Jonathan King: Second movie Me Me Me out in May

Me himself

The ever-productive Jonathan King (yes, him; get over it) releases his second movie on May 5.

It's called Me Me Me and is not ostensibly a sequel to his glorious Vile Pervert: The Musical - my movie of the year 2008. A video from the slick new flick featuring a female trio fast approaches 100,000 hits in one week on YouTube - I do like their catchy song Don't Let Him Touch You, which I take to be a welcome homily to save one's cherry for the right bastard.

You can buy it on iTunes now. Details of where you can view the film for zilch in its entirety will be given in May.

Meantime, view the video below. Click screen once.

Jonathan King: Nation's Vile Pervert returns as God this Christmas

Jonathan King as God in Vile Pervert

Jonathan King sends Madame Arcati a gorgeous Christmas card with a cover pic of him as God bearing news of his 2010. He reports that his movie Vile Perpert: The Musical hit 55,000 downloads this year while iTunes brought in a tidy sum.

Unfortunately, Madame Arcati was on her extended 'retirement' this summer when Private Eye revealed that the author of the novel Beware The Monkey Man, Rex Kenny, was none other than.... Jonathan King.

The exposé resulted in 'dozens of review copies (sold unopened by "reviewers" to shops) to shift from Amazon within days.' Flogging unread review copies to bookshops is a nice money-earner for our nation's impoverished critics.

If you want to know more about his novel, visit the dedicated website.  I'm sorry I didn't get to read or review it: perhaps I shall in 2011. However, if you haven't already, do read my review of his excellent film Vile Pervert. The unelected YouTube nannies have of course disabled the video excerpt for the protection of one's fragile morals, but JK's put up another ('Wilde About Boys'). You can watch the entire film here.

Also, read my review of his excellent memoirs 65 My Life So Far. An ideal prezzie for bystanders to pop culture.

Vote for Roger Lewis to be Oxford's next Professor of Poetry!

Esteemed Arcatiste, legendary memoirist and wit, Roger Lewis, has been nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. Oxford grads such as Duncan Fallowell (can a knighthood be that far away?) Lynn Barber (a damehood?), Rachel "The Lady" Johnson (the sack?), and many Bright Young Things (pah!) in publishing / the media/ journalism, have rallied to his cause, God bless them.

Oxonians need to (a) register to vote by June 4th and (b) actually vote. Polls open on May 21st and close on June 16th. This can all be done online - click here. This is a new departure for Roger; I just hope he is not robbed of his comic ingenuity in the process. I shall be most displeased. Very.

In the past people had to turn up in person in Oxford, so the dons always had it all sewn up, the tarts. Madame Arcati won't be thwarted.

Reward Showbiz™: The 10 most pointless celebrity books and TV shows

I'm a great follower of reward showbiz™ (© Madame Arcati 2010) - gigs bestowed upon slebs only because they have a name. Many showbiz or media projects are dreamt up simply as an excuse to get a star to front them. Such projects have three essential characteristics: 1) a star; 2) a journey, quest or list; 3) pointlessness. Here's my latest top 10 rewardees:

1. Joanna Lumley for Joanna Lumley's Nile, a new four part series on ITV1 starting this week. No earthly reason why the Nepalese goddess should be associated with this river, but it's an opportunity to wallow in cultivated mellifluousness as she bears her polished teeth at familiar sights - such as a lookalike camel - in various gurnings of rapture. Oh look, there's a pyramid.

2. Quentin Letts for his throwaway read 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. The Daily Mail's right-wing attack dog is a professional frother who appears to favour a return to Feudalism and the use of the rack. An utterly pointless addition to the listerature genre - he is after all part of the problem.

3. Michael Palin and his various TV/book tie-in travels, from the Sahara to his Hemingway Adventure. Nothing in Palin's career quite prepared us for the unedifying sight of a perfectly credible comic actor turning into a Phileas Fogg freebie tart. If he has shed new light on any part of the globe do let me know.

4. Andrew Marr for History of Modern Britain. Any excuse to get this gesticulating barker on the box. Rest assured, his "history" will be referenced by no serious scholar; it's just a loafer's guide to event whatnots, the sort of crap Reader's Digest might have once published for leisurely reads.

5. Jeremy Paxman for The Victorians: Britain through the Paintings of the Age (book and TV series). What does he know about art? The book was substantially written by someone else in any case. A great vanity juggernaut to keep a familar face on the screen.

6. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman for Long Way Round: TV series and book. A chance to ogle at two leather clad arses in different international locations. Shamelessly the book's publisher writes on Amazon "The fact that those men are figures with notable film connections ... may be the reason the book got written ... but so what?" How sad are the punters?

