Roger Lewis: Oscar Aid and a smoking twat

You know I adore Roger Lewis, author of one of the funniest books in the English language, Seasonal Suicide Notes. It's the Basil Fawlty of modern literature. Nothing in it is sacred save the author's beautifully cherished reactions to the world, recorded in a comic stream of conscious uncoupling for all eternity (ie hello Oxfam book shop!). I told him the other day that I had a new book out, but with Roger he doesn't waste time on insincere expressions of good luck (he's not alone). He ignored my news and got down to business. The Daily Mail's best book reviewer wants me to put out an appeal to help his son Oscar. Madame Arcati, whose heart exceeds her capacity to find supportive friends, is only too happy to oblige.

First, my congratulations to gifted Oscar for winning a place at the Royal College of Art. You see, I react to others' news. Oscar starts there in the autumn. This is no mean accomplishment. Roger tells me that only 16 places were up for grabs against a tide of aspirant millions. Do watch Oscar's affecting degree movie below - John & Iris - which creatively blends reminiscence with interpretive animation.

But there's a problem - money!

Would someone out there, with perhaps a bulge in his or her pocket - a tent even - kindly consider sponsoring him or otherwise granting Oscar a sum so that he may complete his studies. Please email Madamearcati69@aol.com with your offer which I'll pass onto Roger.

As Roger explains: "Newspapers and magazines don't want to pay for my prose, and publishers now offer contracts without advances on royalties! So unless you are either a po-faced academic, with a nice fat salary and index-linked pension pot, or a TV celebrity producing ghosted memoir shite, that's it for books. Or Lewis' books. Nevertheless, in a Seasonal Suicide Notes sequel I want to do for 2015, it will be called I'LL JUST DIE & THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY."

Well, we don't want that! So please, people. Cough up - you don't really need that patio decking or that new Dutch pension plan.

In other news, I did enjoy Roger's Kafka essay in Craig Raine's Arete publication ("whatever an Arete is," Roger wonders aloud in his email to me). In it he writes of someone called Pinky June - some kind of porn star, I think - who "smokes cigarettes with her twat." He adds: "Pinky at least won’t get lung cancer in a hurry, inhaling in that fashion." 

Now that we're the wiser for that, do relish Oscar's film - and think seriously about how we can fund the poppet's studies:

The Oldie: Richard Ingrams tells it as it probably isn't

Madame Arcati offers her condolences to Richard Ingrams, the nat tresh who co-founded Private Eye in the previous century just as sexual promiscuity was getting into its stride; or so it is imagined. The poor poppet finds himself unemployed after he 'resigned' as editor of The Oldie, a tiny magazine that soldiers on for people no longer as moist as they once were.

The circs of his departure he tells in the Mail on Sunday today. Here we go you lazy, solipsistic cunts. Read all abaht it. Of course what he says is about 10% of something: apparently there were bitching sessions with the publisher James Pembroke. Ingrams tells of his horror at being summoned to anal 'brainstorming' sessions. Then following a slapfest with handbags flying all over the place, Pembroke compelled Ingrams to submit to a disciplinary hearing. Can you imagine? At this, the ancient satirist flounced out, in full knowledge that newspapers would be gagging for the deeeetails. Ah, the attentive duvet of celebrity insurance!

The piece Ingrams has written could be the truth, the whole truth, etc etc. He attributes his departure to the curse of modern management techniques with its petty rules, procedures and whatnot. He can't abide that sort of thing, having made his ascent in life through the informal wilds of making-it-up-as-he-goes-along, with charming people by his side giggling on cue. But I am not convinced that's the real story. The impression I get from Ingrams' doubtless well-rewarded article is that Pembroke wanted him out and simply used legislated procedure to start the process. That's the actual story, in my view. How procedure advertises employer animus and alerts the subject to the exit door, now ajar.

In all of the media places I have plied my trade, the 'disciplinary hearing' is only activated once a decision is made to sack someone. It matters not what the reasons are. Only that the power-in-charge has tired of you. If you want someone to stay in your employ you don't put them in the virtual stocks - you talk to them privately; offer carrots with implied stick. Such hearings usually are part show-trial, part kangaroo court. I don't say Pembroke planned to act as judge and jury in a quasi-judicial charade. Only that he most likely couldn't stand the old fart any more and had to find a way to get him out, so began a legal process. Circulation was slipping after all. Ingrams tells us so.

