Madame Arcati's Top 10 Sexiest Posts of 2010!

Kevin Spacey CBE: bio post is No 1

Happy New Year, poppets! 2010 was the year Madame Arcati retired and then resurrected herself. I would love to say that my comeback owed to a public clamour but in fact, as in all things, my own moods played dictator. Blogging in itself serves no useful purpose beyond adding to the online cacophony. The only point to Madame Arcati is I get read.

Now I know you love lists, so here's my top 10 Madame Arcati posts of 2010, with a little commentary.

1. In terms of reader comments, most surprisingly popular post was my piece on the world's first Kevin Spacey (CBE, hon*.) biography, authored by famous Spaceyphile, Robin Tamblyn, click here. If you only read the books pages of our newspapers and literary mags, you'd never know that Hollywood's most secretive actor finally has an unauthorised Boswell. Self-published books always pose a challenge to book editors: who's to tell them if the book's any good? Mostly, these whores of journalism take their cues from their friends in publishing and from publishers' imprints. God knows what they'd make of the Bible were it submitted anonymously for consideration.

2. While bloggers serve no useful purpose in the general sense, they can be useful as trend muscle. So when Madame Arcati joined the online campaign against a plan to appoint Rod Liddle as editor of the Independent, one knew the war was won. Why anyone thought that a right-wing fool could be saviour of a leftish newspaper was beyond comprehension. Did someone forget to eat their spinach? So I was delighted to write the headline: "Rod Liddle won't be editing the Independent". Click here.

3. Sheila Vogel-Coupe - crazy name! This porno star and prostitute, octogenarian granny of an X Factor starlet already almost forgotten, brought tens of thousands of readers to the blog, much to my amazement. I made her my woman of the year. The link should indirectly take you to the site where you can view her engaged in various sex acts, including a copious money-shot. Click here.

4. Saddest exclusive ran on June 17 when I announced the death of Sebastian Horsley. A few journalists thought I'd made it up. A mutual friend tipped me off instead of running to the newspapers. I think Sebastian would have approved. I'm still getting over the photo of him having sex with an amputee - I wonder if I should put it up. Click here.

5. Another surprisingly popular read was my post "Rachel Johnson's A Diary Of The Lady: Masterly at the authorial hand-job". Rachel, editor of the old cunties' weekly The Lady, wrote me a fan letter informing me that Madame Arcati had a page in her book. How expertly she plays the ego. It was only correct that I review the tome, click here. Her book is a Madame Arcati favourite bathroom read along with Albert Speer's memoirs and a bio of Anna Wintour.

6. Most cynical post of the year was "Justin Bieber's penis: a post-modernist approach to blogging". I'd read that the tiny virgin megastar was one of the most searched names on Google so I Arcatised him to draw in a new generation seeking celebrity cock. They will have been disappointed but enlightened of irony, blogging, journalism and celebrity obsession. Click here.

7. "Reward Showbiz™: The 10 most pointless celebrity books and TV shows" proved a lure. So many TV shows and books are created simply to reward celebrity, just ask Joanna Lumley or Michael Palin. So this spawned yet another sleb list. Click here. Sorry.

8. Kate Reardon's appointment as Tatler editor introduced me to the concept of a spinning vagina. I offer this piece as an antidote to churnalism - the writing-up of PR announcements in our newspapers. Click here.

9. Duncan Fallowell gifted me a wonderful anecdote about the fashion designer Valentino; something about his elaborate relationship with the wind. Click here.

10. Permanent fiancee Molly Parkin published her Mollywood memoirs this year, and included in them a sweet, true reminiscence about the two of us. I'm sorry her family don't take us seriously: but that's what families are for, to look out for one. Read my review, Dodging the Conventional Cunts: click here. Do follow the labels on Molly: her interview with me on cocks and spirituality could change your life. In February 2011 all of Moll's erotic novels are reissued by Beautiful Books - they're as freshly witty, sexy and funny as the day they were born.

And on that note, have an austerity-free 2011 under the most miserable and wretched of governments. x

*Shouldn't he have got a knighthood, hon.?

Nick Clegg looks like a man who shouts 'sorry' before he cums

Nick Clegg, right

Or so Frankie Boyle joked last night.

Madame Arcati: There's only one actress who can play me (& she's dead)

Angela Lansbury: Me as Art Deco

My thanks to the American astrologer and investigative journalist Eric Francis for unearthing this splendid photo of Angela Lansbury posing as me. I interviewed him earlier this year - and to appreciate his singular views on the joys of self-sex, click here.

