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º March 12th-March 18th 2001
Sunday Frosty pod rot
Saturday Chill with Will
Friday Compensation
Thursday Tatchellgraph
Wednesday Scrutony
Tuesday Royal man-pussy
Monday Five fits
º Sunday 18th March 2001
The (lamentably) straight actor Joseph Fiennes was apparently advised to visit local gay clubs as part of his research for his latest role as Edward II at the Crucible, Shefield.
Frankly, I'm surprised he got out alive.
Enjoy that chocolate bar, Tin Man: it may be your last!
Frosty pod rot, anyone?
Interview in The Independent today with a reporter from tehelka.com, the website that may yet bring down the Indian government with its spy-video revelations of bribery amongst military officials.
Aniruddha Bahal says the only thing that halted their investigation was the lack of the necessary readies to press into the palms of corrupt officials. Where are the venture capitalists when you need them?
Vaughan is on a blog-break (boo!). Tom is taking over for a week (yay!).
Death-toll amended to acknowledge more than 100 people killed in a series of explosions in workers' hostels in northern China.
"spiked is a website for those who want to see some change in the real world as well as the virtual one. If you think that the power of the internet could be used for something more than shopping and pseudo-sex, get spiked."
Most of the British-based editorial team responsible for spiked worked on LM, which closed in March 2000 following a libel case brought by ITN. (LM originally stood for Living Marxism but don't let that put you off.)
The inaugural issue has a lengthy article comparing Zadie Smith's 'White Teeth' (which I by and large liked) with the whole chick-lit phonomenon (which I by and large loathed), as well as an intelligent defence of free-speech on the net. ("...the emphasis of these laws has shifted from criminalising acts against children towards criminalising thoughts about children.")
º Saturday 17th March 2001
Chill with Will is a nice try, but wouldn't it be much easier just to mention his drug habit ('A bong with the Bard'?)
Climax to the Red Nose Day charity telethon? The Gay Men's Chorus, a lot of Brazilians in feathers, Graham Norton and SClub7, all singing "Reach". How camp is that?
º Friday 16th March 2001
Now that Mo has abandoned his standards-stockade, everybody can make him a pound poorer - and all in a good cause!
David and Jonathan at the first of three Soft cell gigs; me at the last, tomorrow.
Get compensated for your suffering.
That's the first line of the ClaimsDirect ad. The one that confronts you above the toilet. In the middle cubicle of the Ladies at The Joiners Arms. At 4am. After a night that started at The Spiral Staircase.
º Thursday 15th March 2001
In the blue corner: The Daily Telegraph, voice of the shires, whose editor apparently bans the use of the word 'gay' unless it makes for a conveniently short headline.
In the red corner: Peter Tatchell, "homosexual terrorist", recently in the news for another attempt to carry out a citizen's arrest on Robert Mugabe in Belgium.
The Telegraph's initial report of the fracas in Brussels maintains a relatively moderate tone, although its sympathies plainly lie primarily with the Belgian police - who apparently "looked on in disbelief" as Mugabe's bodyguards left Tatchell "dazed in the gutter".
(Compare and contrast this with the Telegraph's report of a bodyguard "whisking Peter Tatchell, the homosexual rights campaigner, out of Mr Portillo's way" in an assault that Tatchell claimed left him half asphyxiated.)
In the last paragraph of his story reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard drops any pretence at objective reporting: "Mr Tatchell is best known for his antics as leader of the gay rights movement, Outrage!, but in the 1970s he was involved in raising money for Mr Mugabe's guerrilla war against white minority rule."
These "antics" presumably include not only the day that Outrage! activists "stormed" (or "marched into"?) the pulpit at Canterbury Cathedral as the Archbishop delivered his Easter sermon ("Tatchell grabbed the microphone and held forth, accusing Dr Carey of discriminating against homosexuals") but also their call for the repeal of discriminatory legislation ("Gay groups seek to legalise sex in public lavatories").
The cheap dig about Tatchell's previous support for Mugabe is somewhat salved by a report in yesterday's Independent which describes the hitherto grateful Mugabe's reaction in 1997 on being told by Tatchell of his involvement with Outrage! ("He nearly choked on his tea...before getting his minders to fetch Special Branch officers" to have Tatchell ejected.)
So far, so very Daily Telegraph.
But what's this? Six days later, The Telegraph publishes a laudatory interview with Tatchell which begins "Peter Tatchell has become a civil rights campaigner whom we can all applaud", describes his encounter with Mugabe in sympathetic detail and concludes that "most remarkably, Tatchell's solitary protest...has transformed his image in Britain."
When one compares this with the previous profile of Tatchell that the Telegraph published, with its almost unhealthy preoccupation with the contrast between the "smooth, robust" figure of Portillo and Tatchell's "stalk-like neck and waxen sheen" and which describes Tatchell as "like one of those loony sandwich-board men you sometimes see on Oxford Street", it's obvious that the Telegraph has had a bit of a rethink.
