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Archive for October, 2008
So, we’re finalising the cover for the paperback edition of Not In My Name, out next April. I’m pleased with the result. We’ve also chosen the review quotes to include on the cover.
“A spirited attack” – Nick Cohen, The Observer
“Waspish and witty” – Daily Mail
“A feverish anthology” – Word magazine
“Absolutely brilliant – this is a fabulous, clear-eyed book that will frequently make you laugh out loud” – Jewish Chronicle
“Burchill and Newkey-Burden are spot on” – Gay Times
“A by-product of early-onset dementia” – New Statesman
That final one still makes me chuckle!
I am sometimes asked why I decided to write a biography of Amy Winehouse. Her talent, notoriety and popularity were three good reasons. However, her hilarious second appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks was probably the clincher. In case you didn’t see it, here is a collection of her best bits that evening. Absolutely hilarious. Also, check out Penny Smith’s dress, which I described as ‘resembling a plate of hummus with paprika sprinkled over it’.
Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.A worldwide poll has determined which countries’ populations would vote for the great John McCain were they to have a vote in next week’s Presidential election. Among them is Israel. That’s no great surprise, because Barack Obama’s suicidal foreign policy would put the very existence of Israel in even greater peril.
However, next to Israel on the pro-McCain list is Iraq. The Republican candidate is very popular there for advocating the ’surge’ and if the Iraqi people had their say they’d put him and not Obama in the White House.
What’s the betting that Obama’s dumb British fan club – and the ‘Not In My Name’ squad in general – will ignore this news?
Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.I particularly like her expression as she hands the mic back. She seems to be thinking: “I did really well there.”
Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.What a breathtakingly dumb article Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Evening Standard recently. This cannot pass without comment. It might seem strange to take Gilligan seriously. He’s a deluded, treacherous arse, after all. The trouble is that he is an influential, deluded treacherous arse. Here, he cheers the financial crisis because it will allow the “police state” fewer resources to combat terrorism. Blimey O’Reilly!
Gilligan trots out that silly claim that the terror threat isn’t really all that “dastardly”, and that it’s exaggerated by the authorities. Never mind the numerous attacks that have been thwarted by the, ahem, police state including the London nightclubs the terrorists planned to attack on ladies’ night so they could wipe out the “dancing slags”. And let’s put to one side the fertilizer bomb gang and the mammoth liquid bomb plot which was going slaughter many thousands. A similar death toll was planned by the gang that were conspiring to detonate a bomb inside a Tube tunnel beneath the Thames.
Gilligan not only ignores these and other proven threats, he actually wants less resources to be given to the brave, hardworking men and women whose job it is to stop these sort of catastrophes.
His terror-denial is part of a growing trend of wishful thinking among the modern liberal/left. Hamas don’t really want to destroy Israel, they just say they do. Iran doesn’t really want to wipe Israel off the map, it just says it does. Islamist terrorists don’t really want a worldwide medieval Islamic caliphate, they’re just pretending. I’m reminded of those High Court judges who cannot believe that when a woman says no, she means no.
And now the terror-denial movement has a global ringleader in Barack Obama, who looks set to lead it in its suicidal sleepwalk. The Islamists have set out their agenda clearly for all to see. Pretending the threat isn’t there will do nothing to stop it.
Well, she’d be a better choice than Barack Obama.
Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.After three weeks in the US, I am still catching up on all the goss. Some interesting stuff in the Mirror recently, including this piece about Mitch Winehouse. As regular readers of this blog will know, I couldn’t agree more.
Meanwhile, it might not be of the Freddie Star Ate My Hamster level of legend, but this is still a great headline.
On a different note, I was naturally delighted with Neil Davenport’s great write-up of Not In My Name here.
I am overjoyed to get a second mention on the blog of the fantastic Madame Arcati.
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Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.One of the best books I’ve read for some time is Bringing Nothing To The Party, by Paul Carr. It’s the honest and uproarious confessions of Paul, a self-confessed ‘new media whore’. I read it in LA recently, the day after I’d been to see the surprisingly good screen version of Toby Young’s book How To Lose Friends And Alienate People. There’s something of Young to this book, too, given Paul’s capacity to fuck up and then to scribble hilariously about that fuck up.
I wasn’t surprised that this book was so entertaining, because I met Paul a few years back and he is definitely one of the wittiest people I have ever met. Although it was supposed to be a meeting about a book, the conversation ended up meandering between random topics including the price of beef, the previous evening’s episode of Dragons’ Den, silly letters publishers receive and Arsenal FC. Whatever the topic, Paul was sharp and hilarious. I hardly got a word in and for once I didn’t mind because he was so engaging it seemed a waste to butt-in.
He’s just as fun in print. Although his numerous digs at “idiot chavs” are a shame (and predictable, given the techy crowds’ predilection for slagging off the white working-class) this is an uproarious and humane book. Carr might be a bit of a snob at times but he’s a self-effacing snob who directs his most brutal put-downs at himself.
You don’t need to be interested in the new-media world to enjoy Bringing Nothing To The Party, because this is really a book about the hilarious capers of a rare breed: a young man who combines an astonishing amount of ambition with humour and self-awareness. Who cares if Paul brought nothing to the party, he’s brought a real treat to the book stores.
Be active. If you like this post, please click below to show your support.My sources tell me that Amy Winehouse’s ever-entertaining father Mitch is not best pleased with one of my previous posts about his growing media tartdom. Expect shy Mitch to once more open his heart to the tabloids, and then phone up a few radio stations asking if he can please go on air. Having recovered from the rigours of all that, he could then break his silence on GMTV, before hot-footing it over to Sky News in time for their lunchtime show, to complain about media intrusion. When will they leave you alone, Mitch?!
Meantime, the equally-publicity shy moi is flying off to Hollywood today to honeymoon and also do a television interview about…Amy Winehouse!
I interviewed Joe Parry, the brilliant lead singer of July Rising, for the online magazine Flecking Records. I’m a big fan of both July Rising and Flecking, so it was great fun to bring them together. Hats off to the magazine’s beautiful young editor, the unforgivably talented Frankie Genchi, who is one to watch and no mistaking.
In other news, it was nice to see Great Email Disasters getting a plug here. Here’s to a second Christmas of great sales!
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