I pledge that one way or the other Scallywag will continue to be published. By subscription; by selling it on the streets; making sure it gets into the right hands of key people who have influence on our affairs; on the internet (subscription system pending); and abroad. I shall continue to be domiciled in London, but I also now have a small office near Malaga and in the New Year plan to produce a Scallywag-del-Sol. In the summer there are some four million English -speaking people in Spain. Even in the winter there are more than two million, and the World Service does not let them really know what is going on back home. We aim to tell them.
We've done our research and it looks good. Scallywag in Spain will hopefully subsidise the London edition. There are lots of juicy stories down there as well, but the two magazines will have their own identities. With modern technology I could produce a magazine sitting on the loo in Timbuktu (which, by the way, I visited recently. It's a dump!) The paper is where my Apple Mac is - and I can get finished pages to a printer in Spain or London from wherever I have access to a telephone. My old Hermes Ambassador doesn't like it, but these computers certainly can save you a lot of headaches.
I began Scallywag on my own seven years ago in Dorset. I am now back to basics and producing it on my own again. I apologise if rather a lot of Regan enters these pages. Apart from some contributors, I am a staff of one. Until they try and imprison me for criminal libel (both the Police Federation solicitor, Barton Taylor, and Julian Lewis MA, are seriously considering it), I shall continue. And if they ever do succeed, I'm sure there's a way of smuggling it out of the scrubs.
Until I had a small fracas with Buckingham Palace, in which I was threatened with a charge of Treason, I had no concept of just how powerful the establishment can be when they get the bit between the teeth. I am not just talking about the Athenaeum Establishment, but the Mandarins in Whitehall, politicians, the law, the Royal family, the police and most newspapers. Since I began Scallywag this has been rammed home to me over and over again and in the end they do win. And their collective power waves away almost unnoticed from high above ordinary mortals fed on a constant diet of Coronation Street and Eastenders.
This edition comes to you care of you. After our lists of subscribers went "missing" I asked for people to re-subscribe when they thought their subscriptions had run out. Hundreds of you did so, whether they had or not, and some added more. Lewis MA and the others are never going to spoil that sort of loyalty to a small alternative magazine which has clearly got them on the run.
Thanks, pals.
Along with the grotesque self-perpetuated myth that Bordeaux wines arethe best in the world, I note with great interest that British sandwiches at Marks and Sparks in Paris are now all the rave. Not only that but the Frogs simply can't get enough of the M and S fast food dishes such as cauliflower cheese bake, all suitably marked, "produce of England." This of course, is hardly surprising. It has been far easier to eat well in London that Paris for many years now. And with the present exchange rate, incredibly cheaper.
I took the Eurotrain to Paris only a few weeks ago and had promised myself a beer on two in one of my favourite watering holes right opposite the Gar Du Nord on my way to the Crillon. Only recently this establishment sported huge gilded mirrors and dazzling chandeliers; that innate Parisian smell of Gaullois, coffee and fresh croissants, and those oh-so-professional waiters gliding through the tables, the quintessence of gallic pride. The place is now aBig Mac.
France, and particularly Paris, has long been toppled from the top ten list of gourmet paradises. Place for place, I can eat better in a down-town working man's cafe in Kuala Lumpur. Only the French, of course, haven't quite accepted it yet.
As they will never accept that 90% of non-French wine is far superior than 90% of the French vintages and that virtually all Bordeaux wines are carefully contrived shades of urine.
Quote: "Modern computer sytems are like a thriller story with the last chapter missing."
Actually, trans-dressers quite fascinate me. They are normally very gentle and harmless people who otherwise lead quite conventional sex lives with understanding partners who bear their children. In a Dorset village where I lived once a couple moved next door. He was big-built and wore a huge black beard and it did look incongruous when he first appeared in a cotton flowered dress, wig and gum boots to start digging the garden. Far from being conscious of it, he asked me, as any new neighbour might, if I fancied a pint and we trooped off to play darts at the Sailor's Return. He quickly became a pillar of village life and a prominent parish councillor, although the vicar's wife was never quite at ease when she dropped in for tea. Our wives became good friends and the situation was only ever discussed when he admired one of my wife's dresses and she gave it to him. The village post office had to import larger than normal tights but apart from that his eccentricities were entirely tolerated. He never wore men's clothing unless he took the village bus to Dorchester to buy his smalls.
I note recent debate in the Times concerning whether it is a mircle to turn water into wine. After all, wine is only rainwater which is sucked into a vine. What is certain is that it is not a miracle to turn wine into water. I do it some five times a day.
The second was Mad Frankie Frazer - Britain’s most flogged (five times) and birched (seven times) living man - who was off to the Edinburgh Festival to give live, fringe, demonstrations of how he extracted people’s finger nails with a pair of pliers. He complained that the last time he was given the cat his mouth unfortunately dried up and he was unable to spit at the punishing warder after the last stroke. As Paula’s speciality was smacking naughty MP’s bottoms, I should have perhaps introduced them. It is incredible what a good publicist can do. Armed only with his gold plated pincers, Frankie has now become a celebrity.
Overheard in my local: "That man is so well organised, he could run a brewery in a pisshouse".
Talking of snails, I have recently returned from Burgundy with a bunch of renegade pisspots from Dorset who have never been known to spit the stuff out after tasting. With a veritable bellyful of good Macon, followed by a bottle or two of Cru Chablis we repaired to the very best Brasserie in Beaune for a repast. Being a small but fastidious eater, I opted only for a dozen Escargot. It was one of those glorious Parisian places with gilded mirrors and waiters gliding like swans. In animated conversation about the day's adventures, I popped the first viscous little creature into my mouth. Unfortunately, this anti-social beast took one look at where it was going and decided to revolt and come up again. Unfortunately, it brought all the Macon and Chablis up with it. I am no longer welcome in the Brasserie du Beaune, and other imbibers have threatened to auction the animated picture to my enemies.
The booklet, which has obviously had a wide private circulation, claims it is published by Millstone and Deepsea, LRD Publications, of 78 Blackfiars Road, London, and was written by a Dr. A Van Helsing. It makes riveting reading. There seems to be irrefutable evidence that Janner seduced 13-year-old Paul Winston after the MP had escorted a party of Leicester children on a tour of the commons in the late 1970's.
The main accusations come from Sidney Albert Chaney and deal with correspondence he had with the notorious Frank Beck who was later sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment and died in jail. Beck was a proven pervert of the worst kind. Chaney is an excitable exhibitionist who has a grudge and an obsession. Nonetheless, he makes out a clear case - right the way back to Beck's trial when the child, Paul Winston was a witness - when the judge, Mr. Justice Jowitt, gave the court clear instructions that there must be no mention of "persons in high places". This dealt with the certainty that Greville Janner's name would be brought up in evidence.
When the Press Association made an emergency application the High Court ruled that Jowitt's order was unlawful and void. Janner's name duly did come up and the evidence was reported.
The main contention was that, after Janner had taken the boy on holiday in Scotland and allegedly buggered him twice, Beck had filed an official report to his superiors making the allegation and advising that Janner should no longer have access to the boy. This report mysteriously disappeared just before Janner got up in parliament to make statement saying it was all lies. As far as parliament is concerned, that was an end to the matter.
The boy certainly thought he had been buggered by Janner on at least nine occasions and his evidence remained entirely consistent and convincing. He could remember times, places and every small detail of what he later described as an "ordeal".
So far, so good. The booklet has an entire ring of truth to it. Until you get to the summing up in which it states several times that all this was a "Zionist conspiracy" .
The booklet was, of course, produced by the British Nationalist Party who are very strong indeed in Janner's constituency at Leicester. This in itself greatly devalues an argument which has a lot of credence. If they hadn't let their true motives slip in we might have taken the whole thing a lot more seriously.
In the eleven years since he fathered a child by Keays, he has never seen the infant once, nor even inquired after it. Yet he knows through solicitors that, aged 18-months, the little girl developed a serious brain tumour which for a time put her life in grave danger.
