This blog is now closed

...But Madame Arcati has an after-life on Twitter - @Madame_Arcati. We're all micro-bloggers now.

Gerry Anderson: Was he jealous of Lady Penelope's success?

I'm sorry Gerry Anderson decided to leave us over Christmas. Generally I do not approve of this sort of untimeliness. But I must not be severe. The astral tunnel functions by its own timetable and it's not for the likes of me to waggle a timepiece at its insensitive operator.

But his death reminds me of my meeting with Sylvia Anderson, by then his ex-wife, of many years ago. She had been instrumental in the development of Thunderbirds and, in particular, in the rise of Lady Penelope: indeed, Sylvia was Her Ladyship's honeyed voice.

Lady P had all the airs and graces of an English aristocrat with Parker in tow ('m'lady'), but frankly the accent was more RADA-champagne-flute than yer actual cut glass. The Downton Abbey lot are generally clipped in speech and economical in display (social occasions excepted), so I'm afraid Sylvia's version of the hoity-toity was a little vulgar to say the least. And the pink Rolls Royce! Pure Barbara Cartland crossed with Jonathan King via Liberace. 

But anyway, in conversation with Sylvia I gathered a number of impressions. Chief among them being that Lady Penelope had played a part in the disintegration of the Anderson marriage. As Lady P's fame grew, moulded by the soignee aspirations of her ventriloquist, so did Sylvia's own sense of personal accomplishment - and rightly. This unexpected outgrowth, in some strange and inexplicable way, perhaps helped destabilise the Anderson union.

Did Lady Penelope/Sylvia's towering success become the object of Gerry's jealousy, as the earnest Tracy clan (embodying Gerry's heroic fantasies) found themselves upstaged?

Certainly it's a question worth exploring by a talented TV or movie dramatist. And Joanna Lumley, with sufficient slap, would make a marvellous Sylvia and Lady P, as alternates become one. 

Madame Arcati's Christmas message: The best way to dodge Stephen Fry

Santa Fry

Darlings, a merry festive time to you all - except those cunts I hate. 

Well, I'm being honest. You're like me really. Only on Facebook just now I spotted a very famous opinionist celebrating the accidental self-incineration of a terrorist-looking bearded person from the Middle East. That sums up the spirit of Christmas for me, as we merge with the TV screen and snuggle up in the warm dank 3D folds of Stephen Fry's chins (hopefully he's had a proper shave, for once). David Walliams - welcome to your future!

Let us hope that not all of us are swept away by the floods - except perhaps the dog next door that's howling because its pensioner owner is forever out. The present inundations were of course predicted over a year ago by the astrology annual Old Moore's Almanack 2012 - perhaps more than a year ago, as the editorial letter in this edition is dated October 2010.

Allow me to quote for December 2012: 'Heavy rains could cause serious flooding in the west. Storms early and late.' The seer who wrote this then rather ruins it all by adding: 'On the whole, close to the normal pattern.' And the prediction started sooooo promisingly. Yet as a hit-and-miss forecast, it beats the hopeless Met Office that only five minutes ago was getting the Express all excited with promises of Arctic conditions.

Will Madame Arcati prevail in 2013? Probably. The challenge now is that most of my original readers are bloggers themselves - what a fashion I started! There they are on Facebook and Twitter gracing us with their synaptic crackle and pop (and family photos) - plainly Madame's work is cut out in capturing a new generation of glancer. I promise not to find solace in right-wing politics or more PhotoShopped celebrity cock.

Should you find yourself at a loss this Christmas, marooned by the Fry deluge of his repeats, quizzes and folksy, marron glacé thespianism (adverts included), then revisit one of the most popular of my 2012 posts: my interview with Sophie Parkin about her splendid bestseller on The Colony Club. Click here. (If you are predisposed to being offended, then best not read it: Blogger was soooo appalled by the language and references to bodily secretions in the piece, that Google adverts were pulled from this site.)

The Times and Sunday Times have raved over her book; more acclaim is due. And she published the book herself. Further proof that one's literary fate need no longer be decided by some privileged twat in an office.

