Jemima Kiss defends herself against a brutal Madame Arcati attack

I recently bitched about snobbish Twitterers who show off by maintaining a low Following figure despite a huge Followers value - implying a galaxy whose star ego is at the core of the spiral flailing arms of frickin fans. One such I named is Jemima Kiss, a busy and gifted writer on The Guardian who has quite a following among the young intelligentsia, and Girls Aloud. She has replied...

Dear Madame,
Darling ... love your work, etc. I follow 282 people because that's roughly as many as I can realistically read and respond to. I've tried more, but it makes Twitter unusable. I regularly ditch some and follow others, so there's a steady churn. More importantly, my Twitter client shows me every @ message sent my way, even if I don't follow that person, so I always listen when people talk to me. I can promise you I've spent quite some time working out exactly how to manage my Twitter account. It's not realistic to follow 8,700 people - if I could, I would, believe me.
Jemima Kiss, The Guardian
Jemima's website

Dear Jemima,
Thank you poppet - but what torture. How I wonder does Stephen Fry follow over 50,000-plus supplicants on Twitter? Or is he just being polite? And how fickle and brutal of you to drop members of your Followed tribe - do you imagine people take offence when they see a luminary such as yourself withdraw behind a cloud, perhaps yawning? Febrile stalking may be activated by much less. But anyway, you're forgiven.
MA x

William Cash: Has Vanessa buggered orf?

Is it true that Dr Vanessa Neumann has taken her leave of her husband William Cash's society? An Arcatiste makes this claim, but since I have stopped reading publications that deify the rich or run anecdotes about dull people who happen to be loaded, I do not know if this true or public knowledge.

In one of the last pieces that I read of William's in ES, he had revealed tensions in his marriage, one brought on by his blowing up his vintage car by failing to replenish it with oil or petrol. He also appeared to have seen the light on wealth, eschewing his once infamous craven fascination for the glamour of money; though whether this was empathetically precipitated by the fashionable credit crunch and the new unemployment of his many friends is hard to say.

It's always difficult to know whether people mean what they write.

Cherie Blair hasn't a clue about Christianity's decline

Cherie Blair tried to explain why Catholicism/Christianity is on the wane in Channel 4's Christianity: A History – The Future of Christianity last night. She managed not to mention the religion of science once as a major cause, so the programme was a waste of time. Feminism, old churches, the Holocaust, old men in frocks - she tackled these. But science - not a peep.

Nor was her forensic skill in evidence. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, conceded that women should be allowed to "excel" in the Catholic Church "in their own way". In other words, he was politely saying women should continue to know their place which is not the men's place. At this point she should have ululated in fury - as a feminist. Instead she smiled and nodded (as you do on TV). So middle class.

Is Love's Beth cover a Ditto of NME's? No

A couple of Arcatistes have drawn my attention to the claim that Love's recent debut Beth Ditto cover is a rip-off of NME's Ditto cover in 2007 (left). I think not.

Whereas NME's is done in vulgar readers' wives style, with the clear intention to fetishise Ditto's voluptuous curves for the purpose of male self-pleasuring (consider the magazine's core readership), Love's is an asexual aestheticising of her form (given that the title is high fashion/art, gay, guest cunt-cock-cocking [ie straight female gay friendly]).

NME has stained Ditto's body with a tan hue: a visual trope of soft porn imagery. Red coverlines subliminally comfort the viewer in a tabloid red-top ambience while the red kiss lips mark on her buttock cheek is both playful and defiant, a common attitude struck by glamour models: a fake frisson is enticing to those who require the simulacrum of will in a sex doll. Ditto bears a Victorian-style come-hither countenance, her lips parted for the fantasy possibility of a reader blow-job, her hair bottled brunette because blonde would not work against the yellowy-gold background, redolent of the sun/Sun - however, given the model's colouring, brunette is most unsuitable here which is paradoxical perfection: colour clash reassures she's human, lower class, not quite with alienating perfecting. At its most extreme this cover is a poster for the taste that finds expression in the movie Feed.

Love's cover is more suggestive of classless exclusion: you are invited merely to admire the thing on the canvas, not to auto-eroticise, not to take part. The light-bleaching of Ditto's body transmutes flesh to stone (white marble?), the deep purple of closed lips hints at sexual unavailability if not death in its advance stage. Ditto's eyes are closed; she is lost in her own world (or dead again?); the viewer's role in this exhibition is to stand back in awed respect, as an aspirant window shopper with nose pressed against Harvey Nicks glass. Fat folds are light minimised, one is not encouraged to be prurient: the red copper hair exists only for one purpose: to set off for complementary effect the mint green background. The squiggly cover-choral-lines both artfully accentuate Ditto's natural curves and script editorial unorthodoxy and personalisation. Ditto's pink, ruched fig-leaf connotes a stylish and witty portcullis to further inquiry.