He knows that, aged five, she underwent perilous brain surgery to have the tumour removed and for a further five years was extremely ill. He knows the details of how, during the time the tumour was removed, much tissue from the brain also had to go and that since then, although the girl is bright and chirpy, she has had some learning difficulties. He knows all this because her mother has always let the sugary father know about his child's welfare.
Yet for five years now nothing has ever been reported and nor is it likely to be.
After the operation Sarah Keays put in an application for a further maintenance order on the grounds that her daughter was now disabled with special needs. In the corridors of the court the two solicitors huddled together and, on Parkinson's solicitor's advice, they sought a Mary Bell Order.
Sarah's solicitor explained that this would prevent unwanted publicity about the child at the hearing. No one, not least of all Sarah herself, wanted all the tabloids milling around a seriously sick child. So she agreed.
What the lawyers did not explain to Sarah was that no publicity concerning the child could EVER be published until the courts lifted the injunction on the special dispensation from the Official Solicitor.
The Mary Bell order, quite uniquely, is an absolute blanket ban on a minor's name never being mentioned in public. In effect, if the child won a sports day event at her school, the local paper could not report it. It dates back to the Mary Bell case where a five-year-old girl was found guilty of murdering two playmates. The court ruled that in order to protect the girl, so she had some chance of rehabilitation, all publicity would be completely banned. It was created specifically to protect minors who had committed serious crimes. It is invoked very rarely, and never before concerning a child who was merely the subject of a scandal.
But the child's successful fight to survive is a story on its own. One that at the moment will never be told. When the child appeared to digress Sarah searched around and was recommended to an expert in the US. She then tried to raise funds to send the child there. She might have written a book about her life, or at least a newspaper series. She could have even launched a public appeal, had Mary Bell not been strangling her.
Parkinson pays her a paltry £60 a week and, as caring for the child is now a full time occupation, Sarah was unable to do any other kind of work. By this time, however, The Big Story on Carlton TV had caught onto the situation and decided to try and help Sarah lift the injunction. But both mother and TV company came up against a continual blank wall with the Official Solicitor. He firmly ruled that the Mary Bell remain in place.
The child herself is fully aware of the film and is very keen for it to be finished, for it shows her fight to survive - something of which she is very proud. She has told her mother it might help other children in her position and give them heart.
For Cecil Parkinson, of course, the injunction is of vital importance. While Mary Bell exists, no newspaper or TV company may dare refer to his utter caddishness towards his child. Carlton even promised that they would tell the child's story without even mentioning Parkinson.
But the wheels of the establishment stayed jammed. And they are likely to remain so. Backed by Carlton Sarah first took it to the High Court and lost. She appealed, and lost. Now she is waiting for a further appeal to go before the House of Lords. If she loses that she will go to the European Courts. But all this is likely to take up to two years.
Meanwhile, Sarah has argued that the child should go to a special school but the local authority have refused. Sarah was hoping that with the right publicity they might change their minds.
Throughout all the hearings all the courts have agreed that Sarah is an excellent and caring mother.
This charm, in fact, hid an ambitious serpent who would stop at nothing to get his way - either in Parliament or in the bedroom. When Sarah Keays found she was pregnant and was determined to have the child, he completely cut her and it out of his life. They did not exist. Sarah, however, was made of stern stuff and she kicked up rather a fuss. Not about the fact that he had turned his back on her, but that he refused to even recognise the baby.
Because he was so obviously a rotten cad he was put out to pasture for a while, but smooth-talked his way back in after an appropriate period of further sucking up to his "mistress". She was unwilling to accept he was a knave and a scoundrel, but once the Mary Bell was in place the scandal was legally dead and buried, it could not be referred to again until Thatcher's own Official Solicitor gave his permission.
Clearly no one, not even the depths of the gutter press, wishes to harm the child in any way. It is right for the courts to try and protect an innocent child caught up in a sensational scandal. But a Mary Bell order is so strenuous that Sarah is forbidden even to bring the subject up with her MP. So, ironically, the injunction is preventing the child from progressing and is probably doing it far more harm than the publicity of a well-balanced programme about her would bring. This clearly makes the law into an arse.
But it is clearly not an arse to the establishment figures who merely want the Parkinson scandal to go away forever. Right now the injunction is being kept in place for no other reason than to protect a former favoured cabinet minister who went astray . The courts have unanimously agreed that Sarah Keays is a good mother and that the film itself does no harm. Indeed the Appeal Court went so far as to admit that the "film showed (the child) had achieved her potential".
The injunction should be lifted immediately so that the world may know at last just what a scumbag Cecil Parkinson really is.
The leaders of this trecherous band were none other that the Libyan Head of Intelligence, Ahmed Gaddaf Al Dam, Gadaffi's murdering cousin, and Ashraf Marwan, one of the least known but most sinister players on the London property stage, and on the international arms dealing arena.
Just two years before, Marwan had bought in to the House of Fraser - then owned by Tiny Rowland's Lonrho, whose flagship was Harrods. By December Marwan had 3.2 million shares worth £6 million. It was not the first time he had done business with Rowland. In 1979 he had purchased 40% of a cargo airline company called Tradeswind. Lonrho owned the other 60%. Marwan had nominated in his place as director none other than the same Gaddaf al Dam.
Rowland was on the board, alongside prominent Tory, Sir Edward Du Cann. Under al Dam, Tradeswind quickly started a brisk business transporting arms from the US to the Lebanon and Libya. To get through the complicated US government embargoes, they bribed two bent CIA officers, Ed Wilson and Frank Terpil.
Using the legitimate cover of the seemingly respectable airline, Marwan and Al Dam transported an awesome amount of deadly weapons, not just to the governments of Libya and the Lebanon, but to all sorts of terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal group, and in a wholly personal deal organised by Al Dam, to the IRA. The CIA officers were eventually arrested, and for a while the trade stopped. There is an arrest warrant waiting for Marwan and Al Dam should they ever set foot in the United States.
Marwan, through Al Dam, developed a close working relationship with Gadhaffi. So much so that the reclusive Libyan President gave Marwan some $12 million to invest on behalf of Libya. Much of this went into Lonrho projects and compainies. In turn, Rowland eventually invested heavily in hotels and property in Tripoli. Later, to finanlise various deals between the two, Marwan would be whisked to Libya in Tiny's private jet.
Throughout the eighties Al Dam and his even more notorious brother, Sayed, were the principle organisers of nearly all the terrorist activity in Europe. It was Tradeswind which supplied the substantial plastic C4 explosives which Abu Nidal used with such effect.
Lonrho's share in Tradeswind was hidden in a Liechtenstein-based company called Emery Establishment S.A. which was one of Marwan's subsidiaries.
Later, Marwan was the principle supplier of arms to Fremlino in Mozambique, which Rowland publically supported. In one year alone Marwan made 15 trips to see Ghadaffi on Rowland's behalf specifically with a shopping list for Mozmbique's arms requirements. The Colonel was sympathetic because Fremlino was being besieged by Israeli-backed rebels. On each of these deals Marwan took a hefty commission.
During Rowland's celebrted fight with Al Fayed, he used a Marwan- owned company, Octagon, as a dirty-tricks department against Al Fayed. One of the principle dirty tricksters, a private detective called David Coughlin, was directly in the employ of Octagon.
So who is this mysterious Ashraf Marwan, who, despite his high- profile lifestyle has managed so expertly to keep out of the public eye? His background is as murkey as anyone in the world armaments trade and goes back to when he was a penniless student in Nasser's Egypt. He was broke but keenly intelligent, even conniving, and he had a great deal of charm.
He managed to attract first the eye of and then the heart of Muna, Nasser's eldest daughter and with her father's blessing, they married. His wedding day was the first in a meteoric rise to power. First he became a roving diplomat, roaming the Arab world on his father-in-law's behalf, both probing other governments and lobbying for Nasser and Egypt. He proved very adept at it and made invaluable contacts at the very highest level.