That angle is not complimentary to Ingrams, of course, who now recasts himself as some sort of worthy champion of gentleman journalism cast upon the rocks of MBA-inspired martinet bureaucracy. Old stagers know how to carry on the show - 'All right Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my close up.' I do hope Pembroke breaks cover with his (honest) version of events.

Ruminations of a Sequined Relic: a new poem by Molly Parkin

I LOST MY LOOKS AT 82
AND TURNED INTO A CRONE
REFLECTED IN MY MIRROR
WAS A FACE I'D NEVER KNOWN

I SHAVED MY HEAD AT 82
SOWING THERE BRIGHT SILVER HAIR
I DUMPED MASCARA, LIPSTICK-PAINT
THE END RESULT WAS QUAINT RESTRAINT

HARSH ARTIFICE, MASKED-GLAMOUR GONE
REPLACED BY SMILING EYES THAT SHONE
WITH KIND CONCERN, AND NOW PRONOUNCE
 A FRIENDLY, GENEROUS COUNTENANCE

I'D NEVER REALISED BEFORE
THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENT TREATS IN STORE
LIFE BRINGS US GIFTS, THE SPIRIT LIFTS
US HIGH ABOVE WHAT WE'VE ONCE BEEN
WHILST OFFERING A SWEETER DREAM

molly parkin 2014

Jackie Onassis - and she didn't just polish cock!

All this stuff about Jackie Kennedy-Onassis shagging le tout Hollywood. Not just the other Kennedy brothers (Bobby and Teddy) but William Holden, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck (er?), Rock Hudson (OK I made up that up), Warren Beatty, Rudolf Nureyev and sooo many others! Thank goodness, that's what I say. I always hated to think of her sulking about the White House all neglected and sad while JFK dogged about. Now it turns out she quite boldly pursued cock; celebrity cock, mind. Not just your average cock. She didn't do nonentity cock. 

Cock's on my mind because of something I read in this week's excellent Popbitch. It reports that Nick Clegg has a 'polished' cock. Can you imagine? Does he use Brasso to go with his neck (a laboured joke but think about it). And polished things arise in a lovely anecdote that's fallen my way about Jackie. I can't wait to tell you...

In the very late 1980s, my source had a job as a shop assistant at Paragon, the huge sporting goods dept store near Union Square in Manhattan. He tells me:

"Jackie came in one day and asked me a lot of questions about exercises and various equipment and asked what I could do for her butt (as if she had one). I recommended equipment where she should lie on the floor and raise her midsection while clenching her buttocks. Anyway she was puzzled so I dropped down and demonstrated.

"Later when she went to pay, I was nearly blinded by her change purse - like the coins were seriously dazzling. I said, 'What the fuck, does someone polish your money?' And she looked down, looked back at me and said, 'Um, yes.'"

"Um, yes." So Jackie!

Imelda Marcos musical to party at Vout-O-Reenee's!

Molly Parkin cuts Vout's umbilical cord with 'birth-mother' Sophie Parkin (in fuschia, darling) to our right

Even the suits among you know the truth. That I know better. So, trust me. I sense your sexual excitement.

I am therefore delighted to welcome a new club of joy and culture to the London biosphere, launched on May 15. It is called Vout-O-Reenee's and thank God it's in London's Shoreditch and not adjacent to the media whorehouses of Soho and their parasite bar mirror gawpers. Its mother is Sophie Parkin, a Gemini woman of nonpareil good taste and unforgiving insult - and frankly the kind of robust soul required to found and steer such an establishment, dedicated to the artist, the iconoclast, the maverick - in short, to someone who is fresh of flesh yet able to settle her or his bar bill. The Chelsea Arts Club (aka The Old Cunties' Convalescent Home - commodes available on request) must be spitting. They missed a trick when they passed on Sophie.

Muriel Sophie Parkin invites you to party

But don't just believe me. I learn that the very best are flocking to Vout to celebrate the lucrative expressions of their life force. In September, for instance, it is the chosen venue of the after-party for the Fatboy Slim/David Byrne Imelda Marcos disco musical, Here Lies Love. Dubbed a 'poperetta', it opened to rave reviews in New York in 2013. It is the London theatre event of 2014 - and I am delighted that its creatives will celebrate inevitable glory at Vout's. Only the best shoes will be admitted.

I understand that Here Lies Love - created by Talking Heads' icon Byrne and superstar DJ Slim - opens the National Theatre's newly named Dorfman Theatre in the autumn.