On other matters, an Arcatiste has kindly referred me to the website of Terry Richardson - the Love photographer whom I described as "off my radar". I now realise why - this is his mother ...

Terry's website

Robin Hood film delayed by the wrong kind of green leaves

The news that Ridley Scott's Robin Hood movie (no longer to be called Nottingham) starts shooting in April, with Russell Crowe in the starring role, is a green bud amid the incinerated debris of other news - and I'm sure Cate Blanchett will bring her customary dedication to the role of Maid Marian.

I have learnt that the project was so delayed partly because of a problem with the colour of British leaves: they weren't the right kind of green (for Sherwood Forest). The location manager scoured Britain for somewhere suitable, but it was reckoned the absence of the right seasonal colour was due to global warming.

Love mag is a many splendoured cock-cockery

J'adore Condé Nast's new biannual glossy Love edited by unofficial UK Vogue editor heir apparent Katie Grand. I'll review it properly sometime very soon but meantime my eye is drawn to the contributors list which boasts scarcely a cock-cunter.

Anders Thomsen shares: "I once shared my last pickled onion with a boy to make him love me."

Mert Alas reveals: "My first love was this guy back in Turkey ... I think he got married."

Olivier Rizzo: Has a partner called Willy. Hello, Willy.

Paul Flynn: "My first love was Lewis Collins in The Professionals.'

Handstanding Joseph Mercier names Optimus Prime in Transformers as his first love. "I Want To Fuck You Like An Animal by Nine Inch Nails is his favourite love song. Mmm, the jury's out on him.

Alasdair McLellan appears to like Bucks Fizz and Tina Turner.

Terry Richardson: Appears heavily tattoooed, naked from the waist up, bespectacled and is into Tropical Skittles. Off my radar, sadly.

Russell Crowe falls out with an entire film fest

What with the Oscars and Razzies both queening it this weekend, the poorly timed Tropfest ("The world's largest short film festival") in Sydney was easily overlooked on Sunday. And I understand that a row between the organiser (John Polson) and Russell Crowe (directed by Polson in Tenderness) may have deprived it of yet more photo ops.

On Tropfest's website you can read: '"This is a cultural experience like I’ve never had," Russell Crowe, Actor, Tropfest Patron and Judge.' But not this year.

So glad Slumdog cleaned up at the Oscars, incidentally.

And on another matter besides (because it's on the TV as I write), of course Jill Dando was murdered by some Serb. The fool who was stitched up can scarcely ride a bicycle. Only brain-washed hacks and corrupt police officers could have thought otherwise.

Andrew Neil in Australia and the 111 year-old woman

l-r Andrew Neil, Peter Costello, Oscar Humphries


An Arcatiste went to the launch this week of the Australian edition of the Spectator (at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music) whose editor, Oscar Humphries, son of Dame Edna's Barry Humphries, is most delightful. And who should be there but the ubiquitous Andrew Neil (a Gemini - he's quite into astrology), publisher of the title. He told some very funny tales in his speech about his fumbling introductions on his BBC politics show: last week, for instance, he mis-read the autocue and introduced a woman who was 111 years-old. It actually said she was ill.

I hear Mel Gibson is due in for the National Institute of Dramatic Art (Australia's RADA) party on Sunday evening - apparently he's donated $1m for its new theatre.

Julie Burchill's foot is still attached to leg

Met up with the goddess Julie Burchill and a few others last night for a drink at One Aldwych. Her foot is repairing nicely (not amputated as certain dead tree amateur hacks claimed) and she's just sold a short story to the the Sunday Times Magazine. Cathy Galvin (I think the dep ed) has introduced fiction which is great: might even make me read the paper again. "I'm not spiritual, I'm religious," Burch told me. I said I'm the other way round, as I am in lots of respects. Love to my two new young friends, the hairdresser and his PR girlfriend. I predicted they would live in New York after they told me that's what they wanted. I must be psychic.

Veritas: Life, times and Rupert Everett's cockring: An interview

Is that Veritas next to the statuesque April Ashley?

One of the stars of Madame Arcati is a mystery man called Veritas. He came to my attention when he revealed here that he had lost a crown to Rupert Everett's cockring: some doubted his story, but I tended to believe it. So, I asked Veritas to cough up more details of his intriguing life - one that has been inhabited by the likes of Andy Warhol, Boy George, Diana Dors, Kirk Douglas (and Kirk's encounter with 80s drag popsinger Marilyn is (D)divine) and many other stars. A movie beckons, the spirit world is manifest. Read on and embrace celebrity culture and the afterlife you godless goatherds ...