On the side he was amassing files of information on almost anyone who was anyone, especially in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and this would put him in good sted for many years to come. As a sideline he also began arms dealing in a fairly big way and, as a broker, amassed several millions in commissions. By the time Nasser died, Marwan had stashed a small fortune away in various European banks.
As it turned out Nasser's death was an advantage because a young and fledgling Sadat was desperate for key people he thought he could trust and Marwan seemed to know everyone. So he promoted him into the second most powerful post in Egypt.
In effect, he became a Minister Without Portfolio, but that innocuous title hid awesome power. Not only did he keep his diplomatic priviledges and arrange all of Sadat's arm dealing - collecting many further millions in commissions on the way - but he became Sadat's right-hand man as Chief of Staff for Information, Chairman of the Arab Corporation for War Industries, and, even more important, Head of the Security Forces. This made him the supremo over not only all the army, the police, and air force, but also, crucially, the Secret Police.
From l974-l978 Marwan orchestrated an unprecedented programme of arrests and tortures. His nick-name in Cairo changed from "The Miracle Child" to "Dr. Death" as wave after wave of legal terrorism swept the capitol. This reflected Sadat's terrible fear of assassination and he did not even question Marwan's activities or motives. During this time Marwan managed to invest £40 million, mainly in British firms.
As Chief of War Industries he awarded himself all the valuable arms contracts - and the millions rolled in. He bought a fashionable apartment in the "most expensive street in the world" at number 50 Avenue Foch in Paris. He festooned Muna with jewels, including a huge 22 carat diamond from the House of Van Cleef. He bought a private Falcon jet to wisk him to Paris for dinner at Maxime's. The penniless student had become one of the richest men in the world.
Sadat had, just months before the Camp David accord, awarded the War Industries a budget of £400 million to buy arms. Seeing the writing on the wall as the peace palms were being waved, Marwan stashed the money away outside the country. When he fled to Paris immediately after Camp David he sealed his Swiss accounts and only he knows just how much money he had milked from the country which had given him such power.
Sadat was furious and immediately officially expelled Marwan and withdrew his diplomatic status - only to be renewed a few days after Sadat was himself assassinated. Armed with this, Marwan left Muna safely esconsed in the Avenue Foch and began his fateful assault on London.
With almost unlimited funds and high-class contacts throughout the Arab world, Marwan was very well placed to tackle the high-turnover property world. His umbrella company was called Cabra and it owned two dozen subsidiaries which covered just about every facet of his operations. One company owned Chelsea football ground, another Fulham. Yet another owned a large slice of Bloomsbury and a West End theatre.
But it was with his one-off entrepenereal deals where he really excelled, even when the property boom collapsed. For example, in a three-day deal he bought and sold the Playboy club in Park Lane, paying cash for it on the Monday and selling it off to an Arab on the Thursday. For this he pocketed a quick £3 million.
It was at this time, in the early eighties, that he teamed up with Adnan Kashoggi and then the Muktoum brothers who introduced him to Tiny Rowland. Rowland had got to know the Muktoums at an early stage but became more intrigued with them when he discovered they had a long-standing fued with Al Fayed. Together, Rowland, the Muktoums and Ashraf Marwan made an unholy alliance to set up the Octagon dirty tricks department to first discredit Al Fayed and then try and ruin him.
Al Fayed himself believes it was even more sinister that that. Probably using Al Dam, he thinks that Marwan and the Muktoums set out to assassinate him. Marwan had every reason to hate Al Fayed. The latter spoiled a con Marwan was going to pull on the Sulton of Brunei. The long-standing fued with the Muktoums is more mysterious but dates back to when Al Fayed first arrived in London.
Al Fayed employs a veritable army of protection staff and his offices at Harrods and his country home in Surrey are like fortressess. With enemies like Marwan, Al Dam and the Muktoums around, and with Tiny Rowland still dertermined to ruin him, he needs it.
But that was before the wholly overt scandals, mass separations and divorces, the'squidgy tapes', thetoe-sucking by maverick financial advisors, a future king who wants to be Parker-Bowles' Tampax, DNA doubts of fatherhood......well, where do you want us to start?
So, after all that lot, why put the full weight of the Palace machine, the legal system, the security services, the government, indeed, the ENTIRE establishment army into banning it wherever Farrer and Co. could reach a judge? It didn't make sense. Especially as the bookshops in New York and on the Costas sold out within days of its publicationsolely on the cover 'strapline' "Banned in Britain." That, above anything meant that at least the first ten thousand copies would find their way immediately back to the UK where, naturally, a copy found its way to this office.
The answer - the whole answer - lies in one small, rather terse paragraph, exactly 139 words long, on page 110-111, which naturally, for obvious legal reasons I cannot quote for fear of being threatened with charges of treason for the second time in my life. It refers to a rather distraught Princess Diane returned from an AIDS awareness meeting extremely worried, and seemingly convinced, that Buckingham Palace faced an immediate epidemic of AIDS.
These 139 words were mainly in direct quotes froma royal to a servant but hide the reason forthe biggest cover-up the Palace regime (the royal protectors) has ever had to face since Margaret was into toyboys and the king before last was into Mrs. Simpson. Before that, of course, royal courtiers always had to cover-up endless scandals of ineptitude, venereal disease, madness, murder, mayhem, criminality, bastard births, child molesting, incest, rape, pillage, supreme egotism, lunacy, revenge, obsessive hatreds, gambling cheats,and now and again the odd whiff of buggery.
Indeed, a spot of the old AIDS - now so fashionable in London Society - should be a cinch for the bunch of hoods and professional liars, all in line for a knighthood, who fester around what is euphemistically called a Thrown upon which the Queen and others occasionally break wind.
The entire media antenna - surprisingly well tuned on all things royal - was stretched almost to breaking point as the rumour began to harden into fact that Prince Andrew - the Queen's favourite son - was suffering from HIV Positive, and was, in fact, dying.
It all came to something of a head when Aids activist, Sir Ian McKellen, the talented and prestigious classical actor who came out himself six years ago, stormed into a private meeting and revealed that the Palace were going to announce Andrew was dying from Leukaemia. It was extremely unfortunate, he ranted, but this was the most perfect chance to give AIDS the very high profile it so desperately needed.
Instead, the palace were going to fob the issue off and let cancer have all the kudos.
Meanwhile, the palace were taking great measures to stage manage their eventual announcement - to come when Parliament reconvenes in October. Andrew and Fergie were packed off to a "package" holiday on the Costas amid carefully orchestrated rumours of a "reconciliation".
All the more tragic to milk the public heartstrings when the announcement is made.
What was also cleverly hushed up, but known to Fergie's friends, was that during the marriage, she took two AIDS tests herself and was "hysterically pleased and relieved" to find she was not affected.
McKellen, who, because of her long interest in AIDS victims, has become a friend and advisor to Princess Diana, was rightly furious. So, apparently was Diane. For AIDS is an area of royal taboo that she did not even discuss with friends when she leaked so much to Andrew Morton.
News Desks were humming with the news, but unable to cope with how to deal with it. As usual, no one wanted to be first. ITN decided to take the initiative by informing all their foreign correspondents to leak the story in their own countries. As with Edward Vlll when he got up to his high jinx with Mrs. Simpson everyone in the world but the British public would know all about it. This would, however, put immense pressure on the palace to come clean.
A prominent lobby correspondent of our acquaintance, when comparing notes, said: "This story is bursting to break, and it won't be long."
Years ago, before Andrew and Fergie got married and the Prince was gallivanting with Koo Stark while serving in Portland, Scallywag published a very successful local Dorset edition, based in Weymouth. We had excellent contacts at the base and it was not long before we heard the rumpus when Andrew had taken over half the officer's quarters to house his own staff of valets, cooks, security guards, dressers, and so on. It all became all the more fascinating when half his staff (while Andrew was entertaining Koo) turned up at a local gay club.