7. Richard Hammond for all his TV shows but Top Gear. TV looks for any excuse to have him either blowing up things or testing things that may blow up, all because he nearly got himself killed once. Each promise of doom leaves us cruelly tantalised.

8. Sophie Dahl for Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights (book/TV show). A Nigella Lawson copycat  - famous surname + food erotica. The book boasts Dahl's "Matisse-like line drawings" destined for no public exhibition. Only two years ago or so she was presented as the great white hope of literature after a spell as a waif on catwalks.

9. Peter and Dan Snow for 20th Century Battlefields (book/TV series) - lanky father and son become visibly excited in the historical presence of slaughter. Where's a swingometer when you need one?

10. JLS - for all those fucking endless music rundown shows they've been fronting since they didn't win The X Factor but went on to become the show's biggest boy band stars. Testicle hugs and downward spastic finger thrusts conduct their guides to Michael Jackson and others. The tiny one especially requires treatment.

'George Harrison beat up 14-year-old groupie'

The late Beatle George Harrison once punched and broke the nose of a 14-year-old female groupie, claims Jonathan King in his memoirs, 65 My Life So Far.

He writes that this "black girl had the obnoxious habit" of tracking down stars to their homes, ringing their doorbells and then "pour[ing] out a Tourettes-style stream of insults, carefully and cleverly constructed to carry a vestige of truth."

She got her comeuppance when she got to to the door of Harrison's home in Esher. He told King: "I let her go on and on until she finally dried up, then I looked at her and smashed in the face, breaking her nose and several teeth. We'll never hear from her again."

He was right. She didn't bother any more celebs.

King's autobiography is reviewed here.

65 My Life so Far by Jonathan King: Review. Mr Vile Pervert's extraordinary fate

Oh, JK! How could you? Or rather, how could you not?

What with all the celebs you've fucked, discovered, promoted, befriended, detested, wanked, created, re-invented, guided, supported and, yes, fucked again with your self-proclaimed 8" phallus over the decades, how could you not have had an index compiled for this monster-sized tome of star goss that is your autobiography? It took me half an hour to find the Madame Arcati mention on p570. And then I only found it by deductive reasoning.

Please, please get one done for a future reprint! Listen to a gnarled old index-loving clairvoyante.

So, here it is. Mr Vile Pervert's extraordinary life story, told as a breathless, occasionally careless, romp. I thought I'd speed-read it but a lot of the time I couldn't. I kept on returning to many pages thinking: Did I get that right? Did Jonathan King actually write that as a 13-year-old boy he was having (or had) "passionate encounters" with 65 boys at his public school, Charterhouse? And later, did I read that a sexually passive male friend of his relished being bare-backed by loads of men at gang-bangs, over 1,000 one weekend? In Holland? Belgium? Or was it over one year?

And was JK really once an annoyingly ubiquitous national institution whose influence ran through most branches of showbiz? - contributing to the careers of 10cc, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, the Bay City Rollers, Scott Walker et al: why, he even helped bring the The Rocky Horror Show to the masses. You may have to re-read the book just to grasp the full scale of his victories: the popstar (as JK and under his many aliases), the pop promoter, the pop producer, the stage impresario, the TV star, the Eurovision-meister, the tabloid columnist, the blah blah blah. And then the full scale of his spectacular fall from grace.

65 My Life so Far is for certain no apology, no penance or mea culpa, for his conviction and imprisonment for sexual offences against male minors. He proclaims his innocence, gives the legal definition of a paedophile (which he persuades me he is not), castigates the cops. And it is to his credit that he doesn't try to bolster his denials by cleaning up his epic cock and cunt lives as an unashamed bisexual. He is at least a kindly tart and make no mistake. At one orgy, while he's cock-arsing an Adonis, he finds a moment to help the blow-jobbing codger at the front adjust his dislodged false teeth. Earlier in life King says he bedded 12 girls in a row while his first hit Everyone's Gone to the Moon held the No1 spot - the single that later would enchant his unlikely devotee, Miss Marlene Dietrich, no less.

Such uninhibited frankness is almost unheard of in celebrity autobiography, and for King it's a risky strategy. The messageboard moralists, the slaves to tabloid scripture, will seize on such detail as further proof of his criminal deviancy. I'd rather view him as a horny unapologetic libertine, a brazen Lord Rochester-type with a crooked smile - one of life's mavericks who always broke or bent the showbiz rules as he pioneered and innovated - and one brought down by a strange prosecution stuffed with greys and blurs.

