Booked

In the penultimate post in a series of slightly embarrassing 'teasers' intended to recruit readers and backers for that glibbest and most delightful of books, Space, Tuesday Belgravia talked to one of the more charming characters in the book, Lysander Cullinane, the head of a shadowy British government disinformation operation, The Space Agency. She caught up with the posh spook in his trailer on the set of the book, during a short break in writing his final scene...

So you’ve been quite a popular character in Space. Who’s your own favourite character?
Oh, it’s got to be Eva Bartholdy. Of course, she plays a great deal greater role in the book than it seems at first. She’s a charming lady, although she does have quirks. But then we all have quirks, don’t we?

Things haven’t been going terribly well for you, have they?
No, I have to confess they have been better, old thing. It’s odd to have to admit it, but I’m even a little sad that I ever got involved with young Dr. Ben Jonson, although this really isn’t all his fault. Things have unravelled a tad, though. For a start the Russian mafia have been bugging my office, then I’ve lost a good operative in Ian Beresford. Having young Neon seconded from the Americans went pretty wrong, too. She’s a little too, um, trigger-happy, isn’t she? But she does look absolutely marvellous in a black leather catsuit, one has to admit!

And then there’s the virus...
Yes, the virus. Well, we’ve always run campaigns here at The Space Agency that have worked well in terms of disguising what’s actually going on. We’ve had some great successes: stories that have diverted attention away from the real machinations and intent of those in government. It’s important to do that, sometimes. As you know, we invented the Loch Ness Monster, spontaneous combustion, UFOs, out of body experiences. All that paranormal claptrap originated from the teams of young creatives and the massive archives we have here. We’re running most of the Internet, these days. Authonomy was one of ours, you know. Web 2.0 thinking is so exciting, don’t you think? Put the writers where you can see ‘em, that’s what we say!

You mention your archives – aren’t they based on Nazi research?
Yes, found by Kenneth Spamp in the closing weeks of World War Two. It was a treasure trove of strange stories and odd tales. The Nazis were so into that sort of astrological mumbo-jumbo! So we used it to weave our own little web of disinformation!

It's all rather complicated!
Well, the chap had over 350 pages to play with and he certainly filled them up with words. Mostly 'gun', 'blood' and 'dead' from what one can discern...

So, getting back to this virus. It’s got a bit out of control..
It has, rather, hasn’t it? Not a good day.

And the suicides.
Yes, and the suicides. Quite a few of those, aren’t there? This interview’s going to look pretty negative in print, I have to say. Well! Have you ever seen a Yeti? I have!

You’re killed in the next scene.
Yes, on a park bench by the Thames near Richmond. It’s quite a nice place to die.

Any regrets?
What? Apart from being responsible for the virus that’s locking up the country’s computers, telecoms, power and road networks; the multiple murders created by my out of control ‘minder’, the suicides of my second in command and my computer expert and the fact that the man who founded my agency is not in fact dead at all but running a super-powerful cabal of shadowy international power freaks who are reverse engineering two millennia old spaceships?

Yes.
No, no regrets at all, dear heart! It’s been a spiffing day!

Thank you, Lysander Cullinane.
Any time, my dear. Now. Have you seen that wretched Russky, Litvanoff?


You can read Space online on authonomy by clicking on this handy, easy to use hyperlink. And if the book makes you laugh and looks like something you'd buy and read, then you can 'Bookshelf' it and vote for it to stay in the top five books to be 'cherry-picked' for review by Harper Collins' editors at the end of the month! There are three days to go and, believe me, your vote counts right now!

Incidentally, there's a load of other fiction by new writers in the UK, US, Europe and Australia up there, so have a poke around too and see what takes your fancy!

Try Stalking the Widowmaker by Greg Horbay for instance, or MM Bennets' epic 1812. MM Trevalean's Tartare is certainly an interesting, if unsettling read and then there's Dan Holloway's Songs from the other side of the wall, a work of literary genius. Also try Peter Booth's Their Name is Legion or Lauri Shaw's wicked Servicing the Pole!

Plug

In the latest in a series of pathetic 'teasers' trying to recruit readers for that most wonderfully amusing of books, Space, Tuesday Belgravia caught one of the book's most popular and controversial characters, Véronique the housemaid from Vientiane, during the writing of her final scene in the book.

So you’re quite a complex character, really, aren’t you? Because you’re not a housemaid at all, really!
Yes, that’s right. I’m actually working for the Russian mafia and I’m actually spying on Dr. Ben Jonson because Ivan Litvanoff thinks he’s connected to Eva Bartholdy.

Ummm. Your accent is... well, very English! In the book you sound Asian.
That’s because I’m a RADA trained character, obviously. Did you really think that all Asian people spoke like that? I suppose you can’t tell us apart, either.

