Sebastian Horsley

ANY MOVIE, EVEN THE WORST, IS BETTER THAN REAL LIFE.

Features

LONDONER'S DIARY

BY STANDARD REPORTER

16 February 2009

The Evening Standard

PICTURE THE REVOLTING DANDY

IT SEEMS Sebastian Horsley is to be a dandy on celluloid now that his scabrous no-holds-barred autobiography, Dandy in the Underworld, has been optioned by Stephen Fry's Sprout Films. Horsley's memoir was widely regarded to be one of the most revolting of recent times, and only last year he was thrown out of America on grounds of moral turpitude. He is delighted at the news, claiming that: 'Turning your book into a movie is like turning your daughter over to a pimp. Fun.'

This is despite his reservations about making the film in the UK. 'British films are usually awful,' he tells me. 'They are as boring as life in England really is. The Americans make movies, the French make films, the English make adverts.' The artist, who is perhaps best known for crucifying himself while being filmed by Sarah Lucas, likes to be the centre of attention so will he play himself? 'God no, I'd be completely miscast. It will have to be Robert Downey Jr. He is perfect. He is from the methadone school of acting. And if he is not available, I guess it will have to be Bruce Forsyth.'

 

I LIKE REVIEWING BOOKS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME WANT TO READ THEM

The New Statesman.

Swinging: the Games Your Neighbours Play
Mark Brendon
The Friday Project Ltd, 320pp, £12.99

Mark Brendon used to be only an alcoholic. Then he went off to a chemical finishing school to well, finish off. At this clinic he learned that everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist. He left and discovered that an orgy was the only form of group therapy he approved of.

I am delighted that Mr Brendon chose tissues over issues. Orgies are one of the few subjects I know anything about. I have been to many, both here and abroad. In fact, I have a feeling Mr Brendon and I have met before.

If you think the world swings like a hanged man, think again. It is very much alive. Mr Brendon tells us that there are millions of swingers worldwide (four million is the generally accepted estimate in the United States alone) and he seems to have had it off with most of them. "Over the past three years I have had sex or - as swingers have it - I have 'played' with several hundreds of female strangers. Sometimes they have been alone, sometimes in pairs. Sometimes there have been as many as seven or eight in one afternoon or evening." Mr Brendon makes me feel like a chaste whore.

Fortunately, he is as skilled with penetrating insights as he is at penetrating orifices. The book is divided between reflection and erection. We learn that swingers are faithful to their spouses and partners. That though they may play with hundreds of others, they do not have illicit affairs or unprotected, private, penetrative sex, save with their own partners. Swinging is not casual sex - it is rather well dressed.

Swinging works on the premise that the only thing boring in life is a lie. It is the opposite of civilian life, where hypocrisy is the lubricant of society, the Vaseline of social intercourse. He asks us to throw off the straitjackets of religion, morality, upbringing, and to value the impulses of the heart above social convention. As a result, the book is completely naked, unlike the rest of society. Truth can walk about naked; but lies should always be clothed.

This book is genuinely exciting and liberating. Have you ever watched the person you love have sex with someone else? He has. Me, too. Trust us, it brings you closer. The terrible dragon that slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive is finally slayed. As for lust? "Swinging takes lust - the wolf that snuffles and growls at the door of every marital home - tames it, and brings it into the house as an amusing and stimulating pet," he writes.

"I am, I think, a romantic," he tells us at the conclusion. Indeed, he is. A romantic with a little "r" is someone who talks to you after sex. However, he is also a Romantic - in the immortal words of Wordsworth: "Something evermore about to be." Like an alchemist he takes the dirty mud of jealousy, possession and coercion and turns them into the transcendent gold of acceptance, liberty and tolerance.

What he may lack in clothes he more than makes up for in good prose: "Good sex makes it very easy to get on with people - a lot more effectively than getting on with people makes for good sex"; "Tenderness and worship may tentatively foster union, but the damned are united too, and they get there faster"; "Courtesy need not wait for its reward in heaven." If language is the dress of thought there is never any excuse for denim.

When we think of swinging we think of something somehow silly and squalid. This image of it has been given to us by hack whores of the prurient press, with their moralising. They are the ones who are perverse. Journalists need scandal as the police need crime. Mr Brendon has refused to be a hypocrite. He has lived the truth of his life and it will make others question theirs. He is no different from them; he just chooses to be honest about it. He knows that without daring, there is no beauty. Of course, they will call it immorality and are envious because he dares to live, while they have not the guts. But that is England for you.