Even the late Mirror/Sunday Mirror/People editor Richard Stott, an intolerant and vindictive tabloid bruiser of the old Fleet Street school, harboured doubts about the rightness of King's conviction.

As you'd expect, King's book will offend in many other ways. I have reported already on his revelation of John Lennon's bisexuality. His Jimi Hendrix story, that the star admitted having sex with a female minor, will enrage fans. Bolan and Bowie worshippers will also be irked. Heather Mills won't like his fondness for Macca. The sheer industrial quantity of celebrity cock-cockery tends to confirm King in his pluralistic view of human sexuality: that our puny, day-to-day assumptions and expectations bear little resemblance to the rich pubic reality. For certain, he is, like Gore Vidal and other erotic adventurers, a case study for future field workers in the realms of cocking and cunting, same and other.

His book is not perfect. No index - and no guiding chapter titles, just numbers! And I'm sure it was Leslie Howard who co-starred in Brief Encounter, not Trevor [Yes, I know now JK's right!]. But did I misread it? And ... and ... his time at Cambridge starts but never exactly finishes: he just goes up and then ... becomes a popstar. Cambridge kind of fizzles out in the chronicle, a prized but expendable lucky charm on his chunky career bracelet.

King is another one of those Zeligs, like Nicky Haslam - he's been everywhere, knows everyone. And thanks to clean social habits, still remembers. If he remains the sharp-tongued smarmy bighead of lore - even by his own testimony - he also comes across here as big-hearted, broad-minded and resourceful: "I was meeting some fascinating people in Belmarsh," he writes of the jail, "terrorists, rapists, murderers."

If you have any kind of showbiz pulse, King's book is an absolute must. But best leave the bourgoeis morality at the door.

Click here to buy
Book website

Jonathan King: 'John Lennon enjoyed my bisexual orgies'

In his just-published explosive memoirs 65 My Life So Far, Jonathan King adds credence to the many unsubstantiated rumours of John Lennon's bisexuality. He reports that "two or three times" in the 60s, Lennon stayed over at King's flat with "with several young ladies and was perfectly happy to indulge in a multi-gender session of stimulation." Lennon, according to King, "was the most relaxed and adventurous Beatle."

Madame Arcati will be reviewing the surprisingly frank and graphic book very shortly - meantime to buy a copy click here. A perfect Christmas gift.

Christmas books: Madame Arcati's supremely discriminating gift guide

The white beard you can keep, but Madame Arcati is happy to recommend a few books as gifts this Christmas. Unlike certain other media types who take their cues from old buddies in orthodox publishing, Madame Arcati does not discriminate between the self-published and the unself-published and the vanity published: I do not need the approbation of mediating editors to tell me whether a book is worthy of publication. I'll decide, thank you.

My few titles come under two categories: the recommended are under Tomes for the Tights (aren't stockings rather Joan Collins these days?) and the worthless mingers under Tomes for the Cheese Grater (I was shocked to learn that the slave kids of Haiti are punished by being forced to kneel on cheese graters). As I wrote in the below post, shredding a pointless book with your cheese grater (1) promotes wellbeing and (2) creates debris useful for rodent litter or snow in one's Nativity tableau (vivant or toy), as recommended by a reader who put Madonna's Sex book to this excellent use. All Tights titles are hyperlinked for easy purchase; all Cheese Grater titles you can find for yourself. So ....

Tomes for the Tights

Roger Lewis' Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life as it is Lived is an absolute must this Yuletide - by far the funniest memoirs published in years. Even his father's terminal "bum cancer" is framed by comic poignancy - ideal for those contemplating copping out at the Dignitas death camp in Muslim-hating Switzerland.

As comic, but set exotically, is Duncan Fallowell's travel book Going As Far As I Can, the pb of which came out in August. We head for the trog-world of New Zealand in the company of a merciless champion of Western secular culture: the resultant clash of aesthetics (and phwoar of cock-cockings) is both pyrotechnical and exhilarating. DF's prose is the bastard child of an aristo-plebby one-nighter. Reading him is like being fucked at an egalitarian orgy.

As creator of the cock-cunting and cunting-cock neoligisms, it's only right then that Madame Arcati recommends the German title Vulva by Mithu M Sanyal.  The vulva is one of history's Cinderellas - feared, ignored, abused. Yet today we have the designer "yoni puppets" to pat and stroke. What could these be? Well, learn German and find out and delve into the history of the vulva, bitches.