Enjoy!

Molly Parkin reinvention at 80: Welcome to her blue period

Molly Parkin by Rankin
Hair by John Vial and Tracy Hayes at Fudge
Ponystep magazine

I may be her permanent fiancee but even I exclaimed (yes, I'm not usually an exclaimer; but exclaimed is the correct word): 'Who dat?'

This vision of the creative reinvention of Molly Parkin appears in the latest (4th) edition of the biannual fabulous fashion magazine Ponystep. To buy a copy or a subscription, click here. Its war against the apostrophe (by refusing to acknowledge its existence) will surely secure the affections of a generation.

 Moll's decision to ditch the turban is a bit like hearing of the split of Brad and Jen or Depp and that French singer whose name forever slips from memory's talon. I didn't think it possible. But there you go. Just proves once again that you can spot a prehistoric bug in amber, but not a living, breathing duo.

Accompanying Rankin's gorgeous portrait is an interview with Moll by the magazine's editor Richard Mortimer. I cannot commend it enough. Among other things she talks about our unique relationship. No, I'm not going to quote. Treat yourself to an orgy of celebrities beautified or beauties celebrated.

And while I'm here, there's still time to gift Molly's re-issued erotic novel Love All to anyone in your life in need of comic Viagra this Christmush. Click here to buy the e-book - it's only £1.66 for fuck's sake. Or, as Ponystep would put it, for fucks sake.

Jonathan King's whopping 'Christmas card': A review

I'd assumed that the physics-driven vogue for the atheistic faith would result in fewer festive communications. So many apparent friends have now replaced the Star of Bethlehem with Prof Brian Cox's inter-stellar Lego-like imaginings - which at least offer welcome savings in the winter fest family budget. 

But I was wrong. If anything, the Christmas greeting has become much more ambitious.

I first noticed this with writer Roger Lewis. Not content with just sending me (and dozens others) a card bearing glittery-cute Santa bears, he enclosed a round-robin, four-page account (single-spaced, A4) of his 2012 (lesbian porn sites being a feature).

Now Jonathan King has gone one better. Instead of a card, he has dispatched a fully illustrated, 227-page book. It's titled Three Months: 100 Glorious Sunny Days In the Summer of 2012: a 'snapshot' of his life largely abroad when he's not here addressing the Leveson Inquiry and dismissing it presciently as a 'waste of space'.

Three Months falls well within the Katie Price definition of biography - ie diary (with distinct serial possibilities). On p22 we learn that he's had lovers 'much prettier' than Brad Pitt (this memory arises over coffee and petits pains at the Carlton in Cannes), some time after his dear friend, the veteran newspaper interviewer Lynn Barber, has called him an 'egocentric bore' to his face. 

JK has of course weathered much greater insult and is still grinning as Britain's panto 'vile pervert'. A knighthood cannot be that far away. After all, April Ashley, who was once dismissed herself as a deviant monstrosity by our upstanding red-tops, is now an icon of transgender equality with her MBE ribboned in pink and grey. The ghost of John Profumo must surely concur.

Three Months is of course a relentless deluge of name-dropping - but King's en passant goss is worth all the ego-coddling. We learn, for instance, that he's working on a TV format for Simon Fuller (that'll please Cowell) and that he's not given up hopes of getting his hands on The Brits and Eurovision once again - the UK last won the latter under his ministration. Whenever he pops abroad he first has to tell the Marylebone cop shop whose boneheads are always 'nice and helpful'.

And his story on Peter Mandelson is so deliciously wicked that I delight in not repeating it.

JK's intellectual life is sustained by a bookishness that may surprise the tut-tutters of tabloid tat. Paul Bowles and Graham Greene share his journeys; and I was astonished to learn that he actually ploughs through the Booker finalist tomes. Frankly, I'd rather have anal sex with a traffic cone.

I could go on. But I have to remind myself. Three Months is meant only to be a Christmas card!

Nicky Haslam is a popstar again! He sings Illusions. There's a gun....