Later, after the marriage, the royals were ensconced in a house in Dorset as Andrew went through an advanced helicopter course. By then Andrew's friendships with fellow officers had become widely known. One day the inevitable happened. Fergie was not due back at the house until the following day but unexpectedly turned up and found her hubby in bed with a bloke called Lt. Cox. It was the beginning of a rather dramatic end.
It led Sarah to recently opine to a newspaper that if there ever was a reconciliation, she would be returning to a nunnery. It also led to a deepening of the intimate friendship between Diane and Fergie, although this waned as both marriages disintegrated. Both women were able to commiserate each other on the behaviour of their husbands.
Meanwhile, Prince Edward was quietly getting on with his life at Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Theatre Company. The Dressmaker's book confirms that below stairs in all the royal households, nearly everything is run by a "Mafia" of gays.
What the book does state clearly is that Edward is NOT gay. Because of his failure in the marines, his love of theatre and his rather effete disposition, as well as his friendship with known gays, most people assumed he was the only royal who was. But not so. In fact, it becomes obvious from the book that Wendy Berry's son, James, a Highgrove footman and former personal valet to Edward is himself one of the palace gays. If a gay personal valet pronounces his employer "straight" then it is surely to be believed. The entire palace staff vote Edward the nicest and kindest royal and he is extremely popular around London'sCambridge Circus where his theatrical pals hang out.
The rumours of his gayness have been constantly fed by the theatrical gay community itself who all call Edward "Mavis". They saw his particular friend was Aspects of Love star Michael Ball and that when the cast and others threw a farewell party for him, he and Edward cried physically on each other's shoulders. The rumours were also nourished by Edward's overt friendship with both Boy George and Jason Donovan, and then by a publicity-seeking hairdresser who Edward visited twice a week.
Edward is also a friend of Ian McKellen and pals in Cambridge Circus tell us he is equally appalled at what he knows will be a palace cover-up. He has always been extremely reticent about talking about his family with his workmates. But on the AIDS issue he has told all his gay theatrical friends that AIDS awareness has his full support.
What is also emerging from the gay movement, and is hinted at in the book, is that Charles is himself bi-sexual. This has "come out" from several people on the Prince's Trust which is "completely gay". After two decades of Royal Watching this is one that Scallywag has never come across before. Not even the slightest hint. But it could make a great deal of sense.
Charles always felt spurned by his cantankerous father whose favourite "son" was always his sister Anne. He craved affection and first found it in his relationship with his Uncle Lord Mountbatten who was a notorious old Queen. Diane often complains, in the book, that instead of spending time with her, Charles is always off with his close companion and groom, Paddy Whiteland. Grooms were a favourite with his uncle. Even though there is no question that Paddy is himself gay, he was able to give Charles the older-man affection he so craved.
It would do a great deal to explain the break-up of Charles' marriage and, quiet clearly early on in the marriage,the end of all love- making between the couple.
It would also explain, perhaps, the intriguing question of just who leaked the "Tampax Tapes". Was it an anxious palace desperately trying to allay rumours that Charles was in fact gay?
In all the royal households he is most certainly surrounded by bevies of gays, and he probably was in the navy as well. It could well be that he is a repressed gay, only really happy in male company, and unable to show his real emotions.
Thetheatrical gay community are quite notorious gossips and much of it is toilet talk, but there are few secrets between them. They were the first to learn that Diane had already had three abortions before she became pregnant from Will Carling and quickly went for her fourth. Why won't she go on the pill? one may ask. "Oh, she was," they will tell you, "but she thought it was making her fat so she gave it up.The best thing for her to do is get a divorce, then she can screw who she likes."
Oh, by the way, just in passing the book also reveals that Andrew is not at all well-endowed; that Diane used to wear ear plugs when Charles slept with her in the early days (because he snored so much); that a very pregnant Fergie used to cavort naked with her dogs; and that Charles was a good and affectionate father much loved by his children, but he simply couldn't get around to showing the same to his wife.
We continue our never-ending, fascinating, incredible, amazing, phenomenal, astounding, wholly true and vastly amusing alternative study of the goings on and shenanigans at Rupert Murdoch's pre- Wapping News of the World, according to the sworn affidavits and testimony of former freelance photographer, Ian Cutler. Our story is taken from a MSS still going the rounds of agents in Hollywood, New York, London and Sydney and the only thing guaranteed is that it will never appear on SKY TV.
Gerald Runcible Brown, (known to colleagues as 'Brown Gerry' - as in toilet, not Hun), is a quite remarkable man. For a start, his drinking capacity is such that he completely humbles lightweight dipsomaniacs like Scallywag. He has been known, while 'on the job', to consume up to two or even three bottles of scotch a session while concocting his expenses for a seemingly ever-tolerant 'Screws' hierarchy. Even more incredible is his capacity to get his end away with whatever pussy is available, even while surrounded by the sordid evidence of the empty bottles of his wretched debauchery.
But there is something even more unimaginable and inconceivable, even preposterous, about the Runcible Super-loo which very, very nearly defies all rational and sagacious thinking. It is that, despite overwhelming evidence to his life-long depravity, he is actually taken seriously by his peers.
Jerry-can has written and published a book called "EXPOSED - Sensational True Story of Fleet Street Reporter" in which he not only pontificates about the glories of exposure journalism (with himself as the knight in shining white armour gallivanting valiantly as the Great Crusader against universal sleaze) but has now set himself up as the authentic mouthpiece of the exposure genre.
Indeed, so well-established as a spokesman of "freedom of speech" has he become that he was lauded in the Guardian by the editor-in-chief, Peter Preston, no less, for his tenacious belief that if others are at it, it is up to Gallahads like himself to tell the world about it. But there is no one, of course, to tell the world about Gerald Runcible Brown. Or just what he actually gets up to when he takes his trousers down.
Not until, anyway, veteran snatch-man, ex-con, sexual athlete (he claims to have screwed a thousand women in his sordid life) and self- confessed manipulator of the front page, Ian Cutler comes along to re-write the Jerry-can memoirs.
Take, for example, the different testimonies of the two former colleagues concerning a trip to Uganda after Idi Amin had been ousted by the Tanzanian army. According to 'Exposed', Jerry-can, at the time a fearless freelance who wanted to put the world to rights, decided to go to Uganda and took "my photographer." Well, it was rather the other way round. Cutler took him and picked up all the tabs. In fact, Jerry at the time had a warrant out for his arrest after he had fled from Florida (where he had worked for a time for the notorious National Enquirer), under more than a cloud. It was, although the book skilfully doesn't mention it, just a little bit of a hurricane. Something to do with serious driving offences while trying to escape with dodgy credit cards.
Yet the intrepid Jerry, while propped up in a bar, managed to expose Amin's plans to build an atomic bomb to take over the world. I quote: " The resulting feature ended up as a five-part series in the Daily Mirror and they filled the paper each day with tales of plans for nuclear bombs, drugs, sex orgies, high living, torture and depravity."
The truth of the matter is that at the time Fearless-Jerry-can was so completely drunk he did not even know he was in Uganda and, in a town called Kisumu, Cutler went one morning to wake him from his stupours in a brothel and found the intrepid hack completely covered in a mysterious black slime which "looked like sick" but had obviously emanated from the private parts of the whore.
"It was quite incredible," Cutler recalls. "When I pointed out to him that he was completely covered all over with this strange black spew he leapt out of bed thinking he had the DT's. He tore his clothes off and ran screaming in a berserk fashion around the room. He threw all the sodden clothes into the corner and, completely demented and naked, he dived out into the street and found a nearby tap to wash himself off.
"When we had a post mortum on just what had afflicted him and asked an experienced Save the Children Fund worker, he told us that the whores in the town regularly went to a witch doctor before business each day and he concocted a brew of fried black bat which they turned into a sort of sickly porridge which they stuffed up their fannies before sex. Apparently, this was supposed not only to save them from VD and pregnancy, but make their fannies smaller so, hopefully, making their clients' sex more enjoyable."