See you there, dearies.

For Vout membership details, email: info@vout-o-reenees.co.uk. 07753702910. 30 Prescot St, London E1 8AZ

Burchill, Fallowell (and others) in my new Lifesurfing tome

Such a joy to be back among you, especially given the egregious state of blogging these days. I can but do my best, permitting you a glimpse of Arcati's ancient soul which bubbles with spite and acuity and long memory, though I dress it all up in a sage's garb and vocabulary of daunting endowment.

Yes, I shall be publishing a naked Prince Harry artwork - by a former mayor (only the best on Arcati). But before that exciting controversy, I wish to do what we all do these days - and offer you my ass.

Step forward Lifesurfing: Your Horoscope Forecast Guide 2015. You know the drill. Monthly forecasts of uncanny precision. It's rather early to be thinking of next year; I know that. There are, however, other things to read in my gorgeous tome as you while away the rest of 2014 in anticipation of 2015.

This year I have included a number of in-depth astro-profiles of certain people I find intriguing and entrancing. Julie Burchill, for instance. Yes, I have peered into her horoscopic bowels and found...well, why spoil it? I have included non-astro personal insights and revelations which can only add flesh to the planetary bones of Britain's most revered media opinionist. Duncan Fallowell, too, has been conscripted: the temperature of his heart is a question of some longevity - whip out your thermostats with Madame as we watch the mercury shoot up (or down).

I could go on...but I know you have things to do, such as peruse the latest porn uploads. So I shan't try your patience. I'll try it later.

FREE sample read: E-Book. For classier acts there's always the Paperback.

Steph Booth: Labour says No to Cherie Blair's step-mum

Steph Booth

You would think that being the step-mother of Cherie Blair might count for something within the Labour Party. Yet writer and political activist Steph Booth - fourth wife of actor Tony Booth since 1998 - has discovered that extensive relevant political experience (quite apart from family connections) counts for little or nothing to the worthies of socialism-lite.

For I learn that Steph's application to join the Labour Party local government panel - to be included on the list of potential candidates for 2014 council elections in Calderdale (in West Yorkshire) - was rejected back in October. She was told she had insufficient experience. But as Steph says: "I've been in the Party since 1982 and fought every local and national campaign since. Wrong kind of experience I suppose."

She adds: "The local government panel have yet to forgive me for insisting the election of our PPC [Prospective Parliamentary Candidate] was open and fair - ie. they could not slip in their own preferred candidate. They were very cross when I got the general secretary's office to enlighten them about procedure."

Many will say this is a healthy sign that a direct family link to Labour aristocracy is entirely irrelevant - and perhaps it is. But others may speculate whether such a link works against Steph's interests given the controversial figure ex-PM Tony Blair has become, both within the Party and nationally. Certainly she has never attempted to capitalise on her position within the Blair/Booth family and has only asked to be rated on personal political merit.

Final word to Steph (half in jest?): "Maybe I should read the runes and just give up on the Labour Party?"

Meanwhile, she has her work cut out caring for husband Tony who has Alzheimer's. She is currently filing occasional pieces to the Irish Times on life with the actor.

In one article she reveals: "After becoming a pensioner himself Tony [Booth] began to channel some of his political energy into the pensioners’ movement in the UK, speaking at rallies and conferences. His activities were sometimes an intense irritation to his son-in-law, Tony Blair, who was then the British prime minister. My Tony wasted no opportunity to inform the other Tony just how poor the provision for pensioners was in the UK and how much better it was in Ireland, urging the prime minister to do better." To read more, click here.

Madame Arcati's Six Best Books of the Year 2013

Who isn't trying to flog a book these days? Independent publishing is fracking vast quantities of creative gas long ignored under our nose. Kindles everywhere are growing slow on free and cheap literary downloads, perhaps one day to be read when the kids or pets have flown and the only alternative to a heart-warming phone chat with one of Esther Rantzen's Silver Line Friends is that book you meant to read 20 years ago. 

Excellent books are there to be found, and here's Madame Arcati's brief guide to the six best this festive season (all titles hyper-linked to Amazon):

Madame Arcati's Most Excellent Book of the Year 

A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof by Roger Clarke

Divine, darling. Or, as Craig Revel Horwood might say if not too busy eyeing up male dancer buttock curvature, 'fab-u-larse!' Published last year, the paperback released a few weeks ago, this is by far the most fascinating survey of paranormal sightings and encounters I have ever read.