This book should however come with a warning. One thing Mr Brendon doesn't undress is that, once you have taken a bite of this particular apple, you can no longer tolerate saints. I am sure they are fine in heaven, but they're hell on earth. I mean, what is the point of a person who doesn't share themselves? It is like a bank without money. A lighthouse without a light. Christianity without Christ. By being monogamous, you are making one person happy but all the other people in the world unhappy. What right do you have to do that? No, you will no longer be able to tolerate the famous stiff lower lips of the British. They are but weeds in a garden whose flowers are players.

 

2009 THE NEW FEAR.

All you need to be a successful prophet is to be a profound pessimist. Everything will get worse. We're in a sewage pipe baby. We're going to have to crawl along it until we die. “Oh, but what about Obama?” I hear you squeal. A black at the White House! He's no more black than you or me. Everyone's coloured, or you wouldn't be able to see them. He's half-black half-white. Must be confusing for the cunt. Doesn't know whether to rob you or shoot you. Don't be fooled. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics. He's just another white at the Black House

My fate lies not in the stars but in a star – myself .

I am sure my triumphs in the coming New Year will be as short-lived as my resolutions.

My New Year's resolution: to prove physically in front of an audience that male sheep cannot get pregnant. Fuck you. Good night.

HAPPY KISS MY ASS

They say Christmas is for the kids and considering just how ghastly the whole thing is and just how much I loathe kids, I would tend to agree.

I must have inherited my festive feelings from Father. Father was not what you would call a religious man. He believed in nothing. It was only sheer indolence that stopped him from being a nihilist. "Easter is cancelled this year," was his annual joke. "They've found the body." Christmas was treated much the same: "Xmas? What's that? A bloody skin disease."

My childhood days were the happiest of my life which is only a reflection of the misery I have endured since. I grew up in a house riddled with standards of living. High Hall could have accommodated an entire family of Catholics. It was a soaring, rambling red-brick mansion with a maze of rooms to get lost in. At the heart of it all was the great balconied entrance hall. It was here that the sequoia-sized Christmas tree was every year planted, festooned with tinsel and piled with gifts. It was here that my parents and their coterie annually assembled to turn away the local carol-singers, to drink themselves stupid and collapse insentient instead. Yes, every luxury was lavished on me at Christmas: atheism, alcoholism and insanity.

This year will be my 45th Christmas. But how many since childhood can I actually remember? Only two. The first, I spent in Amsterdam alone I wanted to wake up on Christmas morning in the arms of someone I loved. I checked into the Grand Hotel. When the day dawned, I rose in solitary splendour and prepared myself to dazzle the prettily frost-dusted world. The streets were abandoned. The ice glistened on the canals. Down a side street, two lovers were leaning together and laughing. Away in a backyard a chained dog was yapping. Sparrows scuffled for dropped crumbs on a bridge. Solitude moaned across the city like fog horns over the sea.

But the Salvation Army was open. The true spirit of Christmas lies in people being helped by people other than me, of course. I joined the small congregation and sang. The service was touching. Men fear loneliness because it opens a glimpse into life's emptiness. But every taut sense thrills when you are alone on a day like this. Every footstep becomes philosophical. Every decision takes on a romantic cast.

I spent the afternoon chained in the arms of a whore. The brothel is a true home to the spiritual. You go there to pray. Stripped of your finery, you step into the holy of holies. You offer yourself up, your beating soul laid bare. On your knees, you discover that virtue and sin can exist in everything. This is the holy prostitution of the human spirit.

The other Christmas which I can remember was spent in company. There was no snow on the streets. But that didn't matter. I had made the preparations. And I was dreaming of a brown Christmas that year. Our presents came gift-wrapped in Cellophane. I and my friend proceeded happily to unwrap them: a sparkling mountain of extremely dangerous drugs.

Our living-room looked like a police narcotics laboratory. We spent the day roasting heroin on an open fire.

Like all creatures with a habit we did nothing. And then we did it again and we looked great not doing it. We shared our day. We slobbered sentimentally. A storm as turbulent as the traditional Christmas argument may have been brewing about us. We may have been utterly at sea. But we were jolly in our lifeboat. We pulled on another Christmas crack pipe together. The cold turkey only came later.

At Christmas we meet ourselves as we really are. That's why it's so hard to bear for the depressed. The day glows like a fire through dimpled cottage windows in an unforgiving season. But for those who can only peep through the curtains, for those who will never be invited in, it only opens even wider that empty gulf of yearning between other people's happiness and your own cold despair.