Society interior decorator and party Zelig, Nicky Haslam, has released another single with video (16mm b/w). It's called Illusions, a title not thought to be inspired by Nicky's crooning ambitions. Bryan Ferry is partly responsible.

It's the second track taken from his album Midnight Matinee, primed for release in 2013. The first single, Total Control, had the honour of my reviewing attention back in August. Click here to savour.

Illusions finds Nicky once again in a wistful, bitter-sweet mood, but this time seeming to vocalise from beneath the depths (or shallows) of the lake on which, in the video, he otherwise drifts in an occasionally oar-less rowing boat, given the gurgly (aquatic?) echo.  

The best part of the video is confined to the opening seconds in which a young woman, lakeside, slow-mo dances in a dandruffy downpour, dragging her long, luxuriant hair over a monochrome mud shore. Later, dramatically, a gun teleports into Nicky's hands which he aims not at himself. But I must stop here. I wouldn't want to spoil it. His love interest has to be nearly 60 years younger than he. But who's counting? 

Nicky's reinvention as a cock-cunting minstrel is just one more surprise in an epic life of self-sustained fantasy. We are his willing extras.

As he sings in Illusions, 'You are in love with pain...' 

The Radio 1 Christmas lunch - and Andy Kershaw's Santa'd Savile

Radio 1 Christmas lunch 1985 - held in late summer. Where's Sir Jimmy?

Given the need to stuff festive stockings or find something to get through the hideous day, I cannot recommend highly enough Andy Kershaw's bio No Off Switch from which the above pic is lifted. To buy click here.

Ch 32, A Tour of the Cages, adds context to the photo - a Christmas lunch in 1985, held in September. He writes: 'My Radio 1 colleagues could be categorised into three species: there were those who, by the measures of most people, would be considered unfit to be released into the community, never mind set loose on national radio; others had absolutely no personality whatsoever, and even less interest in music, rendering their presence in the broadcasting game, and on a music radio station at that, unfathomable; and just a handful were quite normal, engaging individuals. How the latter bunch ever got over the threshold is, in the light of evident recruitment priorities, perhaps the biggest mystery.'

He explains that Sir Jimmy Saveloy is not in the pic because he demanded extra lolly for publicity pics. But he was in the room. Prior to the snap, 'crashing through the swing doors from the kitchen into the dining room, robed and hooded in a Father Christmas costume and pushing on a trolley a mutantly-proportioned roast turkey, was none other than Sir Jimmy Savile, veteran Radio 1 DJ, tireless charity worker and another national institution, much recognised for his interest in young people.' [My emphasis].

This was written before Savile's death. I think Kershaw was hinting at something.

Roger Lewis at Christmas: Lesbian porn sites and Richard Ingrams

Roger Lewis

Such a delightful change from the usual death threats etc in the post to receive a Christmas card from premier Arcatiste (and Neptunian), Roger Lewis. Not just a card, but a letter. And not just a letter, but his monthly diary of 2012!

'I was concentrating very hard on a lesbian porn site when Richard Ingrams phoned and asked me to go to the Cheltenham Literary festival,' he writes for October. 'I was to represent the Oldie Magazine. My fee was £150....'

I'm afraid Mr Ingrams is off my Christmas card list ever since he failed to invite my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin to an Oldie party a few months back. I'm sure she won't mind me telling you that she'd met him at an Oldie literary munch-up and - well, I'd better not say too much. Suffice to say that someone's domestic problems (not Ingrams' I hasten to add) intruded. Crash, bang, wallop, hospital! I know what I know. And mean.

But back to Roger's wonderfully amusing letter - I do hope a newspaper prints it in its festive edition. Much better than one Christmas tradition I cannot abide - the cunting festive short story: if you laid out all the unread pages of newspaper Yuletide short stories end-to-end, you'd end up with the largest litter tray ever, fit for for all the pussies in Brobdingnag. For an example click here.

