Richard Ingrams: His next magazine creation is obvious

Madame Arcati always helps those of advanced years (see my back catalogue on all the old prostitutes I have profiled) - and so it falls to moi (again!) to make a suggestion to Richard Ingrams (lately deposed editor of The Oldie, once of the province of Private Eye) on his next career move. I should hate to see this national treasure tarnish as bitterness takes possession. My art department has gone to the bother of mocking up my career suggestion. Gratis. (Click image to enlarge.)

 

Molly Parkin: Is she an outsider or an insider-outsider or an aparter?

Molly Parkin
Photo by Anthony Lycett

My darling Molly Parkin is featured in the Guardian today in a series called The Outsiders. I'm not quite sure what an outsider is really. Certainly this tribe does not include marginal sociopaths who've done little with their lives, or "loners" whose existential lonesomeness is frequently cited as reason in itself for demonisation or witch-hunts or criminal suspicion or posthumous besmirchment. So perhaps the series title should be: Insider Outsiders. It surely celebrates the people who belong but who somehow stand apart. The Aparters could be a much better series title. Madame Arcati only seeks greater precision beyond the slack-brained come-ons of newspapers.

That said it's an entertaining encounter between legend and young fan (Clive Martin). As I write there are four reader comments, two of which have been excluded on the grounds of breaching "community standards"; and the third sends up the community standards message. So, 75% of the current reaction is blighted by over-eager censors. Which reminds me. A little while ago I attempted to post a comment beneath an item in the Guardian on the Telegraph's editor-in-chief  Jason Seiken. I simply pointed out that Mr S's birth details are unknown; and would someone supply because I wished to cast his horoscope. Oh dear! Some underpaid hireling imagined I had breached community standards and in consequence cast my innocent message out.

It is an irony that a piece about a wild spirited bohemian outsider is managed by corporate disciplinarians. Yes, my love affair with the Guardian ended some time ago, I'm afraid. Alas, the Guardian is no more a guardian of free speech than Pravda or the Sun. 

In other news, Clive's interview with Moll appears on the day we learn that pink-haired Zandra Rhodes is made a dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours. This is certainly a lot more deserving than the honorary damehood awarded to Angelina Jolie - has she been successful in her laudable campaigns against sexual war violence? Yes, if judged by the mass of media photo ops of a statuesque beauty in battle war zones standing by the side of William Hague. Perhaps we can agree that "Dame Molly Parkin" certainly has a very definite ring to it, now that we know that HMQ has the most excellent taste in fashion and style. That would be most deserving.

Finally, it is Clive's youth (or conformity) that must cause him to express a degree of embarrassment in drawing attention to Moll's "outrageous" sex life, because she's 82. In this day and age I don't think advanced years is reason not to reflect on past or even current amatory activity. I wholly encourage young writers to put aside their Mumsnet attitudes and accept that while there's breath in the body there's probably a hormone or two as well. Let's leave the measuring-speak to undertakers.

You can read Moll's interview - and all about her current projects - here.

Thank God for Amazon - book shops and their lanky owners are OVER

On Newsnight last night, a schoolboy publisher and a middle-aged glamour puss (oh, all right, Caroline Michel who bosses Peters Fraser & Dunlop - the multi-media/lit agency) talked about Amazon and its ongoing battles with Hachette. This Independent piece gives the guff if you've been snoozing or sleeping with a politician these past few days.

The internet vs book shops fight served as excuse to raise their TV profile: in short, is Amazon a hostile monopoly that wishes to suck the life out of our high streets and turn us all into supine keyboard shoppers prone to bowel cancer from lack of physical activity? A leading question perhaps but the answer is probably a qualified yes. And if that's the case, I say this: thank god or Richard Dawkins for that.

The demise of book shops is a wonderful thing. Since childhood I have associated such establishments with wood rot, dust, poorly stocked shelves - they never have the books I want - and geeky elephantiasis in the owner (in male proprietors especially: unusually tall, scalpy, half-moony speccy, poorly dressed, snaggly of tooth, Oxbridgy in a distinctly unsexy sort of way; underfed but over-weak tea'd and cursed with sociopathic reflexes, such as gazing down on one as if Princess Michael of Kent had reincarnated as a giraffe crossed with the carcass of the late homosexual Norman St John Stevas).

