With friends like these...

In which CiF let me back in and, instead of misbehaving aristos, I contemplate a league table of tyranny.

Are we amused yet?

I submitted the following piece to Comment is Free yesterday, but I just received a very nice e-mail saying they weren't able to use it; not because of the content of the piece itself, but because somebody might identify the mystery royal in the subsequent comments. I quite understand their difficult legal position, and I don't blame them at all for playing safe. But there's more than a dash of irony here, since the piece isn't really about the blackmail case or about the identity of some minor aristo, but about whether there's any point in the mainstream media being prevented from mentioning something that's bouncing around the interweb like a picture of Lindsay Lohan's naughty bits.

So the article appears here, on the condition that nobody - I said nobody - reveals who did or didn't get the drugs and/or the blowjob. Otherwise we'll all end up in the Tower, and I don't mean Blackpool.

As I write this, I don’t know the identity of the member of the royal family alleged to be the target of a blackmail attempt over allegations of sex and drugs. It’s 5 a.m. in the UK, and most of my media narks will be asleep. Google is as yet unforthcoming.

By the time you read it, however, I probably will know, and so will many of you. The news won’t appear first in the newspaper that broke the story, nor in those papers that followed it up: the heavy hand of libel and contempt legislation will see to that. But I reckon that at sometime in the near future I’ll get an e-mail from someone who’s overheard something, or a site beyond the control of English law will catapult the appropriate tidbit around the world.

To be honest, I’m not that bothered. Back in the early 90s, the Windsors were beset by lurid tales of tampons and toejobs that make the current vague, prim insinuations ("a sex act", for crying out loud) sound like pre-watershed stuff.

In any case, more important questions remain. The first is whether the mainstream media, in Britain at least, will ever again be able to break a proper, meaty sex-and/or-drugs scandal about a major public figure. By the time the libel lawyers deem it safe to go above ground, the juiciest details will be popping into in-boxes around the world.

In 2002, when John Leslie was the centre of nasty (and, it transpired, unfounded) allegations, newspapers and broadcasters weren't permitted to name him, even though his identity was common knowledge far beyond media circles. More recently, Alisher Usmanov may have wreaked havoc in his efforts to silence Craig Murray's allegations, but those allegations are available to anyone with internet access. Cases like these, and the current royal scandal, bring into doubt the future of English libel laws: not because they are too draconian, but because it is so easy to subvert them.

The other lingering puzzle is why the Sunday Times broke the story in its half-baked state, knowing full well it couldn’t offer the most significant details. Everyone will wonder who the person at the centre of the brouhaha is, and the speculation will encompass individuals who are entirely blameless. Beyond that, there will be questions about how the video at the centre of the story made its way into the hands of the alleged blackmailers, thus raising questions about corruption and lack of security at the heart of the Windsor family.

Rupert Murdoch’s republican tendencies are well known: by laying off the key figure, his newspaper has potentially done far more damage to the overall institution of the British monarchy than a comprehensive name-and-shame job would have done.

Still, at least people might shut up about the Diana inquest for a couple of days.

Something else Mani said to me

(Remember that I hadn't seen him for about 20 years.)

"I would have thought you'd have written The Great Novel by now."

There's a kick up the arse if ever I heard one.

Ragtime

In which I sort out all Britain's environmental and socio-economic problems in one go.

And talking of Dirty Old Men, my old schoolchum Mani just made a lightning visit to BKK, stopping off en route from the Phuket Film Festival to his regular stomping ground of Tehran. He demonstrated all his usual perversity: first he announced that Bitter Moon is Polanski's best film, and eXistenZ is Cronenberg's, which is self-evidently insane, but he's a proper movie director, so I let that go; and then after I guided him and his delightful lady friend through the sweaty fleshpots of Patpong, he decided that he'd pass on a final beer under the shadow of a bikini-clad bargirl's bumping-and-grinding loins, and opted for a nice pot of jasmine tea. Age, it appears, does weary them eventually.

I often feel slightly odd when showing visitors round Bangkok: I know it better than they do, but at the same time, I'm just another outsider, another flavour of tourist. But I'm quite OK with that. I had a worrying moment yesterday, when I read something in Private Eye's Pseuds Corner that had me nodding in recognition and agreement. It's from a piece by a Paris expat called Rick Owens, in the FT:

"I've been in Paris for four years and I still find it exotic. I haven't learned French - I don't need to for work, and it would spoil the excitement of my alienation if I understood everything that was said."

Money for something

LibraryThing continues to throw up new delights; most recently, a new member operating under the name of golgroove, who apparently owns a single book, or at least just the one that s/he will admit to. Can you guess what it might be?

And in that same sort of area, I'm trying to work out a pitch for a new book. The thing is, I've got two competing ideas: find a new twist on the saga of the Beatles, and add to the long and illustrious list of tomes on that subject; or do something a little further from the epicentre of ordinary but, by definition, potentially less commercially viable. Like, for example, a pop cultural reappraisal of Dire Straits. What do you reckon?

Muddied oafs

No, I didn't watch England losing pluckily in the rugby, or Lewis Hamilton arsing up, but maybe still winning because someone else used the wrong flavour petrol. As far as I'm concerned, rugby and Formula 1 are only of any interest when stuff goes wrong: a match that descends into a blood-and-mud-bath (the Swamp Thing at the top is ex-England prop Fran Cotton, surely the hardest man ever to have a girl's name apart from maybe Shirley Crabtree); or a race that features a massive pile-up, preferably involving innocent spectators. And neither of those things happens any more, it seems. So I'll stick to croquet, ta.

In any case, while all those manly men were driving nowhere in Brazil, I was at the Joe Louis Theatre at the Suan Lum night bazaar here in Bangkok, watching a traditional puppet show about Hanuman the monkey god. Who's a friendlier bloke than the monkeys of Delhi, it seems.

The reason we lurched into such a self-evident tourist trap is the presence of my old buddy and self-evident tourist Emma, who came laden with the sort of stuff you can't get in Thailand, like decent peanut butter and the latest edition of Plan B magazine. Perusal of which seems to suggest that I'm not really that into new music any more, but I still like reading about it. And without reopening the wounds of the Paul Morley skirmish from last week, beginning a review of a subversive Ethiopian funk compilation with a quotation from Roland Barthes is always going to be a sound move in my book.

All that's spoke is marr'd

In which I kick apart the hornet's nest of racial politics in an effort to destroy my least favourite Shakespeare play.

Also: can you tell a geek from a psychopath? (Thanks to Boivin for the tip.)

The dying of the light programme

So farewell then, Alan Coren. Following on the heels of Ned Sherrin and George Melly. It's been a rotten few months for funny old men.