Roger informs one and all that though he has yet to sell his gorgeous Grade II-Listed Georgian gentilhommiere in Herefordshire (if you wish to buy, click here), he and family have moved into a charming terraced house in Rochester. And a September entry reveals that plans are afoot to turn his hysterical Seasonal Suicide Notes into a West End extravaganza. Alas, to play Roger, producers wish to cast Richard Griffiths who is '20 years older than me and weighs half a ton.'

Well, the less than beauteous Margaret Rutherford played me once and she did me no harm. That I know of.

There's still time to buy a Roger Lewis classic read - Amazon's page dedicated to his comic work is all you need visit. Click here.

The Hacked Off petition - please sign, and ignore the Lorraine Kellys

I do hope that the sensible among you will sign Hacked Off's petition.

It demands that Leveson's recommendations be implemented - that our media abide by principles enshrined in statute. For decades, newspapers have made up their self-regulation as they went along, with senior members of the press presiding over complaints: hence the hopelessness of the PCC. 

What did it ever do to unearth the scale of Hackgate?

Currently, most national newspapers are propagandising hard against Leveson. Spurious polls staged on leading questions deliver public opinion results to please media barons while compliant celebrity columnists, who should know better, parrot what their editors tell them to write and say.

Would Lorraine Kelly still be writing for the Sun if she did not say (in effect that) Leveson should be dumped? I think not.

If our supine and spineless PM has his way - ie the way of powerful media bosses, their arrogant fly-by-night editors and their bullied staff - nothing will change at all. If you think everything is just fine with how our newspapers are run right now, then ignore the petition. It's that easy.

The Leveson recommendations are crafted to preserve a free press and, if anything, to add muscle to investigative journalism. As important are the rights of individuals whose tragedies or misfortunes are turned into a commodity by powerful media organisations. 

It's incredible that we 'trust' journalists to regulate their own business.

Think Dowler. Think McCanns. These were not one-off errors but major symptoms of irregularity and arrogance.

To sign click here.

Love spesh: Is it The Spectator's Jeremy Clarke + Farah 'the bird' Damji?

Farah Damji

I may have a heart of flint yet even I, in the right circumstances, can turn into a channel for the late Dame Barbara Cartland and bat my false, matted eyelashes while posing as a fan of romantic nougat.

I turn to the Spectator's riveting Low Life column in the latest issue and learn that its author Jeremy Clarke - described as 'The Evelyn Waugh de nos jours' - is the proud owner of a 'bird' whom he takes to a pub after what sounds like an evening at an art class. He tells us that the art teacher may very well fancy his bird as booze is knocked back. The sculptor, too, has designs on her contours. Then someone identified as the mother-in-law asks whom the bird is with. To which the bird replies, 'testily': ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!’

Is it a bird?

Who could this bird be? Given her vocal feistiness, Janet Street-Porter? Dame Shirley Porter? Perhaps even Clarissa Dickson Wright?

Or could it be one Farah Damji? - described by the Evening Standard as 'London's most dangerous woman?' Well, it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Both Jeremy and Farah are highly attractive persons free at the point of delivery and of proven fertility. Both exhibit a cosmopolitan tolerance of some of life's hardier annuals while nonetheless flouncing about in rarefied atmospheres - the Spectator's in Jeremy's case.

Jeremy Clarke

It is distressing then to learn that when she attempted to defend her love in the last 24 hours, by posting a comment below his Low Life column in response to my foul abuse, she was censored! I believe the comment has now been restored - but we can't have the home of free speech (ie the Speccie) nursed along by nannies or people better off running sex clinics (reception).

But whatever the truth of the matter, I extend my best wishes to lovebirds everywhere. Just remember: the fun is always in making up, you sweety-tweeties!

Julie Burchill - join Francis Wheen and help fund her book (61% there!)

Julie Burchill

A while back I (along with others) received an email from the divine goddess Julie Burchill. She was seeking my financial support for a book she wants to publish called Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philosemite - about her adoration of the Jewish race. She had signed up to a crowd-funding publishing outfit called Unbound - if an author can find enough loot via backers (ie interested readers with cash) to sponsor their book, then they, too, will find themselves between covers.

