William Cash: Cruelly betrayed by his London Evening Standard!

Treachery is the coin of newspaper life. But the London Evening Standard's disloyalty to its regular (former?) contributor William Cash is breathtaking. An Arcatiste tells me that a few days ago its City Spy column suggested that William's wealth magazine Spear's hadn't paid some of its writers "for months".

It claimed, "one contributor, fed up with the weeks of waiting, used to go and plonk himself in reception until a cheque materialised."

I am sure an embittered and penniless celebrant of "high net-worth individuals" fed this tale to Spy. Amused followers of Cash will be surprised the paper ran it. For years he has filled pages and pages of ES Mag with his homages to the super-rich - interviews, marital memoir, dispatches from obscure parts of Europe and reports from tax havens with lovely beaches and aristo memento mori - so for his journalistic home from home to stab him in the back like this is nothing short of scandalous.

We must await further news of his magazine's financial status. In the meantime I must add that I have in numerous posts cautioned him against making an altar to money: friendships forged in the world's gilded slops melt away at the first hint of impecuniosity. It is my karmic duty to repeat this message over and over again - I think I must have been the loaded Imam of the Nizārī Muslims in a previous life.

Scarlett Keeling: Her bereaved mother too hip for media slags

The trial of two men accused of killing the 15 year-old Devon girl Scarlett Keeling starts today. Her body was found on an Anjuna beach in Goa in February 2008.

That the matter has reached this point at all is down to Scarlett's tenacious mother Fiona MacKeown who battled with Goan authorities. Initially, local police said the girl had drowned. But later forensic evidence revealed she had been violently attacked and raped before death.

No doubt a larger corrupt story lies behind this attempted cover-up. Several years ago I toured India as a member of a press party. In Goa the guy from the Financial Times popped out for a ride on a motorbike and was stopped by local cops. They told him he would be arrested if he did not pay them a sum of money and keep quiet about it: he gave them cash. Neither in his travel piece nor mine was any mention made of the encounter, probably to save our generous Indian hosts embarrassment. But I vowed never to return to Goa. Something is plainly rotten in its police force.

How some British newspapers have treated Fiona is worth re-examination. Her hippy appearance and lifestyle offended a great many of the lower middleclass neurotics paid a great deal of money to parade their neuroses. The Daily Mail's Allison Pearson excelled herself in March 2008. "Fiona MacKeown... seems less like a grieving mother than an avenging tigress," she wrote, as if any normal mother would not want justice for her dead child. She then went on to claim that Fiona herself was responsible for her daughter's death for leaving her in the care of a local tour guide she hardly knew.

But what upset Allison more than anything else was the idea of a "free-living" woman taking her family on a dream trip to India - "an unrepentant member of the Me Generation" as she put it - as opposed to being an uptight, probably unhappy and certainly overworked hack who allows people to think she's married to her live-in partner to placate a seething hateful readership. Somehow, Fiona had brought this tragedy on herself, because she had rejected convention just as Allison embraces it like a moronic teen clubber seeking a meow meow high.

Sarah Sands, in the Independent, echoed the Pearson line, albeit in a gentler, more caring way. "She may have been a free spirit, but Scarlett was also a child. Fiona MacKeown put ideology before humanity," simpered Sarah, who herself gives a good impression of ylang ylang-scented New Age-lite enlightenment, but ultimately is just another careerist conformist peddling the standard (and Evening Standard) line on a whole array of topics.

What astonishes me is the callous disregard for Fiona MacKeown and for her dead daughter: both are just cultural weapons to beat an offending lifestyle. I will be interested to see what these two media slags have to say about the Keeling case when all the facts emerge.

Vicky Gold and Mark McGowan are over so she's going out with Sebastian Horsley. Now.

Apparently.

Mark and Vicky in happier times.

Give Lara DF a listen (even if I can't abide her bio dad)

I have written brutal things about Mecom's David Montgomery (ex of Mirror Group), one of the reviled and detested figures of European journalism - nicknamed the "locust" by some. Now Madame Arcati is happy to set all this bile aside as a new generation blossoms forth and old hatreds turn to anecdotal humus. One of his kids is Lara DF, a gifted but unsigned high register singer songwriter. Listen to Vision especially, a good movie theme sound in my opinion. Her mum is the journalist Sharon Feinstein. I wish Lara well.

Eulogy - UK awaits its first death magazine

Death. The final frontier. Now I hear a new UK magazine plans to boldly go into this uncharted territory. It's called Eulogy and is due for launch sometime this year. I like the title. It sounds better than fucking Dignitas. Its target readership will include those facing the loss of a loved one, the already bereaved and the seriously or terminally ill. I understand it will focus both on the commerce of death - such as inheritance tax and funeral options - and on philosophical or religious perspectives, with an emphasis on celebration of life and death. I once wrote a piece on the Macchiavellian power of the last will and testament. Readers went wild with recognition. Can't see how Eulogy can fail.