What about those on the inside? What about those who descend into the bunker of the family? It shouldn't take Christmas for us to recognise that Santa Claus definitely had the right idea. Only visit people once a year and make sure, while you are at it, that you don't actually meet them.

But aren't we forgetting the true meaning of this day: a joyful celebration of the birth of Jesus? Isn't it strange how the whole world observes Christ's birthday while absolutely nobody observes his beliefs.

Jesus was a great and radical philosopher. Here was a truly autonomous mind; here was someone who was prepared to do his own thinking, no matter what the price. A Jewish thinker enrolling in the school of the Greek cynics, he drew on traditions of outspokenness, shamelessness and unconventionality. He spoke of anarchy, anti-materialism and identification with the poor.

His message, quite simply, was that family and personal property must go. Only then could we have peace on earth and goodwill to all men. So we celebrate Christ's birthday by gathering our families together and stockpiling mountains of possessions to wage war on one another over TV schedules and who will clear up.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild? No one made more trouble than this baby. The ass-like cult of Christianity that stands around his manger is the antithesis of the man. Christ was an anti-Christ. He was a true radical.

So do celebrate Christmas, my dears: that season when we remind each other of the birth, 2007 years ago, of a Jewish revolutionary by giving tacky commodities to the children of people we dislike.

Christ came to save us from sin. You might as well make his birth meaningful by committing them. Happy Kiss My Ass.

 

 

BEAUTY IS A TEMPLE TO HORSLEY'S LAW - WHERE VANITY AND EXTRAVAGANCE WORSHIP AT ITS SHRINE, AND ARROGANCE AT ITS ALTARS

Clearly God loves ugly people. He makes so many of them. He shows his contempt for life by the kind of person he selects to receive it. Crawling from primeval waters you waddled, slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, fighting for the right to breathe oxygen. It was a mistake but you did it. Little did it matter to you that the earth was a vale of tears, of horrid sufferings, of torturous sickness and death. You wanted life little worm. You got it.

And what did you do with it when you got it? Celebrate? Have fun? No. You moaned. Equal rights! Equal pay! Equal Equal! Equal is a dead word. No man who says “I am as good as you” believes it. The shark never says it to the sardine, nor the intelligent to the stupid, nor the rich to the poor, nor the beautiful to the plain. The claim to equality is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.

And inferior they are. With beautiful classical things like me the Lord finished the job. Ordinary ugly people know they’re deficient and they go on looking for the pieces, moaning and complaining. Don’t you realise my darlings that if you have any complaints, they would be theistic : - they should be about your maker , who lets face it, hasn’t done that great a job.

Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty. The handsome are not merely blessed with their looks, they are somehow better than the plain and ugly : they are wittier, more intelligent, even tempered and socially competent. Ms Sappho put it more bluntly : “What is beautiful is good”

What I hate most about ugliness is that it shows such bad judgement. Much as I loathe ugly people our sympathies should not, however, be for them after all. I mean their faces they are behind - they can’t see their revolting selves. We, the public, on the other hand, are in front of them and can see all too clearly. And its simply not good enough. No its not. How dare they look like that? Don’t they realise that their right to look revolting ends where it meets my eye?

 

FUCK THE AGED

“The great question that has never been answered, and that I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is : what does a woman want?” Freud.

“Me.” Horsley.

Oh yes they do. Asked if they would have sex with me, 99% of British women replied “Never again.” And do I believe in Fidelity? You bet baby. I’m not having one of my girls sleeping with anyone else.

Of course I have a reputation as a misogynist. This it is simply not true. The fact is that what we gentleman would like to do when we see a good interesting woman is fuck her or kill her and we should not make any bones about that.

For example, if I could get two beautiful, buxom women, chainsaw them in half, throw away the legs, the voice boxes, the genitals (all the useless bits) then sew them together at the waist, so that I could fuck one in the face while I gobbled the other’s tits, then I would do it. I would keep this “thing” in a stable chained to a wall on a bed of straw and feed it Kitty cat, beating it on special occasions.

But these days, dear reader, you are not even allowed to hit one!

In fact you are not allowed to hit anyone anymore. Of course, I don’t approve of smacking children - I just use a cattle prod. But if you are allowed to smack children you should be allowed to smack geriatrics as well, because they are just as much of a nuisance as children.