But why would an award-winning author such as Burchill take this route to publication? Have commercial publishing editors entirely taken leave of their senses in their crazy pursuit of Yuletide instant bio, supermarket soft-porn and the celebrity chef TV tie-in?

In a promo video on the Unbound site, she says she wanted to write the book her 'own way'. More to the point, as she revealed in the Telegraph recently, she was put out that publishers had had the gall to demand she submit a sample chapter of 6,000 words. The very idea!

Even more to the point, and In all probability, editors were nervous of the theme. Suddenly the prospect of lucrative wall-to-wall media coverage of the title and its outspoken author paled by the fear of an upset.

How times have changed. Many years ago I couldn't find a publisher for my novel Farce Hole (an 80s-set fashion satire, due to be republished as Vicki Cochrane's Astral Chronicle) despite rave reader reports. Then one day the late Sheridan Morley drew my attention to a new publisher called Citron (now defunct). Even Martis Amis and Fay Weldon were singing its praises. For a nominal fee to cover marketing (I think around £100) this print-on-demand cooperative, with exacting editorial standards, brought out my book. It sold several hundred copies - 25 alone at a Kinky Fiction Night reading at Waterstone's in Oxford Street.

Oh, but the snobbery! I remember the idiotic Jason Cowley, now editor of the New Statesman, sniffing about Citron being a 'vanity publisher' (even though it was nothing of the sort). The Jasons of the day decreed that author talent had to be determined by flaky souls in publishing offices - from whom bookish journalists took their cue, in their anxiety to be seen not in the wrong.

And now look. Famous authors everywhere are finding and funding new ways to sideline the redundant Snipcocks - who gives a fuck about vanity? Why Julie is not self-publishing Unchosen as a Kindle e-book I do not know. And how close is she to publishing Unchosen? She has 61% of the necessary funding as of today - I'm sure she'll soon hit her target. The likes of Private Eye's Francis Wheen, Candida Lycett Green, Barbara Ellen and Paul Burston have made a contribution.

We'll see if Madame Arcati feels so generous.

To watch Julie Burchill's video for Unchosen, click here

Rachel Johnson: Bye bye lady gardens, hello Winter Games

Amidst all the pre-Christmas book releases and assorted stocking-fillers and unwelcome additions to listerature (Britain's Top 100 Arselickers, etc) - and a great many fashionably self-published e-books, it must be said - shimmers Winter Games, a novel by Rachel Johnson, whose departure from the editorship-in-chief of The Lady has just been announced.

I can't be dispassionate about Rachel. A Virgo. It was she who as visionary editor of the venerable magazine appointed me its first-ever astrologer in 2011. I am forever in her debt, as the brief bio on my gorgeous new website makes clear. How the periodical had coped without its own stargazer for its first 125 years is anyone's guess. I mean, one of its former senior editors (among the first to flee Rachel's lash and importation of Jilly Cooper-esque 'lady gardens' and the like) laboured under the misapprehension that The Lady was born under Aquarius (sign of free love, space probes and other lunacies). I thought that can't be right. And indeed, on drawing up the magazine's chart I learnt it drew first breath under Pisces (a much more sedate and tasteful sign). 

But enough of my concerns. Rachel's novel. No, I have not read it (time, darlings, time - astrology is all about time, by the way), though I am sampling its pages on Amazon and find myself moistening. Winter Games resonates with something of the Unity Mitford-Hitler high comedy as upper class twatties permit fascist flash to tantalise their untouched rosebuds - pre-War as well as near-contemporary.

Rachel is almost a Capotean social satirist, but on the whole a keen survival instinct draws her from the brink of disgrace. It doesn't do to go over completely. Not in London, anyway.

Since I am not qualified to commend or condemn her latest book, I hand you over to one Daisy Goodwin who in her Amazon review of Winter Games concludes: 'I would have given it five stars but only sock puppets do that now.'

Very wise. Best wishes, Rachel, in your post-Lady (gardens) literary life.

Winter Games by Rachel Johnson can be bought here or here.