What must a man do to get noticed? Asks Julian Clary
I've decided to sleep with Kate Moss. It's just the shot in the arm my career needs. Russell Brand was virtually unheard of until he emerged bleary-eyed from Kate's flat ten days ago - now he's the epitome of cool. I've contacted Kate's agent and outlined my availability over the next few weeks. (I may not be in the general mould of Johnny Depp and Pete Doherty, she said, but if I can do mascara and I don't wash for a week, she thinks I'm on a promise.)
I also decided to make my carnal services available to Mr Brand. If Kate wants me first then so be it. I learned my heterosexual lovemaking craft in the Nineties. Just a blurred memory for me, but my publicist seems convinced it was with Heather Mills. I'm sure, once it's made known that I've got Heather, Kate and Russell under my belt, I'll be on the front of every tabloid for a week. I've got a book to sell and business is business.
So. A make-over for the New Statesman. And why not? It's attention-seeking behaviour, of course, but there's nothing wrong with that. I, for one, blushed with admiration when I saw the jaunty fonts, snazzy cover and awesome new size. Even magazines can be botoxed, it seems. From now on, instead of the traditional NS luncheons, the select few will be invited to join the editor in his Jacuzzi for a few lines of cocaine refreshment.
Cynical readers might sneer that this is like your granny wearing a boob tube and taking herself off to Glastonbury in search of some hot young totty. What next, you cry? A free bottle of Viagra with every copy and a centre spread of Natasha Kaplinsky? Don't get upset. I'm here every other week with searing political analysis and the latest from the fisting world. Something for everyone, I'd have thought.
I've done a few regrettable things this week. Mutilated a toad and kissed a Tory MP, for starters. I've just moved to an old house in the country. I am 47 and it seemed the only polite thing to do. Maturity means withdrawal, in the gay world at least. You can join a committee or do gay charity work if you want to keep your hand in, but pubs and clubs, dating and mating are unsuitable pursuits.
So here I am, a pale face sometimes glimpsed through a latticed window. If I go out these days it's just into the garden. I have a big grassy area that requires a sitty-on tractor arrangement as a lawnmower. Today, thinking a clump of fading daffodils was ready to be cut back, I ploughed over the patch with my rotating blades and encountered a toad. It lay there, dazed but not dead, and I didn't know what to do. Two limbs were severed and it looked at me, pleading. Its instinct to hop away led to a grotesquely comical half-somersault. On his back, spraying creamy, toady blood from wrist and knee, the toad and I held eye contact. I put the tractor into reverse and finished him off.
To recover from my murderous task I stopped the tractor and went indoors to make some tea (for me, not the toad). I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and I swear there was a whiff of Dennis Nilsen about me.
Later I arrived at a bookshop in Guildford to do what is called a "literary event". Because my autobiography has come out in paperback I am obliged to turn up and talk about myself for an hour. Waiting outside were the local press and the Tory MP Anne Milton, puckering up for a photo opportunity. (Identified as lookie-likies in Punch magazine, we go way back.) Coming over all showbizzy, I rather forgot my position as Kate Moss's lover and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Of course, the flashbulbs went off and our innocent clench was captured.
To find, after all the trouble I've gone to, that the only publicity I've earned is a snap of me and a Tory babe in the Guildford Gazette is a trifle galling. What more must I do for tabloid attention? Mud-wrestle with Nancy Dell'Olio?
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