Susan Hill buys up Duncan Fallowell's 'Peepshow'

Well I never! Two of my favourite writers - and they are friends of Madame Arcati - are getting married! In a manner of speaking, of course. Susan Hill's publishing company Long Barn Books has bought up Duncan Fallowell's book Platinum Peepshow, Scenes from Art, Fashion and Entertainment 1979-2009 for publication in March 2009. A more fascinating union I could not have imagined and all done behind my back.

As I have said before - see my interview with DF via labels - and I'll say it again: Duncan Fallowell is one of the world's best writer interviewers. He applies his own customised rohypnol to his celebrity subjects - teasing out the most extraordinary revelations and indiscretions - and recreates them in splendid pieces of entertainment and acute and glamorous insight. My congratulations to Susan Hill on a bold and imaginative acquisition.

The book is a collection of his star interviews - a good omen is that in the week of this development, Tina Turner has announced she'll be in the UK for her Euro tour in March (the month of the 'Peepshow' publication) - and she's one of his subjects. There's synchronicity for you. Other huge names he's encountered include Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Tony Snowdon, Valentino, Peter O'Toole, Eartha Kitt, Judi Dench, Gilbert & George, Johnny Rotten and many many more. Why, even Sam Fox gets a look in.

Be sure there'll be further news ...

Any ideas who else Duncan should interview? See his note in comments.

Dima Bilan - the penis (almost)

Is this why Russia won Eurovision? Get with it Sir Terry and the BBC - this is what you're up against, you sardonic fossils.

Allison Pearson - once wife of Simon? Ooh, spooky!

An Arcatiste writes of my current favourite Glenda Slagg - Allison Pearson - of the ever-readable Daily Mail, and claims that Allison was once indeed a wife.

Intrigued by the results of my séance with Vera, my anonymous contributor conducted his or her own investigation and discovered that one of the few Lobbetts to be married in the 80's/90's was a Judith A Lobbett in Lincoln in 1988. Allison went to school in Lincoln for a time.

Judith A Lobbett was born in 1960, birth registered in Carmarthen in Wales during May-July. Allison was born in that region at that time.

Judith A Lobbett married a Simon W Pearson in 1988. They divorced sometime before the mid-90s. He then married again in 1996. Are Allison Pearson/Judith Lobbett one and the same?

It's hard to know what to believe in these days of reinvention and media masks ...

Is Eurovision winner Believe a copyCat?

Having praised Dima Bilan’s Eurovision winner Believe I am now persuaded that it resembles Cat Stevens’ Wild World. Whaddya think?

Allison Pearson/Lobbett: Here comes the bride?

The new Private Eye applies its forensic mind to Allison Pearson's recent Mail response to Duchess Fergie's counter-attacks over the Princess Bea "fatso" saga. Mmm, interesting. No wonder the piece is titled "Porkies & Yorkies". Is there any particular point to the mag calling her "Allison Pearson (née Allison Lobbett)"? And a blog by Jonathan Calder (he also has a column in the New Statesman) recollects happy school days with one Allison Lobbett, her maiden name, click here. At a séance the other night I asked Vera - my guide in the next world: Will Allison ever marry (perhaps her partner Anthony Lane)? And Vera replied, cryptically: "But Allison knows already what it is to be married." What can she mean? Wikipedia, typically, fails to shed light on a Pearson "marriage". I can only assume that Vera is deluded. Or that "marriage" means something else in the spirit world. Truly Allison Pearson is the most intriguing of persons - Mata Hari-ish almost - which itself is unusual in a mere journalist.

Mark Borkowski: 'Wogan's a curmudgeon!'

The world's wisest and most effective PR, Mark Borkowski - in a previous life he was a philosopher; I'm certain of it - has been twittering about me, I'm informed (I don't know what twittering means but it sounds fun). Now I see he has embraced the Eurovision row and echoed some of my thoughts on cunting Wogan, click here.