Ingenuity starts at concept stage. Clarke sets out not to debate whether ghosts exist. He is much more interested in the anthropology of spectral experiences and research - or put another way, in relating true-life ghost tales, the 'scientific' attempts to understand them and in classifying the different types of spook: elementals, poltergeists, etc.

This is clever and fortuitous because Clarke knows he'd lose most of his mainstream critical audience if he entertained the notion, even for a moment, that ghosts exist as sentient post-mortem entities. One feature of secularism and atheism is the absolute conviction that life starts and ends with synaptic crackle 'n' pop. But there's no question people have ghostly liaisons. I have seen a ghost. You probably have. Pliny wrote of a haunted house in 100 AD. The materialist will flesh out any unscientific explanation-away provided no concession is made to afterlife drivel. The winner is not rationalism but a replacement irrationalism.

Clarke knows all this as a veteran Poirot of psychical inquiry. So instead he sits us down by a log fire, creeps us out with weird tales, documents the countless vain attempts to solve the mystery of hauntings and treats the topic (of ghosts) as an aspect of immemorial human experience.

Clarke writes tremendously well - an essential component of any effects-driven tale both to satisfy the Bunsen burner know-all and trembly Susan Hill addict. The slightest hint of irony here and there gives sceptics their calorific fill while oo-ee-oo narrative pleases the rest of us. He is unafraid of the plodding nature of prose, the focus on patient set-ups - Gore Vidal called this vital writerly process 'grazing'. The cow's temperament is vital to story-telling.

I also commend Clarke's end notes which combine scholarly learning with a sly sense of humour. At the very least you end up sceptically well-informed and enthralled.

Madame Arcati's Most Promising Foreplay Read of 2014

The View from the Tower by Charles Lambert

One of the joys of reading is the foreplay. Before immersion I like to examine covers, read blurbs, savour hints in reviews or previews, gaze at the author pic (if any), perhaps tantalise myself with a glimpse of the first and last pages (I am intolerant of sequence and secrets - no author will control moi). Charles Lambert is new to me, I have not read his fiction yet; but we are engaged in foreplay (one-sidedly I hasten to add). I am sampling his work at present. I intend to go all the way with his novel The View from the Tower, published on 2 January 2014.

This is the second in a Rome-set trilogy, so really I ought to consummate with the first in the series, Any Human Face (published in 2011). 'A dark and fast-paced literary thriller about love, sex, art and death,' is the terse description. I have the book in front of me. On the cover, a slim man in a black suit gazes warily up an ancient alleyway. An old-style pale blue motor scooter before him startles the period monochrome. Is the man hunting or being hunted? I don't know.

I may read Any Human Face first. It has Malaysian nuns killing time at a second-hand bookstall - a sufficiently kinky observation to grab my attention. I suspect Lambert notices much that is surprising. I can smell his curiosity and his taste for the perverse. The View from the Tower is 'a psychological thriller about love and betrayal, and the damage done when ideals and human lives come into conflict.' But I suspect it's rich in peculiar detail, too. That's what I want. Isn't foreplay fun?

Madame Arcati's Best Poppet Book of the Year 2013

Sleeping With Dogs: A Peripheral Autobiography by Brian Sewell

I just know I would hate art critic Brian Sewell in person. That face, fixed in a state of appalled shock. That voice, strangled to last-breath whine by an odd form of hostile genteelness - the sharp chip in the Whittard of Chelsea teacup rim. In death his visage will slowly, ineluctably draw into one final pull of grotesque disapproval, perhaps impossible in life, now achievable by the new physics of rot. Not even Tracey Emin's art could trigger such a look.

Yet even a glorious cunt has his good side. Should you have a tail, a long tongue and a readiness to shit in public - Brian's all yours. Preferably, you will not bore him with actual speech but simply advertise your wants with a growl and a howl. Brian has loved 17 doggies and there's little they can do to sour his canine fetish. One bark and I'm already thinking of RSPCA extermination. But Brian loves the constant music of dog - and the relentless me-ism, the diva presumptions, the bad breath and foul turds. Why, he has four dogs at a time in his bed.

Brian is probably correct in thinking that dogs share with us the same range of emotions, hence the peculiar show that is Crufts. What perhaps he adores about them is their immediacy and lack of guile, that unmediated need for a cuddle and a scoff and walkies that requires nothing more from us than basic delivery followed by unconditional gratitude (the dog's).