According to frank and fearless Jerry-can's later highly accredited account of his daring and dashing visit to Kisumu he was at that time dodging bullets from wayward drunk Tanzanian troops who were raping and looting at will. As the sweat poured down his valiant brow he was ducking and diving wayward machine gun fire and, in the name of Queen, country, and his expenses, bringing home to his millions of readers the 'real truth' about Amin's despotism.
After our intrepid and daring hero had washed himself down from the bat-spew he naturally needed a drink to settle his nerves. This consisted of a full bottle of Johnny Walker before he decided he was fit enough to face the rest of his highly dangerous assignment. He then heroically penetrated, single-handed against vast odds, Amin's former Ministry of the Interior and looted the incredible plans of Amin's plot to 'Nuke' the world. This was, of course, on top of his complete fantasy, concocted the day before in the same bar, that Idi was a cannibal who kept the heads of his victims in fridge.
According to the book, "there was a file cover marked 'Operation Poker', written by one of Amin's insane policy advisors about how to acquire nuclear weapons and blackmail the rest of Africa and all of Europe."
Cutler's account slightly differs. According to his affidavit: "We were in the bar and Gerry was completely drunk. We found some totally innocuous Photostats of nothing in particular and I wrote "Top Secret" on the top and then, in biro, using the bar itself as a desk, I wrote "Operation Poker." I then photographed these documents as 'evidence'. But, in reality, we completely invented the whole scam. I rather resent being called ' one of Amin's insane policy advisors' but Gerry at the time was so far gone on the scotch that he probably truly believed it may even have happened.
"The fact is that I payrolled the whole trip to nearly a thousand pounds and knew we had to find something to take back to make it worth while. Gerry just got pissed and went along with the completely concocted fantasies. Everything that the Daily Mirror eventually published was invented in a haze of alcohol while we were, in reality, shagging everything in sight."
This is the man who both the Evening Standard and the Guardian have called upon to crusade for "Freedom of Speech in the British Press." We quote Peter Preston on his personal review of the book: "It's the persona, the self-image that strikes you first: tough, ripely humorous, lovably tacky - George Cole plays Robin Hood. Golden-hearted Gerry warns Frank Bough, the second time round, to stick to the straight and narrow.......but the other thing about Gerry Brown is his ferocious professionalism.....the work is utterly painstaking......Brown puts the hours in as doggedly as any journalist around."
This comes after an article by Jerry-can himself entitled: "FINES ARE JUST FINE BY ME", with the strapline, 'if self regulation is good enough for MPs, it's good enough for me.' Gerry Brown, veteran of many a tabloid triumph, applauds the Government's decision to shy away from privacy legislation."
Sir Jerry-can Lancelot fails to mention that when he was sent on an assignment by his then feature's editor Rod Tyler, an expert on Caroline Thatcher's geographical private parts, to Northern Ireland - ostensibly to find out how "our boys" would spend Christmas in a "no-go" area - he actually spent all but two hours, doggedly, either in the officer's mess tanking it up, or in bed sleeping it off.
The missing two hours were when Cutler took him to the nearest pub and he was so drunk he thought he was back in Uganda. This was his one and only 'patrol', yet his heroic forage into bandit country takes up a full chapter of the hackneyed " as I stood, the bullets were whizzing passed my ears" style of on-the-spot journalism in the book.
Obviously the publishers, Virgin Books, were impressed with Brown's credentials. Enough, anyway, to write a blurb saying: "For over twenty-five years, Gerry Brown has been a top-class investigative journalist. He has trailed Idi Amin, sailed the Caribbean with the kidnappers of Ronnie Biggs, and lived in Hollywood, Ulster, the Middle East and Florida. He has worked for the BBC and World in Action: He has been threatened, punched and shot at." There is then a further strapline which says, "Compulsive, witty, no- holds-barred - Exposed is enough to give tabloid journalism a good name."
Jerry-can finally woke up sometime just before the New Year and asked just where he was. When an officer told him he was in Northern Ireland, Cutler reports, he said, "Oh shit, I'd better 'phone the wife."
For the two weeks they were in Crossmaglen, Cutler, and Jerry-can were guests of the Ministry of Defence. Jerry's bar bills became a serious liability to the then Defence Minister who was, via the taxpayer, footing the bill for the wholly gross indulgences.
When Brown finally put in his expenses at Bouverie Street, he added an extra thousand pounds for "necessary entertainment of contacts". It went through without a murmur and our "utter professional" Runcible promptly went to the Printer's Pie to celebrate the New Year.
Lastly, the Jerry-can saga lauds the talents of colleague Ray Chapman without revealing that Chappers is married to a former prostitute who actually charges him a minimum £100 a time for anal intercourse which goes on his expenses as "costs of investigation at Companies House"
(to be continued).
After successfully de-sexing God, The Oxford University Press have decided to republish a politically correct version of the National Anthem because it is felt that referring to "the Queen" will offend gays.
Mother and father save our gracious alternative sex need,(Table of Contents)
Long live our noble alternative sex needs,
Mother and father save the alternative sex needs.Long to piss over us,
happy and glorious
Long may the alternative sex need piss on us.
Mother and father save our alternative sex need.
Buoyant Danny Finklestein was a most unlikely choice as the new-broom Head of Research at Conservative Central Office. A former radical SDP supporter who sports the most unlikely ingredient for a Top Tory dirty trickster - a sense of humour - he appeared virtually from nowhere.
So low profile had he been until now that he was virtually the only person who did not have a file locked in the nasty little snake pit Dr Julian Lewis refers to as "my retirement fund". The revolting, sanctimonious, odious and obsessed doctor, is referring to the carefully selected archives he keeps on hidden discs at a "safe address" believed to be not a million miles away from the offices of Police Federation solicitor Barton Taylor, his new legal eagle.
An interesting choice, of course. Barton Taylor is suing the trade for distributing and wholesaling Scallywag. So is Julian Lewis. Between them there are some 20 writs flying around. In turn Scallywag is suing Barton Taylor for libel and Julian Lewis for malicious falsehood. An interesting little pot pourri.
Barton Taylor is suing our side because we insisted that a client of his, former police Superintendent Gordon Anglesea, was a paedophile. Lewis is suing the trade because we called him a perverted and dangerous scumbag. We are suing Barton Taylor because he called us liars, and the invidious Doctor Scumbag because he told malicious lies about us.
We make no bones about the fact that JL has done us serious damage and virtually taken us off the streets. His spies appear to be everywhere. Since we began, for example, a small bookshop in Camden Town called Compendium has stocked Scallywag and it has always sold well. Compendium was the only place left in the UK where you could obtain a copy. Until, that is, Lewis put the screws on and forced them under malicious threats to withdraw.
But it has not at all been a one-way traffic Our spies report that Lewis is himself acting in a demented fashion and has developed a pathological hatred for us which is so profound it borders on the insane. His entire life at present is devoted to finding out ways in which he can block us further. Number one on his hit list is any person who may be backing us. If he knew the full list he would have apoplexy and probably die from an overdose of masturbation.
I could ease his task slightly by saying all our backers are male, in the top 500 "Britain's Richest Men" (Business Age, September 95), all anti-establishment, and he already has extensive files on the lot of them - which is one of the reasons they came on board so readily. Lewis has now decided that we are after all fairly well funded and worth suing. True or not, we don't know what is stopping him. It's about time he gave up hitting the soft targets like the firm which physically delivers our papers to distributors, and the old soldier who regularly sold 300 copies outside Westminster tube station, and came for someone his own size.
I dream about cross examining Lewis in court 13 - for a man who suffers from such pathological obsessions is easily teased. Especially as he blames us exclusively for his present impending downfall.
When he is not furtively hiding in the spooky corners of Smith Square spying on his colleagues who is he convinced are spying on him, he is ranting and raving to anyone who will listen. Especially since he let it be known that he was looking for a safe Tory seat in the next election.
In fact, his entire time as the Number One Dirty Trickster, has been spent tailoring himself for the despatch box. He put himself forward to go on "the lists" as a candidate but so far he has not had so much as an acknowledgement from his dozens of letters. This he blames squarely and probably quite rightly on us. They don't want you Julian. No one does. Least of all your new boss.
