A beautifully decorated cottage, marquee in the garden, 3 delicious courses for dinner including wild Salmon and filet mignon served by charming staff.
Amongst Kelly’s 50 plus amusing friends included the delightful director Lloyd Kramer and his wife. Lloyd directed Liz and Dick with Lindsay Lohan. We swapped bad actress horror stories. He told me about her and I told him about Liz Hurley. You should have been the fly on the wall.
After I made The Method with Elizabeth Hurley I was a boiling bag of resentment…not unlike I was after I received Jake’s vile email last August. I had been bullied, mistreated and maligned by Elizabeth and my only revenge was to sell my story to the highest bidder.
I had been on the front cover of the NOTW myself after I was found guilty of spending too much on my credit card and not paying the bill. I rather enjoyed the attention.
It is quite easy to sell ones story if the celebrity you are pissing on is famous enough.
My agent contacted all of the relevant tabloid British newspapers and we negotiated the best price with News Corp. I was offered The Daily Mail for the same price. I was assured that The Daily Mail was a more ‘classy’ decision but I was not interested in ‘classy’. I was interested in, as I said, revenge.
I was on vacation in Sydney at the time, Sharon Marshal was assigned to interview me. We met in a smart hotel in Wooloomooloo. Sharon is an attractive brunette who became, after the event, a great friend. The NOTW flew me to London from Sydney for the weekend. I told my story, they paid me the money.
Justice was served.
Elizabeth wrote to me. She said, “I hope you enjoyed your thirty pieces of silver.” I replied, “Actually, I really enjoyed my sixty thousand pieces of silver.”
When I returned from Australia Sharon invited me to stay at her home.
Sharon lived in Vauxhall at the time with Kath Raymond who was dating Les Hinton and would later marry him. The entire cast of this current controversy were at their wedding reception: Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson.
Kath worked for Gordon Brown as a ‘special advisor’ whilst dating Les Hinton. One didn’t need underworld contacts to get information with Kath working so closely with Gordon. Also, however outraged Gordon and Sarah are now their links to News Corp are just as suspect as anyone elses.
Sharon now works with and for soap operas which is ironic given what she used to do.
I texted Sharon after the Milly Dowler scandal hit offering condolences, she texted back, ‘terrible times.’ Her loyalty obviously and quite rightly remains with her friend Kath and she must be torn between her old life and her new.
Sharon long ago turned her back on the NOTW, she ended up disgruntled enough to write a book called Tabloid Girl which was her way of stuffing her ex bosses. Read it, it’s fun and insightful.
The NOTW is no more…until risen again as The Sunday Sun.
The establishment is dancing the streets. They are free of the tyrannical Murdoch, the ocker scoundrel. The dirty old man. Prince William cheered, threw his hands in the air, when he heard the news I am told by very good sources.
It amuses me to see Jarvis Cocker wipe his ass on the freshly murdered newspaper. Our relationship (the British) with this widely sold and read ‘newspaper’ is confused. I am sure that, like most other celebrities, Jarvis has benefited from the newspaper as well as suffered. I don’t believe that he hasn’t ever bought a copy or read a copy when salacious details of people he doesn’t know were made public.
Les Hinton may very well cop some jail time for his erstwhile ex-boss. Kath may lose their upper east side apartment. Wade et el are being hounded as they hounded, their drawn faces peering incredulously from chauffeur driven cars.
Karmageddon has arrived at News Corp.
Hinton’s profile is about to get a lot higher over his role in the scandal that brought down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. As a Murdoch staffer for more than half a century, Hinton spent a dozen years running News International, the British unit of Murdoch’s global company, including while the phone hacking was taking place at News of the World. And it was Hinton who told a parliamentary committee in 2007 that he was “absolutely convinced” that the illegal accessing of phones was limited to a single rogue reporter.
If Elizabeth really had broken up with Arun a few months ago as she claims..why is she having clandestine meetings with Shane Warne in hotel rooms rather than in her Kensington house?
I wonder if Arun remembers my dire warning for him to run as fast as his little legs would carry him when Elizabeth introduced us. Much to his chagrain I sat him down like a good brother and told him that no good would come of knowing Elizabeth…only public shame.
That was when we were filming The Method in Romania when she was publicly toying with him to the amusement of her snotty friends and family.
I wanted to write a bunch of stuff about Elizabeth being a sex addict but I wrote a thousand words and then the computer crashed and it all vanished. I can’t be bothered to write it again.
I was reminiscing about the first time I met Elizabeth and she was laying on the floor of her sitting room…her legs apart, her lips pink and swollen.
I wonder if she remembers telling me about her whipping club in LA? How she loves to ‘take a man in hand’. I wonder if she dominates Shane? He looks like the sort of man who needs to be dominated, coerced, his power stripped from him by a woman, a good..strong woman like Elizabeth. And..of course, we never mention the lesbian interlude. Know about that? I do.