"I can’t believe the furore over the Eurovision song contest results and the ensuing curmudgeonly comments from the British public and Terry Wogan himself," he writes. This is on the news that the UK could lose its right of automatic entry to the final because of the controversy. It's time Wogan and the BBC fucked off and let the professionals make the Euro music. Mark rightly foresees a "PR disaster".

And while I'm thinking of Borkowski, check out his upcoming book, The Fame Formula, about the Hollywood fame machine. Toby Young writes of it: "Most people think of Andy Warhol as having the last word on celebrity culture, but he played John the Baptist to Mark Borkowski's Jesus. In this book, Borkowski tells you how to parlay 15 minute of fame into a lifetime of pampered luxury." It's out on August 1, click here to order.

A star encounter at the US Embassy in London

If you plan to visit the US for professional purposes you have to get yourself an I-Visa. That costs $131. Then to apply you have to queue up outside the US Embassy at 24 Grosvenor Square, even in “inclement weather”, as it says on the forms. It’s far too much trouble to construct a nice little al fresco shelter in the event of a hail storm. Force 8 gale, madam? Just stand over there under those trees so the leaves fall like confetti on your hairstyle. I imagine I’m at a forest wedding, a sylvan union after Robin Hood. The fantasy gets me through the moments. Never mind.

Then once inside and three hours later (if you’re lucky) you get a blue form which you take to the SMS courier desk where prices to return your passport and forms and dispatch your visa start at £14. Ah, how I love the land of the Fee. A man behind me starts making rooster noises. He's playing with his tot-brat, but the girl dealing with my courier order thinks there's a rooster on the premises and asks how did that get in. I explain to her what's making the rooster sound - oh, and by the way, you've misspelt my name. I ask: "Do roosters need a visa, too?"

(Incidentally, although you’re told not to bring mobiles to the embassy – your interview will be cancelled if you do, that’s what it says on the forms – when you get there transparent bags are provided for your mobiles which you can carry about as you might a lipstick or dildo. These small bureaucratic inconsistencies have a disproportionate effect on my temper: I simply go crazy. Inwardly.)

As the hours snail by in the visa section, as you await your call to interview with a consular official, your eye may alight on Warhol’s Monroe prints on the walls: take one sleb photo, daub with colour. $70m please, ta. Actually, my attention is soon caught by a somebody in the visa section waiting room. At first I’m not sure. Were it not for the heavy black shades I wouldn’t take a second glance. But who would wear sunglasses under the gentle fluorescence? Only a sleb. Then I take in the bald head and its tattoos: what looks like a Star of David over his crown and black squiggly things running down his neck. No, it can’t be Boy George! But it is.

He looks grumpy, morose even. The all-black ensemble doesn’t help; nor does the little hood at the back. He yawns a lot, stretches, looks about, rolls his head, rolls his shoulders, hours snailing by. I recall he wants to get back to the US for a concert this year. Can’t think getting a visa can be that easy for him with his record - has the trial over the tied-up male escort finished? Can't be bothered to check. He gets up and pads over to the café, and that’s the last I see of him. Perhaps as I write this he’s still pleading with an official to give him a visa. I wish him luck.

I was tempted to say something before he disappeared but I remembered a friend saying hello to him outside a club recently. He just looked vacantly at her then tightened his countenance somewhat for a minor withering gaze: I’m told at that moment his lips resembled a recently unfucked arsehole. An unhappy thought to end on.

Jason Cowley: Any pics of him in mum's make-up?

Jason's former cultural pin-up, the exquisitely heterosexual David Sylvian

Where are my manners? Madame Arcati extends her belated congratulations to Jason Cowley, the newly appointed editor of the New Statesman, the current editor of Granta.

He is a man of Renaissance interests – accommodating high literature (provided that it’s published by mainstream publishers), pop music, politics and sport in his learned fixations. The last is most unfortunate but makes him acceptable for the purposes of mainstream and senior editorial appointments. It indicates, um, robustness. I understand he moves to the Staggers in September.