Well, no, it’s not like that, really...
I mean, you probably thought I came off the last sampan! Oh, lookie! It’s a Chinky-wink! Do that funny thing do you with slanty eyes, Derek! You want love me long time, Johnny? Ooh look, it’s Ting Tong! I mean, give me a break.

No, no, no. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any offense!
Make her say L! That’s always good for a laugh, isn’t it round-eye? Herro rovery rady!! Eh? Vis chicken’s rubbery! Why is it always chickens with you people as well? Like you hap chicken is you good ruck! See? You’re laughing!

Well, that is one of your lines from Space, isn’t it?
Yes and I’m less than happy about it. They’re making it into a bloody T-shirt now, you know.

Changing the subject, you get shot in this scene.
It’s scandalous. Everyone in this damn book gets shot. There’s just guns and dead people all over the place. I’m surprised anyone can write in here for the blood and gore and stuff. And, as usual, it’s not a nice clean bullet in the heart, oh no. I get my damn face blown off. I’ve worked for better authors, I can tell you!

Like who?
I just have, right?

A last question, in character if you don’t mind, what’s your favourite bit of the book?
You for real, are you? In character?

Well, yes.
Me no hap like best bit. I am fink vis whole damn book sirry. I finding vis arrixandar, I mess him up good piece rong time. There. Happy?

Thank you, Véronique
I don’t think.

You can read Space online on authonomy by clicking on this handy, easy to use hyperlink. And if the book makes you laugh and looks like something you'd buy and read, then you can 'Bookshelf' it and vote for it to stay in the top five books to be 'cherry-picked' for review by Harper Collins' editors at the end of the month! There are three days to go and, believe me, your vote counts right now!

Incidentally, there's a load of other fiction by new writers in the UK, US, Europe and Australia up there, so have a poke around too and see what takes your fancy!

Try Stalking the Widowmaker by Greg Horbay for instance, or MM Bennets' epic 1812. MM Trevalean's Tartare is certainly an interesting, if unsettling read and then there's Dan Holloway's Songs from the other side of the wall, a work of literary genius.

Camp

Tuesday Belgravia talks to Nigel, the terribly camp chap that looks after the M15 safe house that briefly shelters hero Ben Jonson and First Lady Neon Wilcox as they embark on life on the run. She caught up with Nigel as he finished the dusting preparatory to the writing of his final scene in manic comedy thriller Space.

Hi, Nigel, I understand you’re about to start on the writing of your final scene. It looks painful!
Oh, you’re telling me! It’s simply awful, really. I’ve been tied to the floor using high tensile nylon fishing line that’s been looped around my piercings and then tied to brass hooks screwed into the woodwork. And I can’t really move, to tell you the truth. It’s all very Jonathon Swift around here, I must say.

Umm. Why?
Because the Russian baddies, led by a very unpleasant chap called Ivan Litvanoff, want to know where Ben and Neon are going next. So they’re torturing me. I must say, it really is something of an imposition! I mean, I hadn’t even finished the dusting!

So where are they going?
Well that’s the problem, isn’t it my dear? I know they’re going to find someone called Rene Levesques in Paris. But that’s all I know!

Why are they going to find Rene Levesques?
Because Eva Bartholdy sent them there. I’ve known her for years, of course. She was in British intelligence in the war and she’s been something of a grand old dame to us in the ‘community’ ever since. I think she’s just wonderful and she loves my baking!

Are you going to tell the Russians where Ben’s going to, then?
Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Let’s say the acid test will be whether Litvanoff finds my Prince Albert!

Prince Albert?
Honestly, I’d really rather leave it there!

Thank you, Nigel!
Oh, no, thank you. Always nice to have a chitchat!

You can read Space online on authonomy by clicking on this handy, easy to use hyperlink. And if the book makes you laugh and looks like something you'd buy and read, then you can 'Bookshelf' it and vote for it to stay in the top five books to be 'cherry-picked' for review by Harper Collins' editors at the end of the month! Incidentally, there's a load of other fiction by new writers in the UK, US, Europe and Australia up there, so have a poke around too and see what takes your fancy!

Book

I thought I’d just post up some bits and bobs from/about Space for the rest of the month just to give people a wee ‘amuse bouche’ of all the fun and frolics awaiting them if they go and read Space, that most wonderful cure for a broad spectrum of common ailments.

It's up on Harper Collins' authonomy new writer's website and I would encourage you to 'Back the book' and add your vote if the book makes you laugh and you'd buy it in a bookshop.

While you're there, take a look at Keefieboy's Tybault and Theo!

Today, reporter Tuesday Belgravia talks to Kylie Smith, sex shop worker and the love interest in Space during a break from writing the book on location in Paris.

So you’re just taking a break from writing and I think you’re just about to find Rene Levesques at a cafe in Paris, in the Marais district...
Yes, that’s the idea, I think. He’s a nice old bloke, a French gentleman, so I’m looking forward to meeting him actually. But I’ve just discovered this French drink called Montalow, at a cafe near the Pompeedoo Centre, and it’s like washing your teeth only much bigger. Sort of like doing lots of Crem de Menth shots. Have you ever had a Crem de Menth shot?