An Arcati fave is the ever notorious Farah Damji and her glorious, playfully-titled autobiography Try Me. It is both mea culpa (frauds, darling) and breathtaking tease: in one chapter she mocks the naive for falling for her pose in the redemptive confessional: as if! Its dishonesties are likely subtle, between the lines; in grey areas. Her story as told feels broadly true. Media, sex, drugs, slebs, jail - they're all here. Trashy novel content in classy narrative.

And for total teeth-chattering joy do buy Jonathan King's memoirs 65 My Life So Far, which I shall review shortly. How could I not like a book that favourably name-checks this blog on p570? We all know what JK was done for: over-worked cock-cunting newspaper scrotes have decreed a persecution. Yet this book is an immense surprise: gossipy, revealing, insightful, scandalous, huge fun. A recommended gift for the multi-millionaire maiden aunt who refuses to die and whose legacy you impatiently await. She'll die usefully with a pre-rot rictus on her wrinkled mug. You won't be charged with her homicide.

Me: The Authorised Biography by Byron Rogers is the blissful tale of how one of Britain's most stylish writers became the object of an intense infatuation: Does Mr Rogers have a cock as big as that of his former employer, Prince Charles? The title may or may not reveal all.

For cookery lovers, may I introduce you to the Rt Hon The Countess of Shannon alias the global mystic guru, Almine. A few years ago Almine gave up her life of ermined British privilege and turned into an international goddess served by angels. So who better to pass down tips on puff pastry? She has two titles: Cooking with Class and Memoirs & Meals (click here). Makes Nigella and Delia look like the raucous lower class cook Mrs Bridges in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Shena Mackay's The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories was released in late 2008 but who cares? A more wonderfully surreal short story writer you will not find: her quirks are encoded not manufactured: queerness and peculiarity run through her soul. She is most otherly. I want more, more, more.

Philip Hoare's Leviathan gets it wrong on sperm whales - no,they cannot swallow a grown man. Never mind. His prosaic quest to commune with the warm blooded spurters of the seas helps to cutefy the whale kingdom: a species to be protected must first have the ah factor.

Interior designer Nicky Haslam's memoir Redeeming Features reports that Wallis Simpson's Edward was once a bisexual drag artist and that Lord Snowdon cock-cocked with the author. Wallis herself may have been hermaphrodite because her maid once whispered that the old girl's knickers were stained with urine always at the front. Gorgeous society flim-flam in which people merge at times with their stylish inanimate objects. So that at one point I became convinced Tallulah Bankhead was a wallpaper.

For the less demanding, Katie Price's novel Sapphire should not be scorned: her ghost writer Rebecca Farnworth is as smart as they come, weaving in sly digs at her subject (Katie Price aka Jordan) in a fictionalisaton of the tabloid-trimmed life that requires dark orange model flesh topped up daily by 18-minute sessions in a carcinogenic sunbed. Simply mindlessly thrilling, dearies.

A few months back I reviewed the novel Dazed & Aroused by handsome male model Gavin James Bower. I hadn't read the book and still haven't but I don't see why that should inhibit me from recommending the British version of Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama. Your OK!-reading brats will adore it - I believe Kate Moss has a walk-on part, but I don't know. Perhaps someone will confirm or correct.

And finally, the "psychic barber" Gordon Smith has a book out titled Why Bad Things Happen. Why was my pet pussy run over by a cripple in his fucking cripple car? That question is not asked or answered, more's the pity (for that's what happened to my Prudence aka Pruce), yet this famous medium tries to shed light on the question of misfortune's purpose, with insights on the next life. Derren Brown is a very poor substitute for this sort of thing.

Tomes for the Cheese Grater

Clive James' The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years is fatally hobbled by its author's incessant need to remind us of how brilliant/famous he is. Whether working through Linguaphone to read a classic in its original tongue or telling us why he deigned to take a phone call from Tina Brown, his book reeks of a clever juvenile wanker locked in a mirrored closet.

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is Richard Dawkins' latest piece of propaganda against faiths - even though his brand of science is akin to faith, such is his messianic zeal to mix facts with popular theories. Though Dawkins reviles all divination, he has never researched such lowly topics as palmistry or mediumship. Very scientific!

Some time back I wrote an affectionate item about a strange little one-man industry called Chas Newkey-Burden. He churns out about half a dozen books a year - many of them in the genre of listerature. Since then the Julie Burchill once-time co-writer and right-wing squirt has foolishly picked an argument with me, so the first casualty of this is all his books. Let's see:  Simon Cowell: The Unauthorised Biography; Amy Winehouse: The Biography; Michael Jackson: Legend 1958-2009: all manically churned mayfly productions that suffer expiry after a brief fuck of publicity. The sound of a writer is tap tap. The sound of Chas is snip snip.

