My favourite things in the Big Apple

I arrived in a city I love today - New York.  I'm staying at one of the trendiest design hotels, the Mondrian in SoHo.   The above picture shows their garden room, an enchanted eatery with icy chandeliers and blue trees, inspired by Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête. 

The last time I was in New York, I was photographed and put on the front of Vogue magazine:

I always somehow bump into the very sexy Naked Cowboy when I'm in town.  For me, he's a New York institution and no trip is complete without chatting to him.  Robert John Burck, better known as the Naked Cowboy, is a street performer whose pitch is on New York City's Times Square. He wears only cowboy boots, a hat, and briefs, with a guitar strategically placed to give the illusion of nudity. 

I also love the boutiques and independent eateries in the Meatpacking District.  This is a historic area which had almost 200 slaughterhouses in the 1900s, but has been gentrified over the years.  Much of the darkly atmospheric Cruising, starring the gorgeous Al Pacino and delving into the 1970s gay leather underworld, was shot here, and the district is still an epi-centre of gay life.  I particularly frequent the area around the Hotel Gansevoort.  

It is at this point that I buy some alternative jewellery, to wear out.  I call these my "conversation pieces" because they inevitably start tongues wagging.



and something to hide behind, a divine creation I usually wear when entering an exclusive restaurant:

 This is my new dress, although some would call it lingerie.  I love to wear this type of garment.  Why should you wear anything more when you're going out to dine, socialise and dance?
 

This evening, I got to see one of my favourite New York artists singing live, Ryan Star.  He's a hotty and 100% New Yorker.  He's virtually unheard of in the UK or Europe, so I thought it would be a good moment to include some of his music on my blog.

Have a listen to this:

Ryan Star - Breathe

and the haunting, We Might Fall, taken from one of my favourite music albums of all time, the 2006 release of Songs from the Eye of an Elephant.

Ryan Star - We Might Fall

A - Z of Fear

Do you know of any more?  

My additions are:

Luton-o-phobia  (see my previous post)
Lesbo-nympho-phobia

Mona Breezeblock and her native Luton

This is my dear friend, Mona Breezeblock.  She claims to be a "classy transvestite from the good part of Luton, Bedfordshire [sorry, which part?]".  

"My most favouritist things in life are the simple things: cocaine and caviar, beers down the pub with mates, a good, ring-stinger curry.  And, did I say, I have a liquorice fetish: I love buying the stuff and sucking it through the gap in my front teeth.  Liquorice stains are everywhere, all over the house.  I'm a wild child of the 80s, you see, I still listen to AC/DC on a 12-inch record player.  

I especially adore dogging in ripped fishnets, plenty of bling and a shoulder-length black wig - and my startling collection of sex toys take up a lot of time, too: I've got over 32 Chinese love eggs, in a rainbow of different colours, one even vibrates whilst another plays We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  I hang out at the layby off the A6 at Clophill as well as the A43 just out of Northampton.  You see I've been a transvestite for almost 10 years now.".

 Drag queen, more like it.
 

Not that I've ever visited, but just a 1-hour drive away from my rural estate in NW Buckinghamshire, is Mona's 'scenic' town of Luton.  From what I've heard elsewhere, it's reputed to be the "TV Set Thrown From The Top Floor Of A Tower Block" Capital of the World, which is all the more reason to visit, although Mona naturally denied this.

"When TV Licensing blitzed these 15-storey flats on the Marsh Farm Estate to see who had a tv licence, the residents threw their TV sets out of the top floor flat; most had never owned a TV licence in their lives."- Sorry, Mona, I'd rather believe this resident's view over your rose-tinted version.

According to drag queen, Mona Breezeblock,  it's not all bad, as there is some classical countryside in Bedfordshire to get lost in, if you don't mind the smell of rotten eggs and a sudden geyser of molten-hot, sulphurous air shooting out of the ground without warning:

Owing to its multi-cultural population, Mona continues that there are some great eateries serving the finest cuisine outside of London, as epitomised by this picture: 

"Luton has a state-of-the-art airport" she prattles and her pictures really prove that.   "I flew to Benidorm with my Mum and we had a great holiday there, I was popping Valium like candy the whole time".