Book shops are all Basil and no Fawlty; places of hushed hostility only crackling with corduroy static and pot-pourri'd with the ever-so faint whiff of skidmarks. Repressed people stand about 'sampling' books they have no intention of purchasing - the equivalent of shoplifting in my view. All those words snatched freely from the page never to experience again the initial thrill of discovery in the brain of this standing loafer. Books bake gently in shop windows, curling at edges and yielding colour to UV-unfiltered nuclear blasting (aka the sun). The grey cheap recycled paper cannot withstand such exposure; but don't expect a discount when you pick up the irradiated item and discover its fragility to human touch - foxed and fucked. The Giraffe Princess St John Stevas at his bell tolling old till - still showing pounds shillings and pence - will demand the full price, which adds another sad £1.25 to his profits since he has had to haggle with the distributor, the publisher and the cleaner for his (or the odd her) cut.

What a sad state of affairs. So, welcome the rise of Amazon as the necessary Dignitas to book shop vendors. Put these dinos out of their misery. I have never yet failed to find the book I want on Amazon. Payment is simple as pie. Delivery is within two or three working days. A sexy post-person with a cute bum hand-delivers my package, superbly wrapped and invoiced. Amazon is just one of many answers to a prayer in the 21st Century, marking the end of avoidable boredom, frustration and employment of thin tall people who drawl and keep the tea industry going. A surfeit of alternative vendors and second-hand booksellers on Amazon ensures competitiveness and survival of the fittest (allowable in the books world) - and the eternity of books in the life of consumers.

If you see a book shop today, pass it by without a second thought. Soon it will be sold off to some delightful gorgeous people with white teeth and in sexy underwear, such as nail technicians.

Gorgeous! Princess Michael of Kent discusses 'dark shadows'!

Josephine Pembroke

All this fuss at The Oldie (the latest news is that Richard Ingrams has been locked out) reminds me that ages back I meant to blog about Josephine Pembroke and her online Radio Gorgeous. Josephine, who's about 50 but looks 36, is the wife of The Oldie's publisher, James. Radio Gorgeous is a station which discriminates against men by only featuring the lives and voices of females - arguably a not unreasonable editorial principle given millennia of misogynistic exclusion, Private Eye and cricket. A little correction is in order, surely.

Ever the swashbuckler, I, Madame Arcati - as female as you are lizard, in the Ickian sense - clamped headphones upon my head and decided to listen to the very first thing on Radio Gorgeous that I was drawn to; an example of Fate's Prodding. And who should I encounter there before I've drawn breath but Princess Michael of Kent! Josephine interviewed Princess Pushy on the occasion of the publication of her latest novel, The Queen of Four Kingdoms.

Her Royal Highness is certainly an authority on name-checking the crowned and titled stars of yore - a 'professor emeritus of history' fact-checks her books. In speech she accents foreign words, as if her tongue does the italic font. Rouen, for instance, emerges as 'Rrrooowahn' - I'm sure a media queen of etiquette has decreed that one should pronounce foreign terms in the usual English accent. But no matter.

Interest grows when she describes in pornographic detail the burning of Joan of Arc. Apparently she died of smoke inhalation not of actual burning - consumed by 'à petit feu, I was brought up speaking French, as you may know.' The executioner wore a leather apron. And a mask. Joan was chained to the post. Her corpse was properly burnt and the ashes thrown into the Seine as ghastly peasants screeched 'she's a boy!'

When later the princess talks of people's unreadable hand-writing, apropos Old French, Josephine laughs, 'My husband.'

We learn that the princess' blood group is A-positive - it's sweet and mosquitoes love it. However it may account for the arthritis she once had in her hands until a homoeopath 'cured' her by banning alcohol from her diet - she's not touched a drop in 13 years. Plus, she had hot wax baths which caused 'toxins [to come out] and they smell....' She always had dark shadows around her eyes like her kids because of smoking and drinking - but not now. She nags her dark shadowed children to give up these vices so that they, too, may display faces of unblemished light. But they ignore her. Freddie works for JP Morgan but one day will be a writer, like mummy.

Oh the details! Everything is framed in gilt, in luxe thinking and oneupmanship. The princess is rendered naked. I strongly urge TV channels and radio stations to hire Josephine Pembroke. This woman extracts the nitty-gritty. Like the princess, Josephine is 'well-organised.'

Listen to Princess Michael of Kent here. The interview gets more interesting after 44 minutes if you wish to jump and dodge the history.