I hear that she was in San Lorenzo last week looking a bit worse for wear. Drunk.
I wonder who is looking after the kid?
The problem with Elizabeth is that she is a mere actress/celebrity when in fact she was born to be a high priestess or warrior princess, acolytes tugging at her skirt. Gladiators hand-picked from the forum to pleasure her.
Poor Elizabeth! She’s the straight equivalent of a gay ‘power bottom’.
Elizabeth! Go and sort yourself out at Sex Rehab. You are one of us! You control every straight man within sniffing distance with your pussy perfume, the intoxicating scent of your vagina.
Oh, I have seen it with my own eyes warrior princess!
Until you get yourself a kingdom I’m afraid it might be rehab for you dear.
On an entirely different note…do you like my new socks?
I can always tell when JB has had a particularly social weekend because on Monday morning there are people googling him.
It makes me happy that he is out there meeting people, enjoying his new gay life.
He deserves it.
He really is a very sweet man.
I hope that he is happy. I do. I hope that he has consigned me to the past and made his peace with the ex-girlfriend.
My fantasy is that he has met a man who he can love and settle on. He can do what I have attempted to do but have failed. It was that particular line in his last email that hurt me most, the way he derided my ability/hope to make a successful relationship. Mocking me. Though it may be true that is the last thing you want to hear from a man who you love.
He is out there having a blast. He will attract wonderful people into his life. For him, the dark days are over. One thing is for sure: he isn’t going to make any of the mistakes that he made before. How do I know this? Because he is a sensible guy.
Today, I wish him all the best.
Okay, this is the deal: my ticket to London is now booked for the 17th. Why has this taken so long? Because I had to make everything secure here before I went home. I mean emotionally as well as practically .
I don’t want to bring a troubled mind into a situation that requires absolute focus.
I need to get well. I need to recuperate. I need to go where the love it.
So, I have been going to meetings, dealing with my STUFF. I got into a palava before dinner on Saturday night with a rather unpleasant, drunk lesbian but rather than write about what happened I think I may just try to forget all about it…unless it bites me in the ass. Drama included Ellen (yes that one) a vile decorator and her equally vile gay son.
If I get particularly moody this week we may just consign this to history.
Decorators? Who needs them?
Bumped into David Furnish (Mrs Elton John) who can scarcely conceal his loathing for me. He is Elizabeth Hurley’s great friend so this is totally understandable. I don’t mind my pariah role. I am who I am, flaws and all…yet I know that I am not just my flaws. As I have said before..in society we need our devils and our angels. It is a role that I own and have undoubtedly made my own.
Barry is here from Whitstable on his way to Australia. It’s lovely having him around. We are going into Beverly Hills this afternoon.
Rained heavily all night, today the sun is shining.
The weekend was spent largely with Gabe. He cooked lunch here on Saturday and the four of us ate grilled pork chops, brussel sprouts and bacon with crushed walnuts and some wonderful kale.
We picked passion fruit (I am going to make passion fruit creme brule) lemons and figs from the garden. We peeled the figs, reduced them in balsamic vinegar and made a cherry and fig compote to eat with the chops.
Dinner at SHLA on Saturday night (bad food) and Chateau Marmont (good food) for brunch the following day. Saw Marilyn Heston. Everybody is very excited about Miami Basel.
The weekend was very social, lots of fun..amusing celebrity sightings and a good deal of flirting. I like my life right now, returned to normal…I have much to look forward to.
On Sunday afternoon I lay by the fire at Soho House reading the Observer, chatting with friends, eating home made cookies and milk. In bed by 8pm…exhausted.
Script notes arrived from JA. Will attend to them this evening.
After it’s six month epic repair my gold watch finally came home from Boucheron. The Mec, designed by Solange Azagury. Bought after seeing it on her husband at a party for Bella Freud.
Sparkling rose gold and new black leather strap, the small gold button that had popped off for no reason last year was finally repaired, the scratches erased.
I bought the watch with the money I was paid by The News of the World when I sold my Elizabeth Hurley ‘tell all’ story after the making of my film, The Method. My sweet revenge for her appalling behaviour, the treatment of me and others and general vileness.
Most of all I sold that story because it galled me daily that a talentless witch like Hurley could steal a paying job from a real actress.
Going into that project I rather stupidly thought that I could give her the benefit of the doubt and coerce a performance out of her. When she told me rather grandly the first day of shooting not to direct her because she was a ‘a celebrity, not an actress’ I really had nowhere to go.
A grueling 3 months followed.