Quite clearly, poor Julian is on the run and is now taking desperate measures to survive. He can only do this by eliminating us, and we refuse to go away.
Armed with documents stolen from our offices, Lewis is systematically harassing any person who might have helped us in the past. This includes a sweet old lady from Hampstead, condemned the Eagle, who was for a time one of our benefactresses, He has made threatening calls to our solicitor and actually told David Price (a) that he was in possession of the stolen documents.
The theft of these documents was properly reported to the police and, armed with the irrefutable proof that he has received sensitive stolen property, we have now filed a formal criminal complaint and fully expect that Kentish Town police will soon be paying him a visit. That will give the wags in Smith Square a well-earned giggle.
He has also gone to the Sunday Times - to his retained staffers on the Murdoch press, like David Leppard - to try and persuade them to do an expose on us. Come on, chaps. We'd love it.
He has also heard rumours that we are starting a Scallywag-del-Sol for the English speaking people of Spain. The rumour is absolutely true. We already have bricks and mortar just outside Malaga and if he wants to give his spies a holiday in Spain, Scallywag is lunching at the Palacio Hotel in Madrid on Friday 15th September, with most of the people in the capitol who wish to be involved with the project. But Julian's lackeys had better bring their chequebooks. A glass of champagne at the Palacio - opposite the Prado - is about £20.
His scare-mongering techniques were summed up in a constant stream of ultra right-wing rhetoric which started with his "celebrated" The Assault on the West in l968. This caught the imagination of Tory right because of student militancy at the time.
There was, of course, much legitimate ammunition at the time, for the ultra loony left was in its turbulent teens and itself the victim of violent paranoia. But Greig completely overrated their political importance and would see an insidious revolution being plotted at any legitimate Labour Party fete.
He earned a living of sorts from his writings, but he was sponsored as well by the Heritage Trust in Washington which is a covert cover for the CIA "subversion unit". At the time the Trust was also sponsoring Julian Lewis in his campaign against the CND.
As a North London council housing estate goes, mine is safer than most. I do not have to run a gauntlet of Yardies every time I pop out for some cigarettes. There is no overt violence over and above the odd "domestic". You do have to tightly secure doors and windows and not be too adventurous late at night. But that is the same everywhere these days. The main difference is that my block is virtually all cockney and while they are not averse to the odd armed robbery, gang fight, even a murder or two thrown in, Cockneys generally don't like shitting on their own doorsteps.
In this sense the estate is a bit of an enclave. Over the railway line is the sedateness of Primrose Hill and up past the Round House Hampstead starts. If you go south or west, however, you step into a no-man's land which occasionally spills over into our "village".
From time to time a gang of youths collect in one of the doorways to barter stolen goods and drugs. There are late night scuffles and endless police sirens and after the big drugs clean-up in King's Cross, the dealers first moved to Camden Town tube station and then to Camden Lock where they almost sneer at the police.
There are an intolerable number of alcoholics and beggars all over the area. Handbags are snatched on a regular basis; pickpockets abound in Camden market where more than 100,000 tourists visit each year. There are muggers and knifefights - as any visit on any night to the casualty department at the Royal Free will adequately testify.
So, while we are luckier than most, we certainly don't live in a social utopia. The police complain they are often so busy they simply don't have the manpower to deal with petty crimes. It can sometimes take twenty minutes to answer an emergency and, knowing the area, I can be sympathetic to this.
All the more strange, indeed perniciously odd, then when the other day I was walking from my flat to my local and two policemen, after making their enquiries, were getting back into the Panda. I was crossing the square nearby smoking the last of a cigarette and aimed the butt at a drain. It missed.
The passenger policeman immediately jumped out and demanded aggressively that I pick the dog end up or he would arrest me on litter offences. The banality of this, the sheer crassness, left me at first stunned for I had at the time been lost in thought and almost unaware of my actions. By then the fag had gone out and anyway had fallen close to a litter bin which was over-spilling with ice cream papers and last night's takeaways. The cigarette was difficult to even spot.
For a moment we stared at each other, eyeball-to-eyeball, unsure of the next move. I had by then gathered my thoughts and said the fatal thing, "haven't you REALLY got something better to do around here?"
At that the other copper jumped out. "You got a problem, George?" he asked. "He thinks we waste our time," the other said waving his arm at me.
"Well, we both saw him, didn't we George."
"Definitely acting suspiciously. Shall we take him in?"
"Well, let's search him first."
By now incredulous, I said angrily. "I am a law abiding citizen going about my legal business. If you really wish to arrest we for dropping a cigarette butt, fair enough. But you are definitely not going to search me."
"Threatening behaviour, resisting arrest, if we search him George we might also get him on assault. What do you think?"
"Well, we wouldn't be wasting our time, would we?"
At that moment the police radio crackled out a mayday and the two leapt back into the car and roared off. I stared after them, still stunned, and later went and had my pint.
My anger turned to a mood of sober perception.
I have watched the situation with blacks in this area and studied Paul Condon's assertion that most street crimes are committed by young blacks. I know very well that most of the muggers and drug dealers at my end of town are indeed black, and they can harass you on almost every street corner. But then I see blacks all around me - in the music business, driving buses, sweeping streets, black office yuppies with their mobile 'phones. In Hampstead I know black artists and poets, window cleaners and actors and I se black families getting the 24 bus for a picnic on Hampstead Heath.
Suddenly, after my own brief encounter, police harassment became a nasty reality and I wished now that that mayday call had not gone off because it just so happened two reliable witnesses had watched the whole confrontation from a first floor window and had they gone through with their plans, I would have taken those two coppers to the cleaners.
We have over the past year established Lewis's modi operandi and fully realise we are up against an evil but expert operator. A worthy opponent if ever there was one. But methinks our unworthy doctor does not play chess or poker. Or if he does, not well. He is impetuous to a fault, often allowing his temper to get in the way of sound judgement. Dangerous for a high-powered top Tory in the old boy think tank. Always dangerous to leave that odd pawn so vulnerable - or to bet on three nines. In short, Julian keeps making mistakes and it is only a matter of time before he gets the spanking he deserves.
Because he is such a mine of high-class gossip and is more than willing to keep the daily diaries informed, he is also able from time to time to pull in his marker. His two tamest targets are Peterborough in the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard Diary. He can 'plant' a story in either of them more or less whenever he wants.
So it was that when he wanted to put the pressure on, just to let everyone know he meant business, he leaked a story to Peterborough (a chair recently vacated by the odious Quinten Letts) on his so-called "triumph" against a small bookshop called Compendium in Camden High Street, North London.
The background to this sorry saga is as follows.
When Scallywag stopped being a provincial, Dorset, naughty boy and came back to his Hampstead homestead to launch a similar magazine in Camden it was a small and unambitious affair. We printed about 2000 copies and distributed ourselves to pubs, coffee bars, clubs and so on, as well as to newsagents and "alternative" bookshops. We sold for £1 and the retailer took a third. Compendium was not only among the first to stock us - from edition one - but the first to sell out. They were happy with it, and naturally so were we.
The Ham and High local newspaper has called Compendium a "left-wing, intellectual bookshop". I don't know whether it is or not, but it is the kind of bookshop that any intelligent booklover loves. It is one of those 'browsers' shops where you always come across the unexpected. It is 'arty' in the intellectual sense and, if it is not left-wing, it is certainly not right-wing.
Throughout our different trials and tribulations, Compendium always had us in stock and when we went 'national' we still made a personal delivery.
When Julian Lewis tried to close us down he effectively forced us out of the newsagents by suing distributors and wholesalers. We had several alternatives and we took them, but no one pretends it wasn't a serious blow. We truly had to go 'underground', naturally not without great cost. But we are still around, not aground.
As we had always done, we delivered a copy of the last edition to Compendium where it was, as usual, well received. I doubt very much whether anyone at the shop had ever actually read the magazine, so they would not have known of its contents. They were, in every sense of the word concerning Scallywag, "innocents".