If you get bored of the immediately-unobvious multifarious charms of Luton, there is the Greenhouse Sauna, defining itself as "the UK's premier healthclub".  A frequent visitor herself, Mona Breezeblock recently told me that the Greenhouse Luton are running a promotion on their Twitter page.   

If you have giant-size genitalia and you can prove it, you get a 100% discount on the £13 entrance fee.  I've reproduced their Tweet for you.  I can't really see that same promotion working at other healthclub establishments such as LA Fitness or Golds Gym, but I admire their creativity.

What Fanny wore at London Fashion Week

 

"Faded, controversy queens Lady Gaga and Grace Jones might think they made an impression at London Fashion Week with their über-weird dresses and look-at-me attitude, but the name on everyone's lips was that of avante-garde beauty queen, Fanny Love, who arrived on stage hidden inside a gigantic, floating glitterball."

This is how a certain newspaper reported my entrance to London Fashion Week.  Serenaded by trumpeting and an orchestra, a door in the glitterball opened and I descended onto the stage, engulfed by the flash of the papparazzi and the cheer of the crowd, as my new single, "Hampstead Love" was played at deafening volume. 

Here are some photographs of what I chose to wear

 

My outfit consisted of sexy red leather cow-girl backless chaps and these shoes made from Sicilian goat feet with a gold replica James Bond pistol fashioned as the heel:

Successfully outdoing Lady Gaga in the hat department, this was my choice:

I went on to stage with my gold, personalised chainsaw held high in the air.  

  
I will shortly be releasing photographs of the evening, not before they've been released to the media and seen on every newsstand around the world!

Shoplifting in Glasgow

No, it's not Chipping Sodbury.

After a heavenly three weeks touring the Scottish islands, earning a much-deserved break after the intensive filming in London of The Hampstead Heath Chainsaw Massacre, I felt it was time to head for home.  But not before I had enjoyed Glasgow, a city I knew very little about.

Certainly, the picture above was a forboding welcome to this gritty, grey city.  We took the wrong turning off the motorway and ended up in the Red Road area of Balornock with its infamous high-rise flats, making it look like a Siberian hellhole.



However, this was just one side of the city and before long we were driving through the West End, which was as different from Balornock as chalk and cheese.  Glasgow's West End - particularly around Kelvingrove Park - reminded me of Bath in Somerset with its lovely terraces, green spaces and lack of hoi-polloi.

Tonight being Saturday night, I was looking for a dress to wear to paint the town red in.  One reader completely misinterpreted the euphemism 'paint the town red' and emailed me the following suggestion:

I eventually found an exclusive boutique selling this most divine outfit.  I think you'll see that it leaves no doubt as to the intention of the wearer.

I seemed, however, to be having trouble making myself understood by the elderly, frumpish shop assistant.  This might be because in Scotland they often speak their own language, which is called Gay Lick (or is it Gaelic).  They have words which most English speakers have never heard of, for example 'minger' is a term of endearment used amongst courting couples or a respectful greeting towards an older person; 'bairns' are children; 'haggis' is a sheep's stomach which is eaten with 'neeps and tatties' (apparently a dish of turnips and potato); 'NEDS' apparently stands for Non-Educated Delusional Solicitors, and a 'Glasgow kiss' is a custom among certain quarters usually enacted after a session of binge-drinking all day on White Lightning Cider.

 A wonderful souvenir of Scotland - a hot chocolate drinking mug ideal as a Christmas present for your Granny or Aunt.

This shop assistant - bearing an uncanny resemblance to Mrs Doubtfire - did not seem to understand me at all.  They probably don't get many Texans this far north.  


I did not have a Gay Lick / English dictionary with me, but I've always had a knack with languages (my high school language teacher said I was a cunnilingus - - - or is it cunning linguist?).  

"Do you speak English?"I said slowly and clearly.  That didn't seem to do it either.

She kept making a funny noise with her mouth, which at first sounded like she was having an epileptic fit, but I then realised she was saying things like 

"Och tripe, We've bin skitin' a lot ay whiskey. Th' frock is worth thee thoosain poond, didna see the pricey? Whit ur ye blethering aboot, standin' thaur loch a sodger wi' yer gob open catchin' cleggs.  Dorn't fankle me, I cannae be doing with gypos like yae".