In fact a lot more. I hate old people. I hate them so much that I am going to start a new charity called “FUCK THE AGED”. And why not? I mean, look at them, babbling away to themselves, wasting tax payers’ money on heating, rotting on valuable pavement space - and holding me up at the shop till ... WHY DO THEY NEVER HAVE THEIR FUCKING MONEY OUT WHEN THEY GET TO THE FUCKING TILL? To the workhouse with you all - go away and die of hypothermia.

Old cunts should be taxed to the hilt. They’ve spent half their fucking lives picking fights with Germany, started two World Wars, and then they expect to sit back and get cheap central heating while we sort out the bloody mess they're got the country into.

Fucking old people make me puke. Walking around like that just to save on funeral expenses. I just want to invite them all on a lemming package holiday to Europe, via Beachey head.

Well there we are. We think that laughter is the best medicine which is perhaps why everyone is dying of cancer. Good.

Actually, I am told that women find men who have a fine sense of humour extremely sexy. I am always making women laugh. But they never say : “Oh stop it, you’re killing me. Take off all your clothes and give it to me you dirty bastard,“ See - you’re laughing now. But you won’t come down to 7 Meard Street (Black bell) and fuck me until my teeth rattle, will you? No, you’ll just sit there on your mountainous bottoms, with your pointless enthusiasms, saying things like: “Oh men, they have a one-track mind.” Well, let me tell you something girls. It’s better than having a no-track mind like you lot. Indeed, in the entire history of the world the smartest thing ever to come out of a woman’s mouth is my cock.

I have to say writing this has given my a fucking hard on. It is said that lust is an enemy to the purse and a foe to the conscience. Just as well I’m rich and amoral then isn’t it?

Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough of this bollocks. I’m off to the brothel to get a good housemaids wank. I’m off to see my favourite Serbian whore. Her name? Sloberdownmycockyoubitch.

I LOVE ANIMALS - IN GOOD GRAVY

I have been off drugs for some time now. Virtue may be its own reward, but it’s not much of a reward is it? I used to be able to start the day with drugs, instead of with my own company. Chemicals may have been my anti-personality mine but I still look back on them as an exhilarating remembrance of the abyss. They were my death support system and they saved my life by removing me from the dull routine of Sebastian and existence. Lets face it - living on earth is boring and expensive even if it does include a free trip round the sun.

What shall I do today? I will visit the zoo, which is where I belong.

But first the doctor. No one fills such a large space and leaves it so empty as my doctor. She is a great ugly blubbernaut, a salvation salesman who finds deliverance in malevolence. Our exchange went something like this :

“I’ve stopped taking all chemicals, owing to side effects of euphoria,” I told her.

“Get to the point.”

Er ... can I have some sleeping pills?”

“No.”

“Then will you give me a lobotomy on the NHS instead?”
“No”

“I’m miserable”

“Have you tried NA? It is the spiritual, not the medicinal path that you need.”

“I don’t want cough syrup for the soul. I want drugs to make me feel better.”

“Look. I’m busy. Have you got any real problems?”

“Yes. I’ve got Tourette’s Syndrome, you fat ugly cunt.”

Oh how one cloud is enough to eclipse all the sun! I waltz though Soho determined to fling misery around me like confetti. I am allowed to see my flawed reflection in turbulent water - but her! I could have done with a little less frankness if you don’t mind and a little more flattery. What does she know? Of all the masks of modern man, from the clown to the priest to the junkie, by which we seek to disguise our fear of life and death, the doctor is surely the worst. I mean, what can they cure? Aids? No. Cancer? No. Me? No. And the worst disease of them all, being born - can they cure it? No. Well then, they can just fuck off. As for that spiritual lark. How much does it cost?

I’m at the zoo, What I hate most about the zoo is the animals.In fact, may I take this opportunity of being in print to say to animals, all animals everywhere : I fucking hate you. I hate the way you eat; I hate the way you shit; I hate the way you all swagger around as if your lives mattered as much as mine. Who the fuck do you think you are ? I hate you almost as much as I hate the RSPCA. The RSPCA! What the fuck do you want? The RSECA more like! The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Cruelty to animals. I say nuke the fucking RSPCA. Yes! And I say nuke all animals, all species, everywhere. But let me be more specific.

Right. First up. Dogs. Who the fuck do you think you are? Just because you are the only thing on earth that loves me more than I love myself and you’ve read Mein Kampf and all you do is follow leaders like me everywhere, do you think that gives you the right to do so pissing and shitting and carrying on? No it doesn’t. Fuck off and die all of you.