Veritas! Mystery man! Well, I assume you're male ... do you dress left or right?

Left. When I was 13/14 I was slightly confused as I lived with an aunt who loved to dress me in drag. She owned a pub so I tended to look rather tarty. The pub was a favourite with the local coppers who came in for payoffs and free drinks. Can't imagine what they thought seeing this young drag queen hanging about the place.

You first came to Arcatistes' attention when you told us of your encounter with Rupert Everett and how you'd lost a crown on his cockring. What were the circumstances of the encounter? And did you find that Rupes is a noisy cummer or whatever?

I had been at a dinner party given by Lady Edith Foxwell at the Embassy Club for some of her movie pals. Norma Heyman, Richard Johnson and guest of honour Zsa Zsa Gabor who Edith stayed with in LA. Edith had a young black boyfriend, Winston, at the time and Zsa Zsa said during conversation that there was no way Edith could bring him to stay. Edith threw a bread roll at Zsa Zsa and the dinner party sort of broke up after Zsa Zsa stormed out.

I was giving a French friend a lift home and we saw this tall, leather-clad boy hanging around out the front of the Embassy. We thought he was a hustler and asked him to get into the car - he did and invited us to his flat just off the King's Road (in the basement of his parents’ house). I didn't really fancy him but my friend did but Rupert preferred me so the French friend pissed off. Rupert was very wham-bam-thankyou-mam! And then kicked me out to sleep in another room although I was awoken for an early morning encounter and then booted out into the street as he had to go to a fencing lesson.

Now why the nom de plume? And tell us a little bit about yourself past and present - I understand you travel a lot ....

I'm anonymous at present because of some work I'm doing which would take too long to explain. I was rejected for the first 2 jobs I went for when I was 15 which I found paralysing as I'm very shy so since I've only ever taken jobs people have offered me.

It's meant I've been a short order cook in a Soho Bar, written a social/gossip column for a major newspaper, a PR agent for some stars, promoted films and records, worked on films as a gofer and acted in one, spent a few months putting up business cards in phone booths around Bayswater for a house full of hookers, waited in restaurants, run a King's Road shop, run a porn shop, worked for the Sultan of Oman and I was the official photographer on Princess Diana's final charity event shortly before she died. I can't remember all the jobs I've had. It's also meant I've travelled the world at someone else’s expense- to New York to promote a band or Monte Carlo for a party on the Kashoggi yacht, etc.

Clairvoyantly, the word "toyboy" comes to mind. Am I on the right lines about you?

My ex-wife was the first one to use the word "toyboy" when she was planning a photographic book on pretty boys. The (distinguished London) publisher John Blake wrote a story about it years ago - it was the first mention of the term. Even the Guardian took it very seriously. It was way ahead of its time but it didn't happen. Years later her friend Germaine Greer channelled her with "The Beautiful Boy". Then I was featured in a Sunday tabloid in a spread called "A Toyboy Tells All" - scurrilous but harmless tales about some celebrities. But I was paid well.

In one message you said that you're planning to make a movie of your life. Could you tell us more? Would it be a Brit or US movie?

Not about me but someone else who was well known who I worked with. I've been working on it for 20 years and had put it away in a drawer. Then, as so often happens, I was approached by a well known music figure who knew I had the project and within weeks we had a successful Hollywood producer interested. He loves it and the wheels are in motion.

Would you say you've lived with or worked around celebs all your adult life? Could you name-drop a few more with any stories ...?

I seem to have encounters with celebrities without seeking them out. I was Diana Dors’ publicist for a record she made. I once lived in Dodi Fayed's flat for 6 months, long before he met Diana.

He had a reputation then as not being able to get it up because of his cocaine habit. One night I was there with her, a friend and a very famous film star who began to choke on some peanuts after a heavy coke session. I saved her life with the Heimlich manoeuvre. She never thanked me!

Peter Allen (Liza Minnelli's ex) was a great friend and took me to a New Year’s Eve party at Studio 54 in New York (he was a huge star in the US). We were sitting in a booth with a group of friends - Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, etc. A girl came up and slumped against my then wife who was applying eyeliner. We were all covered in glitter that was an inch thick on the floor. Suddenly cameras started flashing and Peter said, "Quick move away." The poor girl was dead from an overdose (one of 2 that night). "You don’t want to spend all night at a police station" said Peter. A month later Women’s Wear Daily did a front page feature on what was In and Out. They said staying home watching telly was in and going out was out! Illustrating this was a big photo of my wife in a hot pink dress putting on make-up whilst slumped on her shoulder is this dead girl. "Out" was right !