Illusionist Derren Brown is quite a talented caricaturist as his book Portrait demonstrates. However, his demeanour irritates me. He should not be encouraged.

Worst, most successful writer in the world Dan Brown released The Lost Symbol this year as part of his mission to keep Tom Hanks busy. His quasi-mystical thrillers are rutted with awful clangers: is the Pope a Protestant?

Most pointless book ever is The Atheist's Guide to Christmas by Ariane Sherine. Silly cunts like Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring contribute their tips both serious and not. Yet for most, Christmas is already just a secular exchange of gifts, with carol song as sentimental soundtrack to retail park festive forage. No real need for a Church of Atheism, then.

Though a late 2008 release, foodie tome Table Talk: Sweet And Sour, Salt and Bitter by the Sunday Times writer AA Gill affords an opportunity to remind people that he recently shot dead a baboon, to see what killing a primate was like, or at least he made this claim in a restaurant review. The minor Twitter controversy this provoked must have disappointed the fathead ligger.

Stephen Fry in America (pb out last May) and its TV series may have persuaded the cultural Zelig to piss off to LA. If he goes, re-cut 'n' paste this under Tights. Job well done.

I detest family photo albums so why the pompously titled Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare should be an exception I do not know. Should it not be titled Snapshots in History's Footnotes? The cover pic of young handsome Gore is very Freeman's catalogue: longevity is his undoing.

Last and least, a title can ruin a book for me. Ant and Dec's Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story is very Mike and Bernie Winters. Get it out of here!

Jonathan King and how Andy Coulson 'doctored a photo'

Jonathan King's autobiography 65 My Life So Far is on sale from December 6 - his birthday. I shall be reviewing it, of course. With former News of the World editor Andy Coulson in the news, it is apposite to publish an alleged example of his work at the paper, especially now he's the Conservative Party's boss spin doctor. In his new book, King publishes two pictures of himself seated in a park: he contends the right pic was doctored and published by the Screws, to make it seem that King was ogling a boy. The left pic is the true view, he claims. The Press Complaints Commission rejected King's complaint. It was unfortunate that, as King himself says, the PCC chairman at the time was Les Hinton, Coulson's boss. In this instance justice did not seem to be done.

Jonathan King: 'Roman Polanski, vindictive acts and a lack of kindness'

Jonathan King was invited by an Arcatiste to comment on whether Polanski should be returned to the US. Here's his response:

"All I can add, knowing nothing of the case, is the fact that then, as now, a plea of guilty does not mean somebody was guilty. Many mitigating circumstances get washed away as lawyers and police persuade innocent people to admit guilt, chipping away with "you'll be convicted anyway" and other reasons to give up. So I would say - never believe transcripts or pleas or "admission". Likewise, sometimes people did dreadful things having convinced themselves all was fine. Neither extreme is the reality, most times. But what is clear here is that vengeance and vindictive acts seem to have taken over tolerance and kindness in the world. Personally I think we should all be nice to everyone."

Roman Polanski: Danny DeVito vs Madame Arcati ....

Actor Danny DeVito writes to Madame Arcati via Twitter, in answer to my question about whether Roman Polanski should be returned to the US, "He was forgiven. Let it be." I'm not so sure ....

I've just read the Samantha Gailey (now Geimer) transcript in the 1977 Roman Polanski sexual assault case before the LA grand jury. The details refresh one's sense of shock. I think he should go back to the US for sentencing.

The 13-year-old girl relates being plied with champagne and a Quaalude by Polanski at Jack Nicholson's house, given oral sex by him (she calls it "cuddliness") before he placed his penis inside her vagina. While they had sex "I was mostly just on and off saying 'No, stop,'" she says.

After asking her if she was on the Pill, and when she last had her period (she couldn't recall), he had second thoughts about vaginal sex and suggested sodomy, or as he put it, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" She didn't resist this "because I was afraid of him". He climaxed inside her.

His conduct was plainly predatory and abusive and I don't see that a 32-year delay in sentencing should make any difference. I also think he should get the award he's due from the Zurich Film Festival. There are plenty of cunts around who win awards - some of them are trying to get him released now.

Read the testimony

Jonathan King: 'I sent Simon Cowell to Max Clifford'

Dear Madame Arcati

You clearly have a fan in Alice over at the wonderland that is Pandora's Independent; Max Clifford is quoted in her piece calling me an attention seeker. This coming from the man who represented Jade Goody, Kerry Katona and to whom I sent Simon Cowell when he needed attention. Funny old world.

