Prince Andrew and a confusion of dukes at the Spectator

Though I hardly ever read The Spectator these days, I am always happy to scan its weekly emails informing me of what I'm missing. This week, the mag's editor Fraser Nelson - who aspires deludedly to best Madame Arcati's prophetic skills, given his love of making predictions - is a-huffin' and a-puffin' about what he calls Andrewgate: the appalling demolition of Prince Andrew at the hands of anti-royalist knockers, 'unnamed advisers' and other plotters.

I may be missing something here but midway through his advert he writes: 'For my part, I look into the politics behind Andrewgate. Cameron, I understand, was shocked to see how quickly these unnamed advisers laid into the Duke of Edinburgh... '

Does he perhaps mean the Duke of York aka Prince Andrew? Juicily, Nelson adds, 'And Taki has some new gossip about the duke's American host, Jeffrey Epstein.' Since I have no intention of reading Mr Nelson's doubtless invaluable insights into the 'deeper, darker forces' behind the royal scandal, nor Taki's, I shall never know which duke he was thinking of. I fear it matters little.

William & Kate's wedding invitation wording: A little too with-it?

Click invite for engorged version

I meant to say sooner but one small detail of the Lord Chamberlain's invitation to the wedding of William and Kate interested me. The grammar. Guests are invited to the marriage of the prince with Kate. The traditional wording would normally employ the preposition to, although 'with' is not incorrect and is now customary in more fashionable circles: 'with' does enhance the suggestion of a meeting of equals.

However, it should be said that Debrett's, which I find quite common, is very much a to-ist  (click here) and appears to part company with the increasingly modish Royal Family, eschewing the with-ism in its formal wedding invitation template. Perhaps grammarians would care to comment.

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

Quentin Crisp speaks at séance: 'Even homos live beyond death'

A winged Quentin Crisp

The Australian contingent of the Church of Madame Arcati informs me that the late Quentin Crisp has communicated his thoughts via a medium. A recording of the séance has been posted on Australian former lawyer and outspoken Spiritualist Victor Zammit's website  (scroll down for the link on his site).

The voice purporting to be that of Quentin says: 'One of the reasons that I come through is to prove that even homosexuals live beyond death... It proves that the Catholics are speaking out from where the sun doesn't shine. Why, pray, would you not live beyond death because you're homosexual. There's lots of ignoramuses ...'

I have to say that the voice sounds nothing like Quentin's, though the speaker has adopted a pawsh drawl of the Lady Bracknell variety: and the opinions expressed would predictably be those of Quentin. The vulgar allusion to an anus is out of character, however. And Catholics do not claim that homosexuals do not survive death; rather, that eternal damnation is the devil's Pontin's for poofters, though you won't hear old Ratzi with his pussy cats saying that publicly.

As for the voice of Quentin, where's Rory Bremner these days?

Nicky Haslam: Cock-cocking with Tony and Roddy

Nicky Haslam's Redeeming Features autobio is out on Nov 5 and one of its delights is his revelation that the old party-goer and name-dropper cock-cocked with Tony Armstrong-Jones (now Lord Snowdon) in the 1950s, before Tony married Princess Margaret, and later with Roddy Llewellyn, before Roddy became her boyfriend. I had never thought of Nicky till now as the late Queen sister's unwitting bedtime taster.

Graydon Carter Short Story: God's Big Bang

Graydon Carter's Lothario reputation has inspired me to write a piece of fiction, titled God's Big Bang, based on his legendary hotel fucking, as reported by Rupert Everett.

Graydon Carter took in a deep breath and lost three of his five bellies - just enough to catch sight of his vast manhood from a vertical perspective, standing to attention the way Toby Young didn't in Graydon's presence when the little scamp was researching his book at Vanity Fair.

"That goddam son-of-a-bitch," growled Graydon thinking of Toby as he let out a vast gale of air and lost sight of his organ. For a moment his enormity quivered at the fear of deflation.

"Oh Graydon, Graydon, look at it! Bring it over here before you lose it," bellowed the awed blonde in the hotel four-poster, usually purple-shiny with the latest Eva Mendes De-luxe Duvet which had been carelessly cast to the floor.

"My God! Who's that?" barked the mighty editor-in-chief as he caught sight of a strange looking man in the bedroom. "What the - ?"

"There's no one there but you, honeybunch" said Blondie lightly. "It's just you're looking in the mirror."

For a moment he thought he had spotted the ectoplasmic effusion of a ghost, all cottoned up about the head. Then he realised it was just his own hair, a vast, proud luxuriance, the like of which once dreamt about by elderly periwigged gentlemen grandees of Louis XIV's court.

"Oh, Graydon, it's gone!"

He breathed in again, losing an impressive four bellies this time. But, alas, the combination of Toby Young and the imagined ghost had caused his blood to surge from his cock to his cheeks. All he could see now was the rolling result of one too many dinners at Gotham's finest restaurants. He knew choler was bad for the blood pressure.

"Ah, fuck it," shouted the man who had written diatribes against George W Bush every month in his women's magazine for eight years with no discernible effect. "Come over here and give it a rub."

Blondie sighed a little, and then spun out of bed on her pert naked buttocks. A scream followed and then the poor girl lay unconscious on the carpet. She had landed on the Eva Mendes De-luxe Duvet which proved slippery underfoot.

"That's great," said Graydon to himself. He swaggered over to the lifeless form of his inamorata and couldn't feel a pulse. "Fuck!" He began banging her chest with his fist, like they did in ER, causing the floor to tremble with each blow. The actor in the room below lay in his bed wondering how the old boy upstairs could keep up such a pace - the thought stirred him and he started thinking again of another man who had once lost his dental crown on the actor's cockring.

Mercifully, Blondie came round in Graydon's arms - he had mistakenly felt her Cartier Love Collection watch, not her pulse - "Hello God, I must be dead," she whispered, struck by Graydon's resemblance to the image of the Old Testament sky god she'd seen on a biscuit tin once. Graydon scowled, "Don't ever fucking say that in front of Hitchens - he's crazy about his atheism," he snarled.

"Oh, Graydon, it's up again," she whinnied. "Come here and do me."

The actor in his bed could only marvel at the resumption of banging above. "It must be Viagra," he bitched as he stroked his cockring. "It takes me at least an hour to recover."