I've met schizophrenics who spoke more interesting gibberish than this woman. 

We need an interpreter, I think.  

It seemed, from the garbled discourse, that she was charging an unsightly amount for the dress.     

It was at that point in proceedings that I decided I would steal the dress.  Some shoplifters just grab the stuff and walk out with it, but I could see that this beady-eyed woman wouldn't fall for a trick like that.  I've also heard that they still burn people in huge wooden effigies in certain remote parts of this country, as evidenced by this picture, so it would be vital that I got away with it without getting caught red-handed, and barbecued like Edward Woodward.

 A real life documentary showing life on a Scottish island - The Wicker Man - starring one of my favourite transvestites of the 1970s, Edward Woodworm.

My accomplice in crime on this daring errand is my rainbow-dyed poodle, whom you may recall I christened Mr Puffywuffycutesweetgummywummygumdrop.  Here is a picture of him.

I also opt to go in disguise so as not to be recognised.  Here is what I'm wearing:

Returning to the boutique a few hours later, I tie Mr Puffywuffycutesweetgummywummygumdrop up outside the shop and go inside and place several rashers of uncooked bacon draped prominently on an antique vase in the window display, without the bitch noticing what I'm up to.

 
By now, Mr P is both ravenous and slaverous, licking the outside shop window like a lollipop, especially as he can see the strips of bacon draped enticingly over the antique vase, but cannot get at them.

Moments later, there is a tremendous crash as Mr P slips his leash and jumps straight through the plate-glass window completely unscathed but hell-bent for the rashers of bacon which he wolfs down in several audible gulps, amidst the debris of glass, broken vase and several other smashed and completely destroyed items, as well as the ensuing pandemonium.  Mrs Doubtfire is so shocked she doesn't know what to do, she starts screaming about rabid dogs (to which my verbal response is "Pot calling the kettle black, dear"), and runs over to Mr P who jumps on her, knocking her over.  At this moment in time, I grab the dress and run, bundling the dog into the back of the car and Juan drives off at high speed.

I call this shop-lifting technique the 'Burqa, Bacon and Dog' method.  It's highly effective.  Mr P gets a huge reward - four packets of sausages for his din-dins, a pedicure, ear de-waxing and I buy him a very bling, diamante-studded collar with the words 'Mummy's Boy' on it, a mere snip at £2,475.

That night, Juan (wearing pink leather trousers and a ripped muscle top) and I hit the Polo Lounge, Glasgow's most popular and stylish gay club.  It feels as if the whole of Glasgow is in there, and both the men and women are all gorgeous.  I'm so over the moon with my new see-through slut's dress that I get carried away after one too many vodkas and jump up onto the bar, strip to my French lingerie and perform my latest song, VIP Sex, which can be heard here.    Please - ensure you turn the volume way up!

How to get rid of midges and flies

Midges and flies - known to the locals as 'cleggs' - have caused great annoyance during my holiday in Scotland.  Because of the large expanses of water, they're everywhere.  I even found a fly drowning in my soup one evening, at which point I panicked and promptly picked up the full bowl of beef consommé and hurled the lot against the restaurant wall.  

No, it's not a bowl of urine. 

 
At one point later that same evening, I was being attacked by swarms of midges as I took the evening air.   I managed to acquire some heavy-duty insect repellent from the local shop, curiously called Brut, but it simply didn't work when I sprayed it - the horse-flies, midges, even locusts just kept attacking me.

this heavy-duty bug repellent simply didn't work!

In desperation, here are some pictures of how I dealt with the problem.

 

 Fanny has always been a fan of the after-dinner cigar; she once had sex in a humidor

 

Any aerosol will do.

 

It's probably best not to wear a voluminous evening gown when carrying out this procedure as the direction of the wind could change and blow the flame back against you.

The cleggs were dropping like flies after that.

Billboard - Hampstead Heath Chainsaw Massacre

Driving in Scotland, I was over the moon to see this billboard poster for my new film. Isn't it divine?