The invidious information-gathering machine which Lewis has set up eventually informed him that issue 29, which he claims libelled him by calling him a pervert and a dirty trickster, was openly on sale at Compendium. Whereupon he took himself off to Camden to first buy a copy and then make threats to the owners that he would sue them forthwith unless they withdrew the remaining copies, which they promptly did.
Not content with this, he had a pow-wow with his equally obnoxious legal eagle, Barton Taylor, the Police Federation's principle lawyer who is also suing our distributors and wholesalers in conjunction with the CCO, and they decided they could ring a little more from the 'innocents'. Unless Compendium paid up £2,000 immediately, and made a grovelling apology, Taylor threatened, a writ would be issued forthwith. Compendium took legal advice and very, very reluctantly decided to give in.
No writ was ever actually issued and if it had been it would have been easily defended. Using the letter of the law, Compendium had complied - inasmuch as they had withdrawn all copies as soon as it had been pointed out to them that the issue in question might be contentious. But the Lewis-Taylor double act had been able, quite unfairly, to bully a submission based entirely on the premise that "if you don't get out now it's going to cost you a lot of money." I cannot recall a clearer case of legal blackmail. For a small and 'innocent' bookshop, £2,000 is a great deal of money.
But let us now come to the leaking of the story to the tame Peterborough. A holier-than-thou charitable doctor evil claimed: "I have only sought to ban the issues which libel me. I have no wish to ban the whole publication. That would be undemocratic." Well, he left a crucial pawn to be crucified because his threat to Compendium had a rigid proviso that, along with the apology they must agree "never to stock the magazine again."
Then later in the Ham and High he really starts losing the middle game. "The only way I could stop this filth being published, without committing financial suicide, was to deal with its handlers." Then: "I would sue Scallywag itself within 24 hours if I could find a sponsor. If it issues any more poisonous falsehoods against me, anyone who handles it will hear from me."
The real reason why Julian Lewis is not suing us is that he knows damned well we would defend ourselves to the end. He also knows damned well, and so does Barton Taylor, that under the present libel laws everyone handling us are 'soft' targets who are more than likely to give in rather than face the hustle of prolonged legal proceedings.
Taylor and Lewis are exploiting this legal situation for all it is worth, while it lasts. They are bringing out the heavy artillery against people who are not inclined to get into a battle and who don't fully realise what is really going on, or even what their real chances or rights may be.
Barton Taylor is a heavyweight with very little scruples and nice, big, fat, guaranteed cheques coming in from very wealthy police federation. He has taken a leaf out of Carter-Ruck's bible - to hit soft targets and never give an inch. Don't even cajole, just bully and threaten.
Julian Lewis is competing against 151 others in his bid to be the next MP for Kensington and Chelsea, one of the safest Tory seats in the country. He is up against many worthies, including ex-ministers Norman Lamont, Alan Clark, and former Deputy leader of the Conservative party, John Maples. Undaunted, he sent in one of the largest CV's. In it he boasts that one of his 'plusses' was as a parliamentary aide to Edward Leigh. He fails to mention his duties were invariably carried out in the boudoir. He got a doctorate MA in Oxford in 1981. This is why he titles himself "Dr."
Quote: "It is a descent into sleaze with a targeting of personalities like John Prescott and Clare Short to demonstrate that they are still leftist socialists under the Blair veneer. If you take that kind of policy to its natural conclusion, then clearly you want details of their private lives." - Hugh Colver, who resigned as Director of Communications, CCO.
Quote: "The CCO has key figures operating for them at the Sunday Times, including Andrew Grice"
Quote: "At Westminster names being banded about from among the Tory- minded journalists (for Colver's job) are..........Andrew Grice......" The Guardian, 9.11.95
Quote of the Month: "This is typical of the (Conservative) press office. It can't even handle a story about itself properly." - a minister quoted in the Sunday Times after Colver's resignation.
A few years ago, on a seemingly endless three day journey by slow train down the whole backbone of Thailand and Malaysia, bored by endless paddy fields, I noted that the slim telegraph poles were all numbered. It was the kind of exercise one only invents on long, slow train journeys but the photographer and I took notice when we passed 111/11 and made idle side bets on whether, or rather when, we would reach 1111/11. As it happens, an hour away from Singapore, we photographed 1111111/11. If you were going the other way, of course, you'd only take note when you'd reached 1.
A friend of mine joined BT five years ago when they were proud to announce that the profits were £11 a second. This August they shamefacedly admitted they were now £111 a second. Proportionally, we are travelling an express train and the telegraph poles are simply whizzing by. The paddy fields are a mere blur, and we are gathering steam by the minute. The destination is the end of my life - at which time I'm betting the BT telegraph table will register £1111111/11 a second.
The thing is that despite the Thatcher dream of constant Free Enterprise, BT have managed to keep a very firm hold on the telecommunications monopoly. When they have consolidated this, and pretty well ALL modern communications are under the BT banner, then you will find you cannot move in the modern world without paying them money. Sacks of it.
Water and power are two modern essentials which only eccentric hermits are expected to live without. We HAVE to have them and the boards of both know it. They will quite cynically manipulate the situation and prices into their own fat wallets and there will be little we can do about it.
But BT's cynicism is quite boundless. At present they have no less than 1,600 buildings in and around Central London. They are fast closing these down and starting up half a dozen more compact technological centres in such places as Croydon and St. Albans. This is a cynical way of not only cutting costs, but causing mass redundancies.
It is ironical but the safest jobs at BT at the moment are the programmers on the most modern computers which will inevitably make everyone at BT - outside the boardroom - redundant, including themselves.
BT will dominate the internet systems, shipping lines, satellite communications, and be on top of every new innovation going. It will shortly be impossible to move in any direction without the faceless board members somehow taking a cut. If you fall foul of them you will be virtually excommunicated from the modern world.
There will be no people in this Orwellian world, just noiseless, impersonal machines in a handful of gaunt and silent buildings. All part of the Thatcher heritage. Her voice will continue to echo down those eerie corridors well into the next century.
Instead Major and Co. got their PRs to give exclusive TV world rights to a tame TV company called Evolution TV. The company earned tens of thousands of pounds as a result. But there was one very important proviso. Mandarins from the FO and Downing Street would vet every inch of footage and only release film which showed Major and Malcolm Rifkin in a good light.
As a result the world was denied watching any other speaker at the conference. All they got in the end was a three-minute edited version of Major’s best profile as he pontificated thunderously - posing as a world statesman.
Armed with very damning tape recordings - some sixty hours of them - proving beyond doubt the couple's duplicity - Oyston sued them and others for libel. He hired as his solicitor the infamous Peter Carter-Ruck who was "very confident" of winning.
Two years later, however, purely on a technical point before the case could come to court, it was thrown out of court and the two scheming MP's were awarded £400,000 costs. Oyston's own costs were in the region of £200,000. The technical hitch was purely mundane. Carter- Ruck had failed to lodge some papers within the proper period.
Not only are he and the defendants' lawyers some £600,000 better off, but Oyston was prevented airing his case in public and, more important, "publishing" the damaging tapes. What was not known to Oyston until the case was all but lost was Carter-Ruck's close involvement with the Sir James Goldsmith Trust.
This was first set up by Goldsmith to finance any person who had been legitimately libelled by Private Eye, with whom he had had such a controversial fracas. There are several millions in the trust which is administered by a board of trustees, including Norman Tebbit. The most persistent and particular customers of the fund have been Tory MP's and since Private Eye has become so tame, the targets have been widened.
The present most popular target is the BBC and, for example, the trust was used by MP's Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton to sue them. As it was by the disgraced MP for Winchester, John Browne. In many cases the MP's are recommended by the Conservative Central Office. No one from any other party has ever even been considered, however badly they may have been libelled.
We have come into possession of a letter requesting that the Goldsmith Trust backs the case of a prominent Tory against the Observer. In this case the case was turned down.