Jonathan King

JK's memoirs
Pandora
Arcati

Jonathan King writes his uncensored, 'salacious' memoirs

I hear Jonathan King is working on his memoirs - about 150,000 words done so far: the final draft could be as hefty as 200,000.

It will probably be out this Christmas, a feat only possible by self-publishing. This way, he tells me, "it doesn't get censored and looks brilliant."

He plans to "print up a couple of thousand and let a publisher take it if they offer enough... also, that way, it [will] be instantly available via Amazon 'and all good book shops' and I know we can shift several hundred from sales on the DVD of Vile Pervert: The Musical." He adds, "VPTM is about to hit 40,000 full length views/downloads - hoping to hit 50,000 by year end."

What revelations does he plan to make? "It's packed with salacious stuff and dripping with scandal... with LOTS of photos," is all he will say.

Arcati's review of Vile Pervert. King as Wilde ...

Farah Damji interview: 'No more criminals, hookers, journalists, lawyers'

Farah Damji's memoirs Try Me - published on July 6 - are the stuff of scandal. How's that for a hook? A writer and cultural commentator, a former editor, a former jailbird and now an ethical fashion designer who has blinged Madonna and Mary J, she is an "Indian woman who has lived, loved, fucked and fucked-up in spectacular fashion," according to Liz Jones' ex and newspaper columnist Nirpal Dhaliwal.

"Long before she went to prison for perverting the course of justice and theft, Farah Damji was making waves by being a coloured woman, living an anti-coloured woman's life," opens the press release for her book. The story she tells, which starts in Africa and then shifts to India, embraces the New York worlds of fashion, design and the city's glittery lowlife, always edged by celebrity, and her social, professional and sexual encounters with British media and literary figures. Her revelations, indiscretions, anecdotes and conclusions will upset and infuriate many of her subjects and their lap dogs.

If Farah sought reconciliation or redemption in writing this book she may find herself disappointed. On the other hand, her brutal X-ray honesty - which does not even begin at self-exculpation - is matched by a vivid and brilliant prose style which stands as some kind of virtue in itself. I have always been a sucker for elegant clarity. As the writer and filmmaker Farrukh Dhondy says of Try Me: "At last an immigrant autobiography that doesn't have a mission to complain."

Farah agreed to an email interview

Farah Damji! Before we get to the matter in hand - your upcoming memoirs Try Me - tell me your star sign and whether you think you're true or untrue to it. And while we're being mystical - you make many references to Hinduism in your book - have you ever consulted a psychic (if so, what was said?)

Sun sign in Libra but Scorpio everywhere else with a little light sprinkling of Leo. Librans are meant to be artistic and balanced and not temperamental. So one out of three is a fail grade. Psychics told me I would be married with the white picket fence by the time I was thirty. That fortune is a little late in the telling.

So, why did you write Try Me? It is fiercely honest and won't endear you to your critics.

I didn't write it to endear me to anyone. I am not particularly endearing. I wanted to tell my story in my own words.

How hard did you have to sell the proposition for Try Me? Was it hard going or a walk over?

Sold it three times. Once to a Big Book Publisher who then decided they were going to change MY life story after I had signed in blood on the dotted line and spent the advance. Sold it then to a teeny weeny (un)publisher who turned out to be a neo-Ghandian, post-nuclear proto-feminist who wanted to use my book to push hers and her brother's and then I landed, in the midst of drowning and not waving, like the little animals two-by-two, in the safe sanctuary of The Ark Press.

It was an easy sell because people thought they could re-package it so the story became a facsimile of itself. A popular genre at the time (2007) was Indobrit Chic-lit, it was a bit like looking in a watery reflection, in a murky lake. They didn't realise that I wasn't motivated by anything else than the need to tell MY story in my words so it was easy to walk away when things became contrary to commissioning pillow talk. I think most commissioning editors and literary agents are spawned from the devil's own seed.

Darling, now look. There's no nice way of saying this, but you've been baaaaaaad. Jailed in the US, imprisoned for perverting the course of justice in the UK, working for underworld kingpins in New York, meeting Mafia bosses, writing the kiss 'n' tell about your affair with the married travel writer William Dalrymple and having another affair with a married man, Allan Jenkins of the Observer, and more. What's the worst thing you've done of which you are ashamed?

The thing which I am most ashamed about are the years I have wasted by being absent in my children's lives. That can never be replaced and they are the ones I value the most. Shame is a waste of time. Who is going to get anything from it? I feel bad about you making me feel bad and that negativity erodes my sense of worth and success so the desire to be a "good" person is worn down. But these are all other people's ego-based value judgements. I did crime, lots of it, I was sentenced by a Judge, I did my time. People need to learn to get on with it. I certainly have. I contacted everyone ( I could find) when I came out prison and I wrote to them and apologised for being such a shit. Most were incredibly kind and gracious, one or two (mostly Asian media wannabes) were vile and cold. What to do?

