London Evening Standard relaunched: 78 year-old man in rescue mission

As a celebrant of elderliness, Madame Arcati has decided to reverse her previous toxic opinion of editor Geordie Greig in the light of his new London Evening Standard relaunched today.

For at the apex of the neo-goodies on display is Tom Wolfe, 78, messiah of the not-so-New Journalism, and author of a lengthy "world exclusive" for the paper titled The rich have feelings too... - a showcase of Wolfe's schtick - the italics, the capitals, the pastiche demotic, the love letter dressed up as satire - which doubtless has made many other fossils nostalgic for his brand of literary nattering on. The work, comic in intention if not effect, is all about fallen super-wealthy cunts divested of their private Lear Jets, now forced to use the Gatwicks and Heathrows of the world and queue with us commoners. Not quite Swiftian is all I'll say. But nice to see the old boy still in his white suit.

Complementing this heavy-weight contribution from Gotham is... Sam Leith in his Monday debut as a weekly columnist. I was recently less than impressed by his gossy colleague Sebastian Shakespeare. I now have reason to revise this opinion. Sam today loses his ES columnal cherry with this opening original piece of writing: "The devil, as a wise man said, is in the detail." I wonder how long it took him to think that one up. Shakespeare, you're rehired!

I thought the front page splash quite original: a news story all about a very rich man with a "secret common-law wife and child" reluctant to give his betrayed ex-wife £11m. While the rest of the UK media froth about MPs' expenses and other trifles, Mr Greig betrays his true love: the rich and their doings. Expect more long-winded soap on the loaded. What's Lord Linley up to these days ever since that other matter got covered up?

In other news, I learn that the let-go theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh was on a £120k contract and has a £38k pension pot. That's an extraordinary amount of money, all deserved I'm sure. A new theatre reviewer is sought. One can only hope that Sam Leith is on nothing like that amount, if only for the sake of the paper. Though I'm sure Wolfe's piece was VERY EXPENSIVE.

Nicholas de Jongh and his Standard departure

It is tragic news that Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of the little-read regional newspaper, the London Evening Standard for 17 years, is leaving the paper to spend more time with the film script of his John Gielgud cottaging cock-pulling stage play Plague Over England (see my incomparable review of the play via labels, you idle glancing bitches).

I must have imagined that Geordie Grieg or is it Grieg? (who knows or cares?), doomed and über-pompous editor of same (he loves his über), had generously offered to cut his fee prior to this announcement. De Jongh was most gracious about über-Grieg/Greig, alluding to his courtier quality inherited from a relative who grovelled before a king a long time ago and beyond first-hand memory. Amazing what passes down via the DNA and is then edged with the gilt of eugenics puffery, even if light-heartedly.

The Standard has now lost Brian Sewell, its arts editor and others of seniority and talent. I do hope film critic Derek Malcolm is safe. It doesn't pay to have talent or longevity at the Daily Über right now.

Rochester's Sodom: Have a wank over the Loseley

A "grey pube theatre critic" takes me to task for my porno re-imagining of Plague Over England. Apparently I should be jailed. Then a talented friend who stands head and shoulders above others as an arts and culture writer sends me this gem:

"Play reading in Westminster Arts Library: Rochester's Sodom, Thursday 26th 7 to 9pm. Corsets, humourously [sic] shaped root vegetables, group masturbation, anal sex metaphores [sic]. Audience participation. All fully clothed. Book a seat quick as space is limited: rblack1@westminster.gov.uk or 07 940 146 681."

A Plague Over England: Review. Where's the cock?

At long last I got to see Nicholas de Jongh’s Plague Over England last night, his account of Sir John Gielgud’s arrest and conviction for cottaging in the witchhunty 50s. London's Duchess Theatre is a perfect venue since it looks like a mouldering 50s wedding cake itself or something on Miss Havisham’s spider webbed banqueting table, and even as a young child I imagined her hymen as a tatty net curtain in need of laundering. Last night I dreamt of 50s dust motes dancing in my lungs and men’s pee patches left or right of the fly. It’s always best if I keep my fantasies under rein.

The play itself has a fustiness that works well as atmosphere, less so as 21st Century theatre. In its way it’s as prim and proper as its Home Secretary: we see men’s backs at urinals, furtive glances, baggy pressed trousers. Everyone speaks elliptically – a script made up of “…” and “…”: politicians and lawyers allude to grave and unnatural offences, all perfectly realistic I’m sure. What’s never mentioned is the problem here: cock. Clothes and language collude in veiling the thing that is the cause of all the fuss. Where is the cock?

De Jongh would do better to strip all his actors (and Celia Imrie as Sybil Thorndike and another) and have them naked upon the stage. This would import a timeless element in the 50s nonsense and strengthen undermining absurdity. While we do not know precisely what Gielgud got up to in the lav, I would have him stroking the cock of the “pretty policeman” (as a pig agent provocateur was called) and perhaps sucking it too – again, this may not be realistic (because all Gielgud had to do was look invitingly at the copper to get arrested) but it would underline his sexual needs. At the moment he just seems a bit frisky and fancy-free, a bit libido-lite when he’s not quoting Shakespeare or trying to be Oscar and fannying around.

An act of cock-mouth sex would also have the effect of upsetting most of the grey pube theatre critics in the audience who are no less homophobic than the grey flannelled fools on the stage. It would flush out the creased and carbuncled swine - and yes, I mean you, cunty of the Sunday Times.

I would have songs and dancing, off-stage videos screening porn – gay and straight – and when Mrs Thatcher is elected Tory leader I would have her emerge naked in a strap-on dildo as a mark of power, her new shadow Cabinet ministers (all wearing Gielgud masks) stroking it half admiringly, half fearfully. In the ignorant world de Jongh focuses on, cock is power. The fuss he dramatises is simply about compromised perceptions of cock and the prevailing fantasies of the time.

Michael Feast makes a pleasing Gielgud in miniature, his voice has something of the “silver trumpet muffled in silk” of the original: he is a surface creature, all whimsy, gaiety, ciggie smoke and signet ring on pinkie. He is not in the least sexual. The multiple roles the actors play confused me a bit: you wonder whether Steve Hansell’s homophobic copper is jail bait when he reappears as a gay opportunist – in fact not. The alternating split stage sequence where Gregory and Terry make love while the Home Sec dreams of a queerless world doesn't work: what we needed was a graphically sexual interlude - real erections, culminating in orgasm - to remind ourselves why we go to such lengths to have sex in the first place. It's all so ordinary and universal. So average.

Worth seeing, however. Click here to book.