The keystone cop like producers Brad Wyman and Donald Kushner were not interested in making a film, rather they were busily conning money out of the British tax system, which at the time had an incentive designed to help the British Film industry but had been so bastardized that films made in Romania with American producers armed with dodgy budgets..qualified as BRITISH. The BUDGET for The Method that the government saw was no way translated into what the local Romanian crew were paid..about $100 a week.
I told Will Self about this terrible con which, during the time it was operational, must have funneled as much tax payers money out of the country into American bank accounts as it would have cost to pay for several new British hospitals.
Will was appalled. Deborah Orr was appalled. everyone I mentioned it to was appalled but nobody did anything about it.
Thankfully Gordon Brown finally put an end to this theft overseen by the worst kind of British film producers.
If you think I have been nasty to Jake..read what I wrote about Elizabeth.
The Architect stayed over last night. It’s not happening again. I am waiting for him to leave as I write. No sex. I cooked dinner. He smokes really hard. He makes a kind of gay purring ‘ah ha’ when he means to say yes and his perfume and shoes are CHEAP. His hands on me in the night caused pain in my skin his attention was so unwelcome. He was all over me like a rash.
He just left.
I may be a perfectionist, as Jake said, but when I loved him..Jake was my perfection. I simply loved touching him, kissing him, rubbing his head. I loved him laying beside me. I loved his smell and his eyes and soft mouth.
Which makes his treachery that much worse.
I hate him perfectly like I loved him perfectly. For a short while the search for my illusive man was over. For all his miserable flaws and inappropriateness and unavailability I loved him. I really loved him.
They ask me privately: How then, if you say you love him, can you treat him like that?
Anyone who asks that audacious question has never truly been in love and I pity you.
My perfect hatred for him is built like a leaden, black as night, tar wall between what is and what was. A black tar wall erected between me and him so I never yearn for him, never cry for him, never love him ever again.
It is the only way I know how.
When I think of all the arguments I have heard for why he was not right for me I am dumb-founded by how pedestrian they are. LOVE, love when it comes should be fought for! I tried every thing I knew to keep him and when I failed, when I failed I couldn’t be his friend. Listening to him tell me about other men. Listening to him reveal in every sordid detail of who fucked who, how many times they came. The rides home to Washington Heights. Those despicable stories are etched into my brain.
The drinking and driving. The man he slept with for over one year who never let him know until it was over that he had HIV not just risking Jake’s life but the life of his girlfriend!
I really loved him and he tormented me with what he did with others. He tormented me because he saw that love weakens me.
This morning, after the architect left I opened all the windows and doors. I stripped the bed and I wept because I miss the familiarity of my lover. I miss you so much and I never get to tell you. Instead, I have to tell you that I hate you. That I want my money back. That you betrayed me. I don’t want to tell you any of those things. I want you to know that I miss you, that you left something indelible that I try every single day like an idiot savant scrubbing a tattoo out of his skin…to forget.
It was a piss poor, irritating day yesterday. Nothing, it seemed, was going to rescue me from the thankless groaning of harassing renters and the yearning I have to get home.. and quickly. I left my card in the ATM and have mislaid my beastly driving license.
All in all it was pretty ghastly until I went to therapy at 8pm where I sat with my peers and bathed in our shared misery. Suddenly I felt a whole heap better! There really isn’t anything more exhilarating than listening to those who have had a worse day than you.
Look, I could sit here and write about my financial woes. I could entertain you with the menopausal ranting of Irene from Hawaii or I could just let it go. The worse a person complains and harasses the less likely I am to deal with a situation. It’s just the way I am wired.
Many years ago I made a very bad film in Romania called The Method starring Elizabeth Hurley. It was not the best experience of my life (probably one I would rather forget) but it seems I am not going to be afforded that luxury.
The chaotic making of The Method has inspired the Producer of The Method to write and direct a film about the chaotic making of The Method. The premise is thinly disguised. I was prepared to be irritated but after having had a look at the trailer it all looks rather fun. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing it and am sure that the press will come knocking once they realize that his film is based on our experience of creating what must be one of the worst films ever made.
It heartens me to think that out of strife and stress art can be made. I am not at all worried by how I may/may not be portrayed. I am merely flattered that the very enterprising director/writer moved a mountain to make a film based on our shared experience. We know how difficult that can be, don’t we?
Time passes and tightly held resentments lose their steam. Fruitless anger, the spirited defense of nothing worthwhile, all this ultimately becomes the secret joke we tell ourselves in later years.
There is June Gloom in LA which makes the light very English, all the colours in my house come alive when the sky is gray. Apart from our gray British skies I miss just how damned rude we can be. All these years of living in polite America! I am looking forward to the bawdiness of my country men. Rapier wit coupled with a good wank joke.
I love that we can both be extremely polite and totally vile within seconds.
The first book I ever bought with my own teenage money was the collected works of Hogarth. Bawdy.