It was turned down by Alisdair Pepper, a senior partner in Peter Carter-Ruck and Co. The firm has the full blessing of the Goldsmith outfit. In fact you simply cannot get backing without the tacit approval and recommendation of Pepper. Win or lose, Carter-Ruck is guaranteed his hefty fees by the Trust.
Owen Oyston is one of the largest private contributors to the Labour Party and is a staunch and active socialist. Carter-Ruck gets a high proportion of his £1,000 a day fees from Conservatives, and he is considered a very "great friend" of the CCO.
Indeed, when it was reported that our distributors and wholesalers were being defended by Carter Ruck after Julian Lewis had issued writs against nine of them, Lewis bragged: "I have no objection to being up against Peter. He is an old friend of mine and we have done a lot of business together in the past."
Lewis was so extra-confident because he knew very well - as is obvious in the case of Owen Oyston - that Carter-Ruck and Co. would almost certainly sabotage each case of his own clients before it got to court.
Our own legal advisors have confirmed that in the case of Oyston there is a clear cut case of incompetence and we are waiting for the same to happen with the wholesalers.
In the event of this ever being proved, Carter-Ruck would have to be censured by the Law Society and almost certainly struck off.
Bridget Newman, Janine Holden and Samantha Threlkeld all accuse Oyston of rape some seven years ago, although they cannot remember exact times or places and have never mentioned it before police approached them.
Janine Holden has been a serious cocaine user since she was 17.
In addition to pockets full of money they may obtain from the tabloids, all three girls will receive substantial sums in compensation should Oyston be found guilty.
One potential witness, Dawn Harrison was dropped by police after she talked to the Daily Mirror on the day Oyston was arrested. The evidence of Nicola Walker was thrown out at the preliminary hearing for being "entirely inconsistent."
While no money has yet changed hands' substantial offers have been made to all three testifying girls by the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror. Pictures have been taken of the girls and large files have already been built up on what they might say in the event of a conviction.
The original approach was made by Sunday Mirror man Damian Lazarus before the preliminary hearing. He also obtained four hours of tapes from a Hazel Taylor, who is not giving evidence.
A local freelance in Manchester approached all the girls on behalf of the News of the World. All three intimated they were "on the market" if there is a conviction. This may seriously jeopardise the trial.
I am also completely in favour of abolishing the fact that the Jews killed Jesus. It was always complete poppycock anyway, made up by St. Peter who we all know was an utter fascist. It now means of course that Hitler did not kill the Jews either. We mustn’t offend the Germans. The early Americans, of course, did not kill the Red Indians. We can’t possibly go around being prejudiced against early Americans. The Zulu wars, naturally enough, only happened because the gallant black warriors rose up against white Imperial repression. This all enhances my theory that the entire Second World War was a paranoiac figment of the imagination. It is the most perfectly designed way to eliminate all wars - you just write them out of the books and they never existed. The PC’s in American must be warmly congratulated for their monumental and historical peace-keeping efforts.
The new bible makes God into a bi-sexual who is both mother and father but doesn’t quite explain how the couple made love and therefore created humans. I am sure this small oversight does not detract one bit from the overall tremendous value of this tome.
In there only the other day I joined a conversation about lobby facilities which are apparently dire. The Daily Telegraph is the only room with a view. The Times, of course, has a nice large room. But the six Guardian hacks have to make do with a tiny converted lavatory, and the Independent with a broom cupboard. Under the Conservatives, the Sun has inherited rather a good room, while the Mirror makes do in a closet.
Paul Broca, the brilliant, if eccentric 19th Century French anthropologist and sexual bigot studied the size of male and female brains and pronounced in grand misogynist prose, "They (women) excel in fickleness, inconsistency, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without doubt there exists some distinguished women, superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of a monstrosity, as for example, of a gorilla with two heads: consequently, we may neglect them entirely."
Even for Jolly Roger the above goes a teeny bit too far, but as a professional student of female logic I am delighted to find present day anthropologists have now discovered that women's brains DO work entirely differently from our own. I have never argued that women are not logical, just that they are only logical to themselves. I mean, is there really such a thing as 'woman's intuition'?
In fact women's logical never ceases to fascinate and amaze me. In its finer extremes it is so scatter-brained as to be a work of magnificent dexterity and artistry, worthy, I assure you, of admiration and respect, even of some guarded affection.
Now new electronic brain scanners have unveiled the mystery. Men use one side or the other of their brains when thinking. Women use both sides at the same time. It is as beautifully simple as that. Women do not necessarily use MORE of their brain cells at any given time when, say, making an important decision, it's just that their brain cells are operating on both sides of their wretched little fizzogs. It's their mental ying and yang, probably working against each other, whereas we males are always so much more rational because our heads aren't bouncing ideas from side to side like a Wimbledon final.
It is such a great relief to me to find there is after all such a judicious and simple explanation. It's why, for example, no one can ever see 'eye to eye' with their mother in laws. Mother in laws must have this terrible battle going on in their heads with all that logic bouncing around ferociously, getting themselves and everyone else completely confused.
In fact, now I know, I shall be far more forgiving in future. When the next woman is regaling me for enjoying a penis I shall look them straight in the eye and imagine all those brain cells buzzing around like shooting stars in a sort of vast cosmic jelly. It just isn't their FAULT, for heaven's sakes. They were just unfortunately made that way, poor darlings and from now on I shall try and be a lot more tolerant.
I got an involuntary shudder of disgust, touched with panic and despair, when I read the latest rating by Vanity Fair of the ten most influential members of the "New Establishment". Number One was Rupert Murdoch. Number Two was Bill Gates. Number Three was Michael Eisner, of Disney. And so it went on. All ten on the top 'world's most powerful citizens' list were in the technological communications business.
It was the first full, ghastly, frightening realisation that a handful of extremely rich men (very much intent on getting richer) held the whole world by the balls and sooner or later they're going to squeeze tight and there will be nothing we can do about it but yelp meekly and succumb.
As Bill Gates was hyping up his new Windows 95 system, so Murdoch was busy buying up all the existing "subscriber" information systems in Europe.
In the UK we've watched it happen during the privatisation of our crucial industries, especially BT. Once you're in the system - and in order to survive in the modern world you have to be - they begin squeezing you dry. It soon happened with water and electricity. And a few fat cats trebled their incomes and basked in the cynicism of free enterprise.
The whole hype over Windows 95 was classic Gates syndrome. We are all relatively happy with what we've got, yet we are told what we've got is not enough. But whatever we've got will never be enough. Computers are now in charge and only a handful of people are in charge of them.
Getting on the internet now is like swimming through glue.
It all started off valiantly enough. Most of the world's information was stored in technological archives and all you had to do to connect to it was buy a simple modem and plug into your local telephone line. Any kid could do it in the attic at very little cost.
Then in moved the systems men.
Now, not only do I have to pay about £6 an hour for the privilege of locking into free information, but I have to completely upgrade all my hard and soft ware. Every time I got into the slightest difficulty I was told the way to get out of it was to buy more - or preferably jettison all I have and start again with the latest more expensive equipment.
If there are an estimated world-wide 30 million subscribers logging on an average half hour a day it works out at around £18 million a day into the systems' coffers purely on wasted time.
I began to see it clearly when I tried to load on my web browser software. At first it told me it would take ten minutes to put in. But after ten minutes it told me it would take a further forty. And so it went on. As each minute ticked away, so the time increased, didn't diminish. If this isn't swimming backwards I don't know what is. Finally, after both BT and the system had taken about £20 from me, it told me my computer did not have enough memory to accommodate the browser.
But mark my words. This is just the beginning. When the ten world's most powerful men have got it all tied up you won't just need a new system, you'll have to have it and every new system you install, they'll find a way of charging you further for all sorts of things you didn't think you needed.
Bill Gates and co. didn't so much invent new systems as how to legally run their own dollar printing presses. God forbid if he and Rupert ever get into bed together.
Notes:
(a) Profile of David
Price.