Screws gives Max Clifford £1m+ to go away - relief for Andy Coulson

The News of the World has paid Max Clifford over £1m to drop his legal action over alleged phone hacking by the paper. As the Guardian reports, "The settlement means that there will now be no disclosure of court-ordered evidence which threatened to expose the involvement of the newspaper's journalists in a range of illegal information-gathering by private investigators."

That's Andy Coulson off the hook again. The Tories' chief spinner would have been dragged into court and subject to rigorous cross-examination on the topic of what he knew or what he claimed not to know as the Screws' editor about the illegal activities of his own scurvy, lying crew.

I don't blame Clifford for taking the bribe - there's no other word for it. He's inflicted damage. Why would a newspaper part with yet more substantial cash to shut someone up? This "donation" to the Tories saves the Murdoch paper embarrassment. It saves the Tories embarrassment.

The Murdoch newspapers will keep quiet on this episode praying no other big name follows the Clifford example. If this isn't corruption at the heart of our media I don't know what is.

The Hurt Locker: Six Oscars for a propaganda war movie

When Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker was first released last year, much was made of its detachment from the politics of Iraq's 2004 post-invasion period. Because it didn't play The Star-Spangled Banner everytime a US bomb disposal squaddie swaggered out to unpick yet more enemy street ordnance, it was thought apolitical - especially by compliant film critics who pasted phrases from the press packs into their reviews.

In fact the movie is a deft piece of war propaganda. Its unsung assumption is that its US soldiers are in Iraq for some good purpose - no need to spell it out - and that lives are put at risk for some good reason, you fill in the blanks. Shot largely in neighbouring Jordan, its Iraqi citizens are extras to the director's focus, there to be bellowed at, moved on or suspected: they stand about staring uncomprehendingly in their rags at the principals, passive cattle to the cowboy rustlers; or wallpaper in a movie soap.

At no point does anyone say to a US soldier, "What the fuck are you doing in my country?"

The Hurt Locker stylistically is a spaghetti western without the pasta (or the western for that matter). The alpha male catalogue is picked clean of options as brooding men engage in horseplay bonding rituals when not crouched in padded suits over IEDs. Their essential characteristic is muteness. Their lack of outward drama is in inverse proportion to the risks they take. This emotional internalisation makes them pretty useless human beings, hopeless shoppers in superstores. hopeless fathers and husbands.

For they are addicted to the "rush of war ... for war is a drug." The movie makes this plain. But that's just a gloss to the real business in hand - the further movie fetishisation of machismo. Just about every Hollywood flick glams up conventional ideas of masculinity. The Hurt Locker pathologises its heroes - just as The Dark Knight unveils a troubled Batman - yet places them on an altar. It's a romantic thing to do. It's the fulfilment of our dream expectations. We can launder our relish by redressing fantasy superheroism as a sickness. And the superhero need not wear a blue cape.

How many Oscar jurors saw the movie this way? Bigelow's pretence at political objectivity was dropped in her Academy Awards acceptance speech - "I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world." The Hurt Locker is about the men, not the women.

While a useless contribution to any understanding of the pathologised male as superhero, the film did at least put the wretched Avatar in the Oscars shade.

Tony Blair: The Journey of his face - a review

What does this front cover tell us of Tony Blair's current state of mind and his memoirs The Journey (out September)? Arcatistes will be familiar with my appraisals of books by their cover alone: so let's examine the method and the message of this presentation.

Most striking is the light bleaching. I haven't seen anything quite like it since Beth Ditto's cover pic for Love magazine. Two white lamps are trained on the left-hand side of his face: one flat on, the other just off-central visage, casting shadows at the farthest reaches to our right, with illumination splashes on left cheek and mid-forehead. All this serves two purposes: to flood out most of his wrinkles and to deflect attention from the translucent bronze tanning or powder with shade brown and white contrasts.

Artfully, criss-cross lines are just discernible on the forehead while beard grain is non-existent. This succeeds in expressing a hint of the exigencies of past high office while reassuring us of a preserved boyishness, even at the age of 56, one still capable of being summoned up with discreet bronzing and lighting. To go further would be to risk Americanisation of the face. Uncapped teeth and greying hair are another concession to British ideas of authenticity (or another way of maintaining blue transatlantic water between Blighty grunge and American perfectionism). He's still a Brit even if he, like Thatch, is an honorary Yank.

Black open-necked shirt essays a smart-casual, Paul Smith-ish brand of 21st century cool statesmanship, in keeping with the not-quite smile: a smile or grin would incite public violence. So instead we get a Mona Lisa countenance: one that may suggest a certain conflict of feeling. This is a face sensitive to tone (and Tone). Notice how the corners of his mouth level off against the suggestion of a promised smile from the parted lips: it's the look of someone no longer certain of his reception. He looks you straight in the eye but he's wary. Not to be confused with contrition.

Much planning has gone into this pose of informal authenticity. His book promises much as a result, but will it deliver?

Is Alexandra Shulman no longer in Vogue at the Daily Mail?

The Prada-wearing Newcastle conwoman who posed as "Vogue editor" or "editor of Vogue" - agency copy needs only a bit of reshaping - gets wide media coverage today. But nowhere does it say which Vogue editor Emma Charlton pretended to be when she fraudulently booked a top British hotel for an £80,000 shindig.