How can one fail to be ensorcelled by evidence of the total collapse of Brian's default snobbery and disdain in the presence of his best friends? Meanwhile, dog walkers should continue to place street dog turd in plastic bags. Such sights please me no end.

Madame Arcati's Most Wondair Book of the Year 2013

The Mitford Girls' Guide to Life by Lyndsy Spence

I reviewed this delightful book back in August (click here) and am not in the least surprised at its success. It's quirky, quintessentially English (which is odd because Lyndsy is Irish - I think), a guide and etiquette book of sorts but also a wallow in 20th Century interwar eccentricity. Daffy is another word that comes to mind.

Lyndsy has gutted the lives of the Mitford girls and turned them into parables, bullet point social codes and how-to guidance to live this life successfully. From Unity's fixation on and pursuit of Hitler we learn: 'Don't rush head first into an encounter with your idol as this will label you as another fan. Edge your way in slowly and discreetly.' This example does raise a question over the precise location of Lyndsy's tongue at times (in cheek, perhaps?) but there is sufficient quantity of information on the Mitford lives to reassure on overall deadpan purpose. Certainly I learnt a great deal more about the Mitties.

Lyndsy Spence is an author to watch. She is very young - and driven by a passion for old school glamour and style. Not only has she founded The Mitford Society with a large following but she has found time to release the first of the The Mitford Society annuals which comprises many features and essays on the aristocratic clan. One piece is authored by me - I take you to the Arcati Horoscope Revue Bar where we learn more about the astrology of the gels as stripper potential is appraised. It's all done in the best possible taste.

Madame Arcati's Most Peculiar Novel Award 2013

Death Flies, Missing Girls and Brigitte Bardot by Kenneth George King

Quite the oddest book I ever did read is this outré and outrageous nugget which bears the name Kenneth George King. Call me a spoilsport but one may as well know that the author is Eurovision's very own bastard son and general vile perv, Jonathan King - the man who gave us Everyone's Gone To The Moon. This fact alone will cause certain flowers to wilt. But hardier annuals and the odd cactus or two will be rewarded in their staying power. By the end of this book you will be dreaming about flies, naked boys and sex stars and other causes of ruin. JK has well and truly gone over to the surreal side - and the result is something most interesting.

Now that we live in a world of Twitter and gnomic ejaculation, King has produced what seems like a cut-up novel thrown together kaleidoscopically for attention deficit consumption. This is not quite Burroughs cut-up style but the many autobiographical bits strewn through the narrative have a snip-snip-paste quality. We learn quite a lot about prisons, Arab straight boys who like homosex, Barbara Windsor, a bit about Bardot of course and her right-wing husband, and, oh, glam hot places where JK goes for his hols. And about police procedure.

But what's it all abaht? Well, yes. Good question. There is indeed a car accident in Morocco. And girls go missing in England, as the blurb promises. A killer lurks and plots and an old 'superb' detective sniffs. Flies offer clues of sorts. Different voices tell us what they see and do, not all of their perspectives entirely relevant; but always fascinating. That's what it's all abaht.

We are told on the cover that the novel has been submitted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. If an astrology novel can win, so can this.

Madame Arcati's Novella of the Year 2013

You're Never Too Old by Fiona Pitt-Kethley

 

The world could do with a few more Fiona Pitt-Kethleys. Here's a woman who could give Boudicca a run for her money. I love her poetry. I adore the stories about her. Non-payers will soon discover what I mean. You cross Fiona at your peril. She lives in Spain with her chess champion husband and family and cats. She cooks.

Here's the thing about her very short novel, available only on Kindle at 77p. It's not about James Bond - it can't be because the Ian Fleming estate wouldn't permit it. No siree. No, let's get this straight. It's not about Bond, James Bond. It's about James Round - a retired spy. The sort of 'feisty oldie' Fiona worships. Perhaps Round sees himself as a latter-day Bond. We all have our dreams. In another universe I'm a pop star. Friends with Michael.

Anyway, Round is ancient. He's stuck in some cold hovel in Scotland. He longs to get back to his old life of action, double agenting and leg-overing nubile pin-ups. A chance meeting re-opens up his life and before you know it he's on a spying mission to a spa in Israel with senile drunken secretary Penny. Oh the fun we have. Round ain't passed it. It's treble dry Martinis all round.