I remember you mentioned living with the 80s singer Marilyn and his encounter with Kirk Douglas - please, don't hold back. How close were you to the Boy George and the Blitz crowd?

I had a small mews flat in Notting Hill for 15 years and after each Tuesday night at the Blitz loads of kids used to flop on my floor, including Boy George, Marilyn, Steve Strange, Billy Idol - none were famous then.

I had a friend staying who was transport captain on a film being made at Pinewood starring Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett Majors (before drugs took their toll). I was working as Kirk's gofer which entailed things like picking up fish'n'chips for him, taking it to his hotel and charging him 20 times the price. We both slept in one Wednesday morning and there was loud banging on the door. It was Farrah's driver who said, "I've got Farrah and Kirk downstairs - Kirk's furious because you forgot to pick him up." We were dressed and downstairs in a flash. All the neighbours were now out and pointing at Farrah who was admiring the little houses and signing autographs – a grumpy Kirk leaned against his limo. As we all piled in the 2 cars and backed out of the Mews, out of my front door came a screaming Marilyn Monroe pounding on the car window screaming "Kirk, Farrah, I love you!" Kirk was mortified. He didn't speak to me for 2 days. Christopher Logue from Private Eye who lived at the end of the street later said, "I can't believe you people - you not only have Hollywood movie stars visiting you in the morning you have dead ones as well!"

Would I be right in thinking you're in your mid-late-40s now?

39- have been for a few years.

Tell us about the clairvoyant(e) who predicted you'd live a champagne life on beer money, or something like that. What else did s/he say? Do you believe in an afterlife?

My mother was a Spiritualist so I was brought up around them and have always believed. I think I attended services at the Notting Hill Spiritualist Church every week for 15 years. My ex-wife is a clairvoyante. I've seen things in séances that are simply extraordinary - materialisations and such. Naturally I believe in the afterlife - I've been there and been re-born many times. I've been told so many times to never worry about money when I have none so I don't - and something always turns up!

Where’s the movie now? Aside from Rupes, any other names who'd have anything to worry about?

The film script is in its third draft - no-one has been cast. I'll be an extra. Actually there is a great role Rupert would be ideal for.

How do agents/producers et al react to your story?

I have an agent and publisher for the book of the film - that came first. But it's Hollywood - who knows? My friend Stephan Elliot who made Priscilla, Queen of the Desert went there after he got an Oscar and hated everyone in the business. They offered him the next Bond film.

Where do you live?

Sydney, Bangkok and 2 months of the year in London.

What's your brand of toothpaste? And do you wax or gel your hair?

Bigger Brand - you get it in Thailand. Where I get my teeth fixed.

Don't you think cockrings are bad manners?

I'd never seen one before I encountered Rupert's . I thought it was a prosthetic device so didn't ask him about it. Whatever turns you on!

Veritas, I wish you all the best fortune with your project and please stay in touch MA x

Snob Twits. Or, welcome to the Snotters on Twitter

Naturally, Madame Arcati is the first to notice snobbish oneupmanship on Twitter (let's call those guilty of it "Snotters"). This is characterised by a huge followers figure and a very low following figure, expressing the huge importance of the followed ego. The trick is to keep the second figure as low as possible as the first grows - the vaster the difference the bigger the cock, so to speak. I must tell Catherine Ostler, she's sure to see this as the New Snobbery or something, but may wilt at the word Snotters.

Worst Snotters on Twitter - the first figure is followers, the second is following:

Al Gore: 116,080 and 2 (and calls himself a Democrat!)
William Shatner: 16,109 and 4 (which planet's he on?)
Jonathan Ross 105,197 and 261 (nothing catchy to say)
Ryan Seacrest: 6,364 and 81 (American pop idle)
Phillip Schofield 73,823 and 589 (too busy protecting Fern)
Jemima Kiss (of the Guardian) 8,013 and 282 (who does she think she is?)

Stephen Fry is at least to be commended for trying: 200,239 and 54,335. Well done, Stephen.

Personally, I think Snotting is the height of bad manners. The Snotter should follow their followers and remember they, too, will be a rotting corpse one day.

Elton John: Predator slaughters Jane Austen movie

God, I love Elton John. The latest movie project of his Rocket Pictures sees the alien Predator unleashed on the world of Pride & Prejudice. Sublime. I have some extracts from the script:

Mr. Darcy: May I have the next dance, Miss Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Bennet: [taken aback] You may. Oh my God what the cunting is that - aaargh!

Netherfield Butler: A Mrs Bennet, a Miss Bennet, a Miss Bennet and a Miss Bennet, sir.
Caroline Bingley: Oh for heaven's sake, are we to receive every Bennet in the - aaargh!

Lady Catherine de Bourg: That is very strange. Oh fuck - aaargh!