Lansbury projects elegant goofiness for fans of the Art Deco period; and I'm confident that her Madame Arcati (in last year's staging of Blithe Spirit) pleased fans of TV whodunits. But there's the problem: elegance. Only that scrumptious, asymmetrical gargoyle Dame Margaret Rutherford captured the essential wilful otherliness of me in the black & white movies: Arcati is not just some harmless fruitcake with fidgety mannerisms but an ideological warrior of the drawing room who happens to summon up spirits.

She is the timeless crank always proven right. Julian Assange, please take note.

I realise that such ideas are traumatic to diddumsy secular critics who take their scripture from sexy tabloid traditionalist Dr Brian Cox. So as New Year looms I'll move on as an act of charity.

Margaret Rutherford: Me me me

Also, Madame Arcati has no business being tall. This is where Penelope Keith went wrong when I saw her play me at the Savoy Theatre a few years back. I've always regarded tallness as faintly ridiculous and excess to requirements, such as in British Prime Ministers. Only haberdashery shop assistants need to be tall. Madame Arcati does not do excess.

At the Savoy I sat behind Nicky Haslam who wore a thick fur coat throughout the performance even though the theatre was properly heated. From the wafting odour I adjudged that his coat required laundering. But I was too polite to say.

Rupert Everett mocks 'tasteless romcom flops' queen Jennifer Aniston

Rupert Everett: Reduced to drag

Rupert Everett put Jennifer Aniston in her cosmic place this morning in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today show. He named her as one of a number of stars who, despite movie turkeys galore, are regarded by showbiz movers as the "right people for their business" - ie heterosexually alluring - "and will stick by them for quite a while."

He explained: "OK, something will go wrong, like Jennifer Aniston will have one too many total flops but she's still a member of that club, like a star forming in the universe; a whole lot of things swirling around and suddenly solidifying into yet another vital tasteless romcom: a little glitter next to the Crab Nebula."

Rupes was moaning again about Hollywood homopobia and how gay actors are better off in the closet - a view echoed by Richard Clamberlain today who, incidentally, has yet to publicly acknowledge that he was the love of the life of the late astrologer Patric Walker. Because straight male actors like Colin Firth are now landing the yummy queer parts, gay stars like Rupes are reduced to "drag". Blissfully he described himself as "marooned on St Trinian's."

A leading British producer had told Ed Victor, Rupes' sleb-hag literary agent, that he'd love to cast Everett in a movie but... "there is nothing for him." He thinks of Rupes as just a "muscly queen".

Thank God for Hollywood homophobia. But for that and Rupert Everett would just be another Hugh Grant or Colin Firth, cling-filmed mumblers out of the DNA style manuals. The grate of prejudice has sharpened Rupes' wits, replaced a sense of entitlement with edge. One of the results is a splendid diversity of work, not just movie titles selling recycled cock-cuntery plots. Arise Lord Rupes of Chipping Sodbury!

Listen to Rupes' interview here while it lasts.

Hugh Hefner engaged! What awaits Crystal in the marital bed

A surge in visits from a Madame Arcati link on Drudge alerts me to Hugh Hefner's announced engagement to Crystal Harris, a woman 60 years his junior. An opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with what it's like to have sex with Hef: Fuck her daddy!

Anthony Burgess, the Tarot and his inner Madame Arcati

Anthony Burgess and his palm

Given the supernatural flavour of the festive season - Christ's cot, the Pope and Shrek meld into a methane-fuelled hallucination - it is with some delight I learn today that the late Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, was something of a Madame Arcati himself.

Not only a student of the divinatory arts, such as astrology and the Tarot, he also wrote a short story back in the early 60s called Chance Would Be a Fine Thing which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in October. I am deeply bitter I missed this. Someone will suffer. We now have to wait till 2013 before it's published in a collection of newly discovered work.

We can thank the scholar squirrel Dr Andrew Biswell, director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, for unearthing this work. In a Telegraph report Dr Biswell says: “[Burgess] had a strong interest in horoscopes, tarot cards and predictive dreams. In the second volume of his autobiography he even claimed to have predicted the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.”

The celebrated Tarot reader Mary K Greer recounts: "[Burgess] is known to have read cards at a village fete in the 1950s disguised as ‘Professor Sosostris the famous clairvoyant.'"

Professor Sosostris - has a ring to it.

