present, has just been reissued by Duckworth. Amazon says it's out of stock.

A spokesperson for Duckworth tells me: "Yes, we have recently reissued Cleopatra's Wedding Present. It was published at the end of July and there are plenty of copies available to order through bookshops or directly through our distributor, Grantham Book Services. Amazon.co.uk are out of stock at the moment. From my database I can see that they have ordered copies recently (on Tuesday) and it will no doubt be shortly available to order through them."

Incidentally, in mid-May of this year, I had a remarkable séance with a clairvoyante medium called Lealah Kay, at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain in Belgrave Square, in which she purportedly brought through the spirit of Robert (described, not named). Kay did not know me and I booked her only 90 minutes before the sitting. I asked her no questions about Robert; indeed I asked her only one question at the end of the session, on another topic. Nonetheless she communicated information supposedly from Robert to me that I find highly evidential of survival. I may run the transcript. I'll see how I feel.

The book

Douglas Murray, Bosie, Oscar and those horses

In all probability you haven't a clue who Douglas Murray is. Never mind. Eight years ago, at the age of 20, this then undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, wrote a book called Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas (Hodder & Stoughton). The cock-cockers of the literary world got all excited because they couldn't get enough of this handsome debutant, this faintly immature precocity, nor of his subjects - in any case there's nothing quite so delicious as fresh flesh gleaming on the slab. As Julie Burchill says in her new unread book, ageism is rampant among the cock-cockers, though not exclusively.

The work was not without a certain competence. But Murray did himself no favours in comically rushing to Bosie's defence whenever yet another Wilde indictment of his aristocratic suckee was (re-)dug up from De Profundis or wherever - not unlike David Walliams' aide de camp Sebastian Love who sinks his teeth into anyone who rivals him for the affections of his Prime Minister. Among the people who helped young Murray were Tatler editor Geordie Grieg (he's all heart) and the actor Sir Donald Sinden who knew Bosie.

I am not at all persuaded that Murray has yet fulfilled his early promise. He has now turned into a ghastly notice-me apologist for rightwing neocons (wrong side of history, alas) and holds questionable views on Moslems. It's all so unglamorous and literal. Murray's website doesn't even mention Bosie.

But I remain grateful to Murray for one (but not uniquely) thoughtless sentence in Bosie that always makes me laugh - it follows Oscar's death in 1900: "With Wilde gone, Douglas tried to concentrate on his horses." As you would.

Murray's website

David Miliband: His blog requires attention

While our twinky foreign secretary and aspiring PM David Miliband goes off on his hols via Gatwick perhaps someone could do something about his blogroll which is in need of repair. The "Robert Preston" listed is Robert Peston (the screeching, Caligula-voiced BBC business editor); Adam Boulton's blog has a new address (since July 1); and "Omar's blog" is inaccessible. Milly's last posting for Aug 2 promises: "Blog resumes in three weeks or so. Hopefully browner and fresher." But not Browner, presumably.

Milly's super dull blog.