I love Pitt-Kethley's droll, throw-away humour, the teasing satire and the hopeful moral for the silver surfers. Saga magazine should serialise this tale. You'll smile and you'll laugh.

David Montgomery imposes "urinal cake" on Bristol

The morgue that is David Montgomery has resurrected himself with some hideous-sounding company called Local World which has somehow got its bony claws on loads of UK regional newspapers and websites. Its plan is to replace hacks and subs with content managers or skimmers of online content (aka plagiarists on the cheap) - and today, Local World closed Bristol ents site Venue. As a parting shot, its writers wrote the following (I've copied it because the site was not permitted to attain heritage status but was terminated instead - if this a copyright breach, someone contact me at Madamearcati69@aol.com):

Dear Local World,

So, here we are then. Friday 29 November 2013. Venue’s last day on Earth. Hours from being swept away as part of what you so dreamily term “the development of the what’s on module.” Sometime in December, we learn, venue.co.uk will re-emerge, like butterfly become grub, as www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Because, heck, nothing answers “Hey, where to find what’s happening in town tonight?” quite so snappily as www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Given a firm push, a downhill gradient and a stiff following wind, it just rolls off the tongue.

It may surprise you to learn we don’t necessarily have a problem with you closing the Venue website. Don’t get us wrong, it is curious timing. As you know, the most recent figures for daily page hits are: August - 44,162; September - 48,544; October - 55,824. Nevertheless, the two remaining of our number, working part-time on alternate weeks, would be the first to admit that Venue is a husk of its former self. Frankly, they’ll be glad to be put out of their misery. Where once they were part of a vast team of journalists delivering informed, first-hand comment from every last facet of city life, today our hapless duo struggle to do much more than pass on received opinion and rehash press releases. Naturally, we don’t have to explain this process to you, Local World, but we’re keenly aware that newcomers to the site might look at recent content and wonder at our concern.

We’ll come to that shortly, but, this being an open letter, a brief history lesson for the uninitiated (we’re being tactful here, Local World - we’re all too aware you haven’t got a fucking clue yourselves). Venue magazine began life in 1982, covering Bristol and Bath and surrounds, but swiftly fter 18 proudly independent years it was sold to Bristol United Press, owned by your predecessor, the Northcliffe Newspaper Group. Last year, having suffered death by a thousand cuts and a colourful assortment of full-frontal stabbings, the magazine was closed down. Today, it’s fallen to you, Local World, to apply the coup-de-graceless and bring down the final curtain on 31 years of work.

And hand it all over to the Post.

The Post, which decreed all street art as vandalism for years, and yet today, having so very belatedly recognised which way the wind is blowing, reaches for Banksy with the same onanistic lust the Express reserves for Diana.

We’re not going to claim we ever “championed” Banksy. We never really went in for “championing”. We simply covered everything we considered of value. So we might not have “championed” street art, but we did report t. Always. Even before 1985, the year of Arnolfini’s seminal ‘Graffiti Art’ exhibition, featuring work from the UK’s first wave of can-wielders. One of them was called 3D, or Robert Del Naja. He went on to co-found Massive Attack. We put Massive Attack on the cover before they’d even released a single.

Do you see what we’re driving at here? Have you any idea the number of wonderful bands, and theatre groups, and artists, and voluntary organisations, and filmmakers, and minority groups who had no voice anywhere else, at all, ever, and poets, and DJs, and on, and on, who claim inspiration from something they read in Venue? We make no assertions for the influence of our opinion; we simply did our level best to place a mirror in every last corner of Bristol, no matter how hidden, and allow the city to reflect back on itself.

And you want to hand over that legacy to a paper whose management - not journalists - are the precise equivalent of those radio stations which promise “your better music mix” and then put the same few songs on repeat. Which claim “the best new music” and fail to add “once it has charted and proved its popularity.” You want to hand over that legacy because, to quote from a staff email you neglected to send us, “The existing Venue website has really good functionality with a real blend of music reviews, listings, restaurant reviews etc, etc. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow our digital audience and a great platform to sell advertising on.”

Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Local World? Of course you don’t. You who boast all the cultural hinterland of a freshly discarded wet wipe. (Though you do have history, of course: born earlier this year, the helplessly stumbling result of a merger between Iliffe Media and Northcliffe, with a profit forecast of approximately £30 million - that debt-free dowry from the Daily Mail General Trust was a lovely gift, no? And they absolved you of responsibility for the deficit on that pesky old final salary pension scheme. Ah, Local World! You are to localism what urinal cake is to mountain freshness.)