Next up - dolphins. What the fuck do you want? It is said that you are intelligent. If you’re so fucking intelligent why are you dolphins? Hey? Answer me that shitheads. It is said you can understand humans. Good. Then understand this : Fuck off dolphins.

What about pandas? Who the fuck do you think you are? Fat lazy fucks who can’t even be bothered to breed. No wonder you’re extinct, you stinking tubs of shit. Get a job.

As for the tortoise? What the fuck do you want? Why are you always so hysterical and out of control? I see you waddling around on the floor and I just want to run a steamroller right over you motherfuckers.

And the leopard? How dare you swagger around in that beautiful coat trying to be fashionable, when you know damn well that it would look better on my girlfriend. Have you no respect? You’re just like the rhino, you bastard, who hasn’t realised that it’s more important for me to have the horn than it is for that fat cunt to have a horn. But do you want to know what I reserve the bulk of my loathing for? Yes?

The sperm whale. Yes, you. Who the fuck do you think you are? With a name like that you deserve to be extinct, you wanker. Why are you so fat? Hey? Answer me that. Haven’t you had enough to eat for one lifetime? Instead you spend your life moaning and blubbering; save the whale! Save the whale! HA! Save the whale? What for? Dinner? I say : nuke the whale. Yes! Nuke the whale for Christ. Fuck off and be extinct.

As for those vegetarian wankers, I say this to you all - an animal should be delicious and fit well. You don’t agree? Well then, I goose step all over your wall-to-wall lentils in my Lobb boots and I piss in your weaved yoghurts, you cocksuckers. And I say this ; fuck off and die all peaceful, harmless vegetarians everywhere. You fucking nancy boys. You couldn’t kill a turkey unless it was in self-defence. How would you have got on in Vietnam , hey poof boys? Not too well eh? I say : napalm vegetarians everywhere! And you say : a vegetarian diet is best for those who would be beautiful? Well it doesn’t seem to have done much for the elephant or you ugly knob heads does it? You look so much like cabbages you should be called cannibals you moronic buckets of piss. What about this cunt suckers : I eat veal and I’m gorgeous. HA! So shove that up your museli- encrusted arseholes you shit lickers.

As you can see I’m quite a tolerant sort of chap. I believe it is important in life to give things a full and fair hearing. If I was an animal I would already be extinct. As a Horsley I would have been taken out and shot. As it is I am an endangered species ; beautiful, talented and rich. SOS. Save Our Sebastian. There are so few of me left.

THE LAST POST. THE PAST LOST.

I’ve had enough of this shit. The internet is for those who lack the flair for conversation. A blog is what you write for after being rejected by all the reputable publishers. It is Loser Central. The last refuge of the refuse. Anyone who has a blog or leaves comments on a blog is a wanker. It is far too undignified for a man of my stature. That it attracts such bitterness is not surprising. For one person spoilt by success, a thousand are spoilt by failure. Success makes people, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel. I can make no more of you than a hedgehog. You are too dull to be ridiculous.

I am the only thing of value on the internet and I am removing it immediately. Goodbye.

IT'S OFFICIAL : I AM ILLEGAL

THE NEW YORK TIMES

March 20, 2008

British Memoirist Is Denied U.S. Entry

By MOTOKO RICH

Sebastian Horsley, a British author who has written an eyebrow-raising memoir detailing a life of rampant drug use and voluminous encounters with prostitutes, was turned back at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday as he tried to enter the United States for a book party and New York news media tour.

Mr. Horsley, whose memoir, “Dandy in the Underworld,” was published last week in paperback by Harper Perennial, a unit of HarperCollins, said he was detained by United States customs authorities for eight hours and questioned about his former drug addiction, use of prostitutes and activity as a male escort.

“I’m absolutely shattered and upset and gutted about not being able to come to America,” Mr. Horsley said in a telephone interview from London, where he had returned on Wednesday. “I was very much looking forward to meeting everybody.”

Lucille Cirillo, a spokeswoman for the New York office of United States Customs and Border Protection, said she could not comment on specific cases. But in an e-mail message, she said that under a waiver program that allows British citizens to enter the United States without a visa, “travelers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (which includes controlled-substance violations) or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible.”

In “Dandy of the Underworld” Mr. Horsley, who is notorious in Britain, writes of being raised by alcoholic, sexually promiscuous parents and bouncing through several schools. He details a debauched life of cocaine, heroin, opium and amphetamine use, writing that he spent more than £100,000 (nearly $200,000) on crack cocaine and £100,000 to consort with more than 1,000 prostitutes. He also chronicles his trip to the Philippines to be hung from a cross, an event that was recorded by a photographer and videographer and formed part of an art exhibition that was extensively covered by the news media in his home country.