Since it must be assumed the Press Association report failed to specify, the Daily Mail alone has opted for American Vogue, if only as an excuse to put up a pic of its editor Anna Wintour for a sexed up The Devil Wears Prada reference. Commonsense dictates that Charlton would have posed as the British Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman - who is not half as chic as Wintour and has not been depicted in a movie or played by Meryl Streep: she is known to be distressingly normal and pacific in her responses to daily life. Her affable and chirpy boss Nicholas Coleridge can't abide divas. Say "Prada" and you don't automatically think of Shulman. She's not thin, either. Her chipmunky chops are positively squeezable with only the rumour of a hammock-style second chin.

Once upon a time Shulman was a fashion columnist on the Mail until she was dropped in March of last year due to "budget cuts". Her gig was passed to the professional loony Liz Jones who once edited British Marie Claire. All papers are cutting back but I remain unconvinced that money lay at the root of this cut. What could be better than a Vogue editor writing about fashion? Does someone at the Mail think that Alexandra falls slightly below the soignée standards of her US counterpart? The question's not rhetorical.

The Independent editorship: 'Jeremy Paxman meets the Lebedevs'

On January 23, Madame Arcati broke the story that Jeremy Paxman had been offered the Independent editorship - many thought I was joking. Now the Guardian confirms that Paxman has met likely new owners the Lebedevs to talk about his possible appointment. He's not the only name on Alexander Lebedev's wishlist - Greg Dyke's there too, more in need of a big job than Paxman I should have thought. Apparently Lebedev seeks a star to edit the ailing paper - like Napoleon, he has this fantasy he can hitch a lift off another's X factor. Would you buy a paper just because it was edited by Dyke or Paxman - or Simon Cowell for that matter? Such a ludicrous idea.

Tesco: A Bryn Phillips Guerrilla Party - police gatecrash

I could say something about Michael Foot who has just died, aged 143, but to be quite honest I always disliked the way his mouth seemed to froth up during windbag monologues. History can turn on such things. Instead enjoy the work of the love of my life (after Molly Parkin, natch) Bryn Phillips who has just held an "illegal" Guerrilla Party at a Tesco supermarket (Dalston, London) amid trolley-pushers and other discount-slavering agony aunt writers. I understand he held a similar do on a London train a while back. These parties are so good that the police gatecrash them, as they did at Tesco. Isn't Bryn sooo cute - he's the one singing in his tan coat. We must make him famous. Lovely voice. And hands. Keep him away from Simon Cowell. He's mine.

Young Hitler: No beekeeper's arse this time, just a man of God

I see the fabulous Naim Attallah and his Quartet Books is releasing a "non-fiction novel" in April called Young Hitler. It was the boastful Truman Capote who first brought this category - the non-fiction novel - to my attention, with his bestseller In Cold Blood and then the unfinished, promising Answered Prayers. The author in effect novelises documented or researched fact - actually, I'd have preferred the title Young Hitler - A Novelisation. Sounds less poncy. But anyway ....

The author of Young Hitler, Claus Hant, is being sold as the first non-fiction novelist to focus on Adolf's early years. This maybe true, though let us not forget the late Norman Mailer's attempt to novelise Hitler's childhood in the unfortunate The Castle in the Forest, which I wrote about in 2007 - click here. Mailer's "Young Adi" is given an older brother with a penchant for inserting "his happy blood-filled organ into the yearning lips" of an old male beekeeper's arse whose buttocks "feel like the portals to a bounteously endowed temple." I questioned the temple imagery, wondering whether "sweatshop" might not be a happier substitute in the sodomitic circs. But anyway ...

I don't think Hant will be reliving this revenge fantasy. His fantasy is that Hitler was a man of God and not the atheist most historians accept he was. Hant says, "Hitler did not just believe in God, he believed himself to be someone through whom God was revealing his existence." That would depend on your meaning of God. To Hitler, God, Providence and nature/science were interchangeable terms to suit his purposes of self-glorification, not the same thing as spiritual self-deification. Turn to Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944 - transcripts of Hitler's unguarded chit-chat - and you find him saying: "A movement like ours must ... stick to the spirit of exact science."

He adds: "It would be appalling for me ... if I were to end up in the skin of a Buddha."

There is a line to be drawn between a despot's wish to make a cult of himself and a faith in a metaphysical system of ideas. I shall be interested to see where Hant goes with this in his non-fiction novel. I wonder whether he is yet another atheist propagandist with a fashionable loathing for religious faith. I could Google and find out, but I won't. I'll leave that one in the air for now.

The site for the book is fascinating and worth perusing - there are book extracts. I had no idea that Hitler's family home in Braunau, in Austria, is on the market (for £2m) and that the local council are trying to buy it with EU funding to fend off neo-Nazi interest. At another Hitler family home, Hant comes across a teenage girl lolling about in her bedroom, once young Hitler's, walls adorned with popstar posters. Asked what she thinks of the room's demonic past occupant, she replies: "It's just so super cool."

Fucking kids.

Oh, here's the super cool video for the novel.