How do you think the wives of these men will feel about certain intimate revelations in your book?

Oh Madame Arcati. I don't know and I don't care. These wives' husbands were sniffing around like dogs sniff bitches on heat. If a man cheats once and a woman puts up with it, she has created a vacuum where there used to be trust and commitment. If you marry a rake, be prepared to be muck-raked. Both these men are serial adulterers, I wasn't the first and I certainly wasn't the last in either case. These wives stayed, whereas I wouldn't, so I can't say what they might feel, I feel differently.

I take it Allan was better in bed than William ....?

Couldn't possibly say but now that you mention it....

How do you think your family will react to private revelations about certain matters?

My parents are stuck like adolescent narcissists. I am sure they think they were perfect parents who provided every material comfort that money could buy. Indeed they did. But they were and continue to be lousy parents. I don't judge them, I just don't want them in my life, they do the best that they can and it isn't ever going to be enough so the best thing is to stop having the expectation that they will change and find that lost love elsewhere. TV or chocolate are good substitutes. Besides, who cares? I have been disinherited by my daddy decades ago...

You write in Try Me: "I’ve lived like a lost butterfly that flutters this way and that, seeking warmth and nourishment. I sought shelter from the sun that burnt my wings, yet I craved her warmth. I wanted the light." Outside metaphor, define light and warmth. And if there's one person I could promise you would never have to meet again, who would he or she be?

Light and warmth are unconditional love and acceptance, from your god, your children, your lover. It's what I sought outside myself my whole life, but never found. Light to me means God-sense in my life. I have that now. There isn't one person, I would like to never set eyes on again, there is a whole village, we'll swap names later...

I see you know The New York Post's gossip writer Richard Johnson. What's he like?

Nasty little piece of work. He doesn't really do anything anymore, he's so ******* by noon that his sidekick the scary Paula Froelich does it. Paula used to be a sweet thing, worked as the receptionist at the Holmes Place on Fulham Road but is now a little caught up in her own reflected glory. Last I heard she'd written a book of scraps and tidbits, leftovers they couldn't use on Page Six.

Indobrit - which you edited - was launched in 2002, a quarterly magazine for British Asians living in the UK. You wrote in the New Statesman of your father who left the UK and returned to Africa: "He had had enough of the British, his bastard bank manager and all the things that reminded him that, despite owning the best bespoke suits and a sizeable chunk of Soho, he was still regarded as un-British." Is this one reason why you think multi-culturalism is a con?

I think it is a con because there's no such thing. We aren't meant to be this great big melting pot society at all. We're "meant" to redefine our own versions of who we are all the time, we are all works in progress. Besides, more and more people are mixed race, live in more than one place, don't necessarily conform to the norms of their birth culture. We need to achieve transculturalism, wherein we look "above" a person's culture or creed into what that person is inside.

Are the Brits inherently racist?

I think Lord McCauley sums it up better than I ever could, in 1835 in his speech to Parliament, about India. The British are inherently fearful, that they are not good enough or that they will be "found out." Of course not all of them, but an unpleasant BNP backing minority. "I do not think we would ever conquer this country ... for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”

Where are you with Toby Young? He described you as a "a nasty little Indian" which he denies. Then I read Geordie Greig of the London Evening Standard was offering his services as a peace-maker. What's going on?

I awe Toby Young. What a strange thing to call me when he could have called me so much else? We are spectacularly fine. As long as he stays on his side of the bed / planet / universe and I stay on mine, we will have no more friction. It was all due to Mercury in Retrograde, bad communication and all that. Didn't the Americans cook him and eat him on Celebrity Carnivore?

Have you changed? Could you resist major temptations again? How do you know when you've changed?

Yes. I think I make better choices. I think you know when you have changed by the people who are in your life. It's a reflection of what is going on inside, in a way. So no more gangsters, criminals, hookers, journalists, lawyers, j/k. Some very solid good old friends have always stuck through sick and sin but some talented and lovely new people have entered my life too. To stay.

If there's one thing you could change about jail, it would be ....

The horribly itchy polyester sheets. I missed my Pratesi, darling. No seriously, the entire Criminal Justice system needs to be completely overhauled. Thankfully we have been relieved of that god-awful Jacquie Smith [as Home Secretary] but the prison estate is too huge and unwieldy for any effective change to take place.