Certainly the Telegraph letters page - traditional home of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells - bears this out:
SIR - I was very moved to read your article on Peter Tatchell. Tony Blair should find him a post in government. Such men are rare and need to be embraced.
Moral: Even the mangiest leopard can change its spots. For how long?
Hear first: London black cab fares to rise by 5 per cent on April 28th.
º Wednesday 14th March 2001
The most dangerous item of clothing in history? The glove mislaid by astronaut Edward White in 1965 continues to orbit the earth at a speed of 17,000 mph.
"Mackerel The Travelling Cat - By the Sea by Katherine and Maurice George This book describes how a tabby cat, rescued as a kitten and trained to walk with a harness and lead, was regularly taken with his owners on holiday to Suffolk. He gained over his lifetime of 13 years the distinction of appearing at places and events where people least expect a cat to be.
Leaving aside the brow-furrowing matter of why a cat needs to be trained to walk ('Just taking the cat out for a drag dear'), this blurb for a little press publication made me stop and wonder just where one would least expect to see a cat. ('Over there! A cat!')
Failure of imagination on my part no doubt, but I can only come up with a very short list. Most public performances, sure, the Arctic maybe, on a plane or in a tank but...what else? A dog show? An ambulance?
Jonathan went to the pop-quiz on his own (everybody else being ever so ill). And (almost) won.
Thank you God.
He rarely travelled without a rope in his bag, with which to escape in the event of fire in his hotel. He was also morbidly afraid of being buried alive and, just in case the hotel were to disintegrate, he would leave a precautionary note on his table: 'I am not dead'
Who? Hans Christian Andersen, that's who.
In his 'England: An Elegy', published last year, Tory philosopher Roger Scruton laments the current state of the English: 'littering the country with their illegitimate, uncared for and state-subsidised offspring', living in a 'world of fast bucks, informal manners and cheerful offers of unmeant friendship', a world where the 'global economy, the democratisation of taste, the sexual revolution, pop culture and television have worked to erase the sense of spiritual identity in every place where piety shored up the old forms of knowledge and local custom fortified the moral sense.'
Does anyone take this idiot seriously these days?
Certainly not the Pet Shop Boys, who won undisclosed damages after he suggested that they don't make their own music.
Nor Stefan Collini, in his splendid (yet sadly off-line) review in the current issue of the LRB.
Scruton (himself an ex lower middle-class grammar-school boy) on the 'cool, objective' social order of English 'public' schools: '...the perfect apprenticeship for English society, and the real reason why people educated in public schools could advance so quickly in the world outside'.
Collini: 'It would be merely rancorous, I suppose, to ask whether it didn't have something to do with the fact that their fathers owned most of the sodding "world outside".'
Scruton laments the demise of the 'venerable customs and wise institutions...English weights and measures, English currency, local regiments, the Royal Tournament - every practise in which the spirit of England can still be discerned'.
Collini: 'the gobsmacking claim that 'the spirit of England' has been mortally wounded because we no longer cultivate the "wise" and "venerable" tradition of firing dummy rockets from bazookas in Earl's Court.'
Collini points out that 'Philosophical Toryism' is the new chic.
Look out for more inscrutable Scrutonisms in the run-up the next general Election. Who knows: he may even discover the internet betweentimes. That should good for a polemic or two, minimum.
º Tuesday 13th March 2001
Which royal luminary crowned which recent historic ceremony by saying "I'm going home"?
That's right, it was Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic, speaking in Suite 212 at Claridges, having finally received his Yugoslavian citizenship.
Good news, presumably, for his sons, Prince Aleksandar and Prince Filip (sic), the only 19 year old eastern European twins not currently working as gay porn stars. ("Yeah, fuck that royal man-pussy, stud!")
Good news, especially, for His Royal Highness Crown Prince Aleksandar II (designer of the family web-site) who may now be able to command a loftier email address than "HRHCPAlex@btinternet.com"...
º Monday 12th March 2001
Happy birthday, Meg (even if you do keep a whiteboard beneath the bed).
Sunday: an epic journey into insobriety, in five fits:
4:30 Woke up
5:45 - ?8:00 At the Vauxhall, noisy, crowded, leaning in to shout hangover-stories into each others' ears
?8:30 - ??9:00 At The Kings Arms, talking to a profoundly deaf guy we vaguely know, leaning in to talk to each other, leaning out so he could read our lips. Feel rather dizzy.
??9:15 - ???10:30 At Compton's discussing arrogance vs ignorance and innocence vs arrogance. Apparently.
???11:00 - ????12:00 Popping in to the Foundry in passing to find Jonathan closing up. Staggering up the road to Charlie Wrights with a motley crew of artists and travellers.
????12:00 - ?????2:45 LA3. The London Apprentice redux at 333. Well, not really - despite seeing Sven, Barry, Saunders and numerous other familiar faces. (Seem to recall a square of dodgy sponge cake somewhere in there too.)
?????2:45 - ??????4:00 Spiral. (Er, why??!)
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