I don’t know much about him except that he was once an “intensely active teenager”, one of Peter York's "neurotic boy outsiders", who calmed down a bit to the mordant strains of Japan (the band). “It was a time [sometime in the ‘80s I guess] when we all liked to dress up with arch ostentation and steal our mothers' make-up. But it was a superficial time, and no one wishes to be reminded of the excesses of their youth,” he writes prettily in a 2005 essay on (and interview with) Japan’s improbably - yet resolutely - straight David Sylvian.

If anyone has a photograph of the teenage Mr Cowley wearing his mother’s lip gloss, eyeliner and/or other decorative pop accoutrements (high heels especially welcome) - perhaps his arms aloft in a group sway to Japan's Adolescent Sex - do not hesitate to email me. Discretion assured.

A collection of Mr Cowley’s distinguished and stimulating journalism is to be found at his website, click here.

Jonathan King: 'Buggering boys' on La Croisette

I asked Jonathan King how the Cannes Film Fest was for him - he took his movie Vile Pervert: The Musical out there. He replies ...

"Well Madame, Cannes was horrid - dreadful weather, awful traffic and packed with people I didn't know (I know everyone at Midem, the music convention). But I was interviewed a lot (once next to Omar Sharif and another time within yards of Harrison Ford) and the crowds looked bemused but amused as I swept up and down Le Croisette in my red Rolls Royce blasting "there's nothing wrong with buggering boys" at maximum volume to the assembled film queens!The movie has had over 18,000 full length online views in the 3 weeks since your kind review. "

Madame Arcati's review of Vile Pervert (and an excerpt with JK as Oscar Wilde in full singing voice), click here

Jonathan King: 'Wogan never understood Eurovision music'

Jonathan King - who once was Mr Eurovision - writes ...

"I thought it was a brilliant Eurovision and delicious Dima who should have beaten Lordi 2 years ago deserved to win though no songs entered were real hits this year.

"Political voting? Bollocks. When we entered a REAL hit in 1997 (my era in control) we won by the biggest margin ever.Wogan never understood the MUSIC side of it and still doesn't. A hit song by a great performer (and Dima is a special star) will win if entered."

Thank you, Jonathan. I think you should be back running Eurovision - of course, in my view, the BBC is part of the problem because it wants phonelines involved ie public voting ie shite like this year's entry. When you have a moment let us know how Vile Pervert did at Cannes.

Eurovision 2008: Execute Sir Terry Wogan

Well, the old burbling fool had a hand in selecting the pathetic '70s-style karaoke UK entry. Now he's calling for a Western Eurovision Song Contest judging by his comments tonight - even hinting he may not commentate on another Eurovision. Make way, Sir Tel, make way. Ironically, Russia won with a plausible homage (but minus falsetto) to that well known East European ... Justin "hard beats" Timberlake (just as Greece did well by ripping off that notorious Balkan lovely ... Britney Spears). Judge for yourselves ...

Justin ...


And Britney ...

Andrew Wylie: 'In inininininin Lit-land she was 19'

Asked this week how a novelist can sell him a novel, the literary super agent Andrew Wylie advises: "Write a good cover letter and place it on top of a good manuscript. Zadie Smith wrote a cover letter ending, 'I'm six foot tall, I'm 19 years old, and I don't exactly look like the back end of a bus.' I thought: 'Nice cover letter ... '" He adds that he was taken with her phrasing ... "I didn't give a shit what she looked like. That's how we got White Teeth."

Naturally I go to his website for its submissions policy and am greeted by the grim reality: "The Wylie Agency does not currently accept unsolicited submissions."

Lateralising irrelevantly (a chemical inducement), my mind turns to that great Paul Hardcastle song Nineteen at the mention of Zadie's then young age - adapt the lyrics to this posting as you see fit.