I am involved in a Prison Project which teaches accountability and responsibility. I think criminals change when we as a society start to realise that we are all part of the problem and that crime doesn't exist outside of determining factors such as class, background, economics and race.

We need a much more reformative, restorative system not just one that exists only to punish. Big stick no carrot can't work. Not everyone can write a book in prison and it's a human shame that so much talent, time and potential isn't put to better use. And I don't mean making number plates, I mean teaching people in the prison system real life skills so they can go out and live valuable lives, not repeat old crimes and go back into the cycle.

Finally tell us something about your life now. Would you edit another magazine if you could?

Ethical fashion, working on a big presentation for a big high street chain, who are not too well-known for their current stand on ethics in fashion. You can't use organic cotton and then chain some sub-continental kid to his sewing machine for fourteen hours a day and pay him £1 and call it an ethical garment. There has to be complete transparency all the way down the chain, from how the textile crop is grown, dyed, manufactured, stitched, finished and to how the final item is packaged, marketed, paid for and transported. It's more than just soothing our Guardian-singed consciences because we feel we "should" do something or support a movement.

No more magazines for me, been asked but Dead Tree Media is endangered and it's a soulless life, I wouldn't want to go back to it. I love writing and am formulating a plot for my second book. My life provides fertile ground for stories! Watch this space...

Farah, I wish you all the best with your fascinating and brilliantly written book.

More about Farah and Try Me extracts, click here

To order a copy of Try Me, click here

Jonathan King: Soldiers and their excuses

One finds Jonathan King in a dyspeptic, dystopian mood in his wonderful Deck of Cards 2009. Soldiers especially may want to turn away now - your excuses for immorality are mercilessly pilloried. The song can be bought on iTunes.

Calling Russians! Set Duncan Fallowell song to music!

A chance to get famous(er) as Duncan Fallowell's music writer!

I learn that one of Madame Arcati's luminous friends, Duncan Fallowell, is seeking a Russian to set a song of his to music.

The work in question, taken from his St Petersburg travel book, is called Nevsky - these are the lyrics, click here. The first verse goes:

I am a Soviet queen
From behind the Iron Curtain.
Life is pretty obscene
But of one thing I am certain –
When you’re sick of revolution and find Lenin a bore
You can strut your polyester near Gostiny Dvor
And if you want a heavy hooey that is red and erect
Hang around at midnight on the Nevsky Prospekt!
Hooey-hooey
Hooey-hooey

You'll have to click the link to read all the words.

Post your entry on YouTube and the best one will be released as a single - do let us know, of course. You'll find a contact for Duncan on his homepage when you click through if you have any questions.

Do have a listen to his marvellous Le Weekend song on that link (click the muscle man pic there) - with one of Micky Karoli's most blistering guitar solos on it, after a deceptively oompah Kurt Weill beginning (play through real speakers and annoy the bastard neighbours and their howling dogs). It should be a Eurovision song entry - I must mention it to Jonathan King. Go on, get composing!

Oh, and read Pravda.
Oh, and let's not leave darling Dima out ...

Jonathan King: 'Camilla is a delightful gerbil'

The Eurovision-meister emeritus Jonathan King writes in praise of the Popbitch Madame, Camilla Wright ...

Dear Madame,
Camilla is one of us Madame; really sweet, intelligent, genuine, funny and bright. I'm a huge fan - which may not be regarded as a plus by all your correspondents!
JK

Dear Jonathan,
You've never said that about me. I'm really quite upset. You make Camilla sound like an enchanting gerbil, though I may have to reconsider my opinion of this nancy-woman. It's bad enough that Nicholas Coleridge fans have started to lobby me, insisting that he is "nice". Can it be possible that a man who writes appalling novels about ghastly rich alpha-types, who have ruined the world economy, and rules Condé Nast, is in fact Santa Claus wrapped up in a Bono aura in homage to the late Gregory Peck? It's as if my entire world is collapsing. I wonder who Kevin Spacey is fucking now. I want to know!
Love MA x

Camilla Wright of Popbitch: Let's get her stats up

I see the Popbitch editor Camilla Wright's appearance last year on Five News to flog her online mag's Celebrity Excess book has only attracted 63 visits on YouTube, as I write. Oh dear. Let's see if we can get that figure up and turn her into the kind of sleb she writes about. Camilla's a sweet Oxford graduate - hence the snobbish Guardian's sycophantic interest in her - who loves otters and dislikes rude tales about the size of female slebs. Certainly otters have their uses, click here.

Do you have anything to tell me about Camilla?