Carrie Kania, publisher of Harper Perennial, said Mr. Horsley’s party, which was scheduled for Wednesday in Manhattan, would go on without him. “I believe this book is very important,” Ms. Kania said. “It certainly moved me, and we’re going to continue to back it 100 percent.”

British public records are not available in the United States, and it was not possible to verify independently many of the details in Mr. Horsley’s memoir.

In interviews, though, he has been repeatedly coy about what is real and what is contrived. “It’s better to be quotable than honest,” he told Time Out London in February. In an interview with The Independent last September, he said: “I don’t speak, I quote. I am a fraud. I have cobbled together my personality from hundreds of little bits. I am simultaneously the most genuine and the most artificial person you will ever meet.”

In his interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Horsley insisted the memoir was true. “I’m a dandy, so I like to play with words,” he said. “I am real, but in an artificial way, because I like to play with language. But my story is completely true.”

Ms. Kania said that the book, published in Britain in September by an imprint of Hodder Headline, had been through a “lengthy legal review” by the British publisher. But Harper did not independently fact-check it.

Mr. Horsley said he was surprised he was deported, since he had previously traveled to the United States six times, twice to visit relatives in Boston and four times to New York.

“God bless America, land of the free, but sadly not the land of the depraved,” he said. He referred to the recent resignation of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, in the wake of revelations that he had frequented prostitutes. “I’m not a politician, I’m an artist,” Mr. Horsley said. “Depravity is part of the job description.”

He added that he regarded his memoir as “a very moral book in the same way that Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho’ was a moral book.” He added, “I’m not a bad person.”

Jack Begg contributed reporting.

MY GOD WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO AMERICA - A WOMAN, A NIGGER AND NOW SEBASTIAN HORSLEY!

My book Dandy in the Underworld came out across America yesterday. 31 years ago Marc Bolan’s album Dandy in the Underworld was released on the same day. Its for you Marc.

America is going potty. TV shows. New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, whole page in the LA Times. And much much more. I am so tired. Of being admired. I have been offering myself gift wrapped to the world. Every day for the last two months I have been either interviewed, filmed or photographed. Even I am getting bored of talking about myself. I fear I am an amateur narcissist after all. I am sure it won't last and I shall finally give in to my narcissism and marry myself.

Does Christ never get tired of bleeding? I’m sure he does - but the show must go on.

I arrive in the USA next week. God knows how they shall take me. Does getting shot hurt? Actually, I am sure the marksman will be dazzled by the sight of me and consequently miss.

In truth if I do not return it will only be because I have been murdered by love. Like Quentin I have always felt American in my artificial heart. We are all English at puberty; we die American.

I’ve always felt the book would do better over there. I hate Britain’s rugged will to lose. In America, they love a loser turned winner as much as we love the opposite. As St Quentin knew : it is because of our hearts. The English have shrivelled hearts. The Americans plump, peachy, warm ones. Success in England inspires only envy. In America : hope.

It is because life for the Americans is always becoming, never being.

It is because of the cruelty of England and the generosity of America. In America people will only come to see you if they like you, if they wish you well. In England they will come because they despise you, to laugh at you.

It is because Americans are unafraid of being positive.

Poor old England ; sometimes negativity don’t pull you through.

I broadcast to 12 million of the US nation this week. Harper tell me that all Things Considered is probably the biggest radio show in all of the US.

The lady producer liked me

I said to her :

“Can I get my cock out on live radio?”

There was a deadly silence. “Oh No” I thought! “I’ve have blown it!”

Then suddenly she said :

“Awesome.”

12 million yanks is like one brilliant Brit really isn't it? Me. You see, what is good about England is that it prepares you for the world. Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can’t hurt you unless you are a wimp, and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble. It is through the snipers and vipers that we develop ourselves. Only the best get through so by the time we arrive in America we are ready to rule the world.

And rule it I shall. I have lost my reins and shall begin my reign. I am off to America for a week. I am sure everyone will be expecting me to go by boat and as I sail through the harbour, 'Wilde-like,' announce, 'I have nothing declare but my genius.' But I am not Oscar Wilde.

No darling, Whoresley-like I shall announce, “I have nothing to declare but my genitals.”

“My heinous, genius, penis.”

Bon Mot Voyage