And now you presume to inherit our work. We were writers, Local World, photographers, not “content providers”. We were bound together not only by our city, but by a love of language, of striking image. Our editors consistently backed our individual judgement and allowed us complete freedom of expression. As a result, Venue inspired a loyalty out of all proportion with the pittance it paid. Local World, we put our very heart and soul into our catalogue of work. And if you think you can now simply walk in and trample on its remains, then you can, with the very greatest lack of respect, fuck the fuck off.

Because we, the undersigned, do hereby assert our full rights under copyright law. It really would be for the best if you were take a moment to visit [page is no longer - MA] on the Venue website. Sit down, take a deep breath, and pause and reflect on this: “This website and its content is the copyright of the individual authors credited.” Please be assured we did not pull this phrase out of our collective arses, but out of legal statute. And if we perceive so much as a single full-stop, a solitary pixel of our work when your shameless hijacking is unveiled, then you in turn can expect to perceive a court summons. We are, to put it in terms you regularly use but cannot hope to understand, passionate about defending our legacy.

Sincerely,

Robin Askew
Lesley Barnes
Tony Benjamin
Melissa Blease
Anna Britten
Darryl Bullock
Charlotte Butterfield
Jay Chakravorty
Hannah Chapman
Matt Collins
Marc Crewe (deceased)*
Stephen Dalton
Ellen Doherty (deceased)*
Carl Dolan
Rebecca Ewing
Kristen Grayewski
Elfyn Griffith
Tom Hackett
Mike Harley
Steve Henwood
Gareth Jones
Nic Matthews
Tamar Newton
Huw Oliver
Julian Owen
Emma Parkinson
Kid Pensioner
Tom Phillips
Leah Pritchard
Pat Reid
Jo Renshaw
Andrew Rilstone
Stuart Roberts
Anna Rutherford
Mark Simmons
Delia Sparrow
Joe Spurgeon
John Stevens
Campbell Stevenson
Nick Talbot
Lou Trimby
Tom Wainwright
Cris Warren
Ben Welch
Kirsten Williams
Kate Withers
John Christopher Wood
Adam Workman
Steve D Wright
Nicola Yeeles

*Because if there is an afterlife, and we don’t add these enduringly lamented names to our treatise, we’ll never hear the end of it.

Madame Arcati books: Curtains and Lifesurfing

Something had to give, in this instance, you. I had to get my books done hence the blogging silence. And now they're out. The latest is my novel Curtains. I have already endured the drapes jokes. Free copies at Dunelm! Well, curtains certainly play an important part in my fiction, not least to expedite "those crucial eye journeys" good manners forbid us, as one of my characters puts it. Sharp-eyed readers will however discern other types of curtain.

Curtains is set in the world of high fashion mags, but it's not bitterly celebratory The Devil Wears Prada or ambivalent Glamorama. It's a slice of meringue with a crunchy satirical base and a heroine editor who starts fictive life by being blown up on a seaside pier with a fruit knife in her hand. How this pitiful fate befell her is the preoccupation of the story, a piecing together of a crazy puzzle whose pieces tend to melt at the edges. That's all I'm saying.

To find out more about Curtains, and what some critics have made of it to date, click here.

It's currently in paperback and kindle formats. Take your pick, poppets. And for a chance to win one of four copies up for grabs visit my friends at the Anorak news site. click here.

My other title is Lifesurfing: Your Horoscope Forecast Guide 2014 - the title says it all really. It debuted at No 1 in Amazon's astrology bestseller chart. It offers a monthly breakdown of your year ahead by star sign. An obvious stocking-filler - or a lovely gift to yourself. This too comes in paperback or kindle format - click here. 

With each purchase I'm offering a free intro birth chart analysis - with proof of purchase (I'll ask a very simple question). For this I'll need your date and location of birth as well as clock time if possible. Email: Volliver5@aol.com.

Curtains - a novel not quite like any other

My novel Curtains is out in early November, available only through Amazon in paperback and kindle formats.

A near-death fashion empress writes: 

"This much I recall: I was boarding the Brightworth Pier and I may have just said good evening to the tollgate master when the explosion occurred. In my right hand was the fruit knife with which I planned to end the life of Max Cochrane...."

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