Merry Christmas - despite the Old Etonian plutocracy

Kerchingle bells! Anyway, Christmas coincides with the 300,000th visitor to Madame Arcati this year which is not bad considering I took the summer off. In the past month alone there were 120,592 pageviews. The top 10 visitor countries May - December (using a new system) were:

United Kingdom 72,895
United States 63,780
Canada 9,655
Australia 8,198
Germany 6,044
Ireland 4,214
Italy 3,408
Netherlands 3,375
Brazil 2,111
Philippines 2,038

Elizabeth Hurley: Arun's 'mystery' brunette and what the papers will ignore

"Sorry to rain on your parade Gossip Press, but Arun 'mystery brunette' is his brother's wife. Snigger." - Elizabeth Hurley, Twitter.

The Savoy: Gleam, luxe, a billionaire prince... and then Stephen Fry

ITV1's curious 2-part doc on the re-opened Savoy introduced us to its current owner Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. In the show he was described as the fourth richest man in the world whereas Forbes rates him only at 19th with a net fortune (as of March this year) of nearly US$20 billion. Perhaps he slipped in the chart because the Savoy's total refurbishment went £120m over budget during its mad near-three year closure.

The prince, a member of the Saudi royal family, arrived with a huge entourage. In a coach. We learned from his Savoy-assigned butler in the royal suite (price: £10k a night) that he had demanded white slippers in place of the black (or vice versa), liked Melba toast (or was that someone else?) and didn't wish to be disturbed before his rather late rising at 2pm every day. If he wished to eat out, every table of the establishment was booked in his name. He might however change his mind at the last minute and go elsewhere. He likes curry.

The prince didn't say much. He and Prince Charles kissed cheeks at the relaunch ceremony. I'm afraid any good feeling I might have had about the Savoy refit was blown away by the arrival of Stephen Fry, appointed the hotel's blogger in residence: cue free suite. A man with long unkempt hair, creased jacket and trousers, and the mouldy aura of a panto professor, stepped into a world of gleam and luxe: hello Mr Fry. He oozed a pus-like unctuous awe as he was ushered into a blue lift. Not once did he desist in his obsequious wittering, sadly confused with charm. What won't he do to annoy me?

One evening in the Savoy's American Bar, a few years back, I was astonished to see virtually every Fleet St newspaper editor knocking back drinks at one of their regular get-togethers. That was the first time I went off the Savoy.

Kate Reardon (a spinning vagina expert) takes over Tatler!

Kate Reardon. Photo by Rankin

Oh, I hope it wasn't something I didn't say. Catherine Ostler (aka Tiny Tears) has departed her dream editorship of Tatler. She seeks pastures new, challenges over there (fill in detail). Someone called Kate Reardon, who's blonde and was raised in the Condé Nast nurseries, is enthroned. How peculiar.

Usually, a media tally-ho serenades any hunt for a new Tatler editor. Condé Nast life-MD Sir Nicholas Coleridge (as he hopes to be soon) traditionally sifts the society desperadoes at early breakfast hotel interviews before appointing a non-applicant (a neighbour, say); or something like that. This time, nothing. Ostler's off after a mere two years and no public notice. The queen is dead etc.

Obviously the real story remains unpublished. Would someone kindly furnish, ta. I'm far too busy to delve. Nothing to do with this I'm sure.

As for Kate, I see she has a website called Top Tips. While glancing at it my eye alights on a vagina dialogue. A reader has a problem. "After my first spinning class, my vagina feels very sore and bruised. Other women said this will stop after a couple classes. Did anyone else have this problem and if so, were you able to spin again?"

Could this be a coded reference to some kind of social intercourse with Lord 'former spinmeister' Mandelson?

One can only hope Tatler offers Kate challenges of comparable import. Good luck, poppet!

Welcome to Mollywood is Independent on Sunday's celeb memoir of the year

Molly Parkin's Welcome to Mollywood has been named celebrity memoir of the year by the Independent on Sunday.

My congratulations to permanent fiancee Moll, to her innovative publisher Beautiful Books and to the newspaper on its good taste and discernment. Matthew Bell, who has penned the paper's encomium, is of course one of Madame Arcati's approved journalists (a short list) and I am delighted that he has repaid my faith with his unsolicited plaudit.

To read his piece click here.

To read Arcati's review, Dodging the Conventional Cunts, click here.

Madame Arcati interview Part 2: Indecent exposures

Part 2 of Madame Arcati's second interview with the Virtual Reality website is now up. Unique perspectives on Charles and Camilla, Wills and Kate, rioting stidents and, er, Sam Leith are offered - and Ken Clarke's penal secret is revealed. Children turn away! Eloquent, shrewd filth for discerning readers, click here.