Umm, no. You’re on the run with Ben Jonson. What’s he like?
Oh, I like Ben, see. I mean, he’s not exactly the most exciting bloke in the world and everything, but I usually pull blokes with pitbulls and gold teeth what hit me, so he’s much nicer. He’s a doctor, see? I sort of fancy him. But he’s very jumpy on account of things appearing around him with a pop and some sort of secret from the war that only Mr. Levesques knows about. So Ben has to see him. It’s all very exciting for a girl like me, I only usually see sort of ASBO stuff, you know? Not international crime and that!

Fancy Ben? But didn’t you fancy Detective Inspector Ocelot?
Mr. Oscelot? Nah! Don’t be daft! I was just winding him up a bit ‘cos every time he saw my boobs he got all sweaty. He was nice, though, like a proper TV detective an’ all! Though he didn’t have a housekeeper. Do you like my boobs?

They’re very nice. Moving on, is it true that you’ve featured in a sex film?
Who told you about that? I’m not talking about that! I said I wouln’t talk about it!

Apparently you were very good in it!
(Laughs) I won’t, I was very bad in it. But I said I wouln’t talk about School of Sex!

Was that the title?
Ummm. Yes.

And what happened in it?
(sighs) Oh, you know, the usual. BJ, DP. Usual.

DP? Dom Perignon?
What? No! Look, it was just one of them arty house movies. Can we just move on?

You're a popular character in Space. Do you mind dying in the book?
Do I?

Yes. Actually, quite a lot of people do!
Oh. That’s put a bit of a damper on things, then, hasn’t it?

Didn’t you know?
Know? Of course not! Wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d known that, would I?

Thank you, Kylie, for your time.
Yeah right. Thanks for telling me I’m gonna die. Not in this scene, is it?

No
Oh. That’s alright then. I can finish me montalow at least.

Deposit

There have been some mad things done in the name of 'media relations' in the Middle East. Some might remember my chucklesome post about Nokia in Egypt, for instance.

But this one takes the biscuit.

A Maltese agency, according to Malta Today, has started to insist on a deposit being paid by media before it co-operates in answering requests. The deposit, equivalent to around €2,300 is refundable if the client likes what the journalist says.

The 'system' being put in place is that the journalist fronts up the deposit, gets the quotes he/she needs and then sends a copy of the story to the agency for approval. The deposit is refunded if the story that appears is the same as the approved version.

As Malta Today points out, "The idea of requesting a deposit simply for being quoted in the news has been met with incredulity among media workers."

Incredulity is an uncommonly kind reaction. This is muckle-headed incompetence of the highest water and should be punished by sacking the whole damn lot of them instantly. I do heartily commend taking a look at the story (linked above)!!!

The client in whose name this idiocy is taking place? Dubai's Tecom Investments Ltd, no less!

Show

I heard someone who knows what they talk about saying a very interesting thing. "This GITEX is worse than it was during the Gulf War."

Then, the organisers had to space the stands to fill the halls. There were 'café' areas set out in the show filling the space where stands had pulled out or had never come in. A lot of US companies wouldn't let their people travel to the Gulf so a number of big names were absent. And there were shell scheme stands in the main halls, not just flashy built-to-order 'space only' stands.

He's right. This GITEX was exactly the same. Where before there were massive two-story stands from the major players in technology, now there are blocks of schell scheme. GITEX is not well at all. A quiet show, no major car parking hassles, no gridlocks. A dull show, little on offer that will change your life and most of the major players simply aren't around.

Oh dear, oh dear.

Mobile

So now you can pay for your Salik using your mobile. Whoopee.

I don't need that service, thanks to the Dubai e-government payment portal, which crashed last time I tried to pay my Salik, a couple of months ago. It blew out the transaction with an error message. I tried again, same result. I thought I'd give it a go at 'third time lucky' but it just came back again with a failure and error message.

Next day I had Dhs750 of Salik credit. The RTA blamed the e-government payment portal, the e-government people blamed Salik. Neither would contemplate (against the TOS, I believe, of Visa) a refund of the erroneously credited Dhs500. I sent email after email to the e-Pay people. Nada.

I also raised a complaint to HSBC Visa, who have been brilliantly silent on the matter since.

I remain a Salik millionaire. But I shudder to think what financial carnage could be achieved by the combination of RTA, Etisalat, e-Pay and HSBC, particularly bearing in mind that Etisalat will only discuss a billing problem once the bill has been settled and that the other three won't discuss a problem at all.

A confederacy of dunces indeed...

SPLASH

Stop press

Sammy the Shark is to be released!

Following a brave, crusading campaign by this blog (and a couple of stories that ran in some newspaper or other), I can now confirm that Sammy the Whale Shark is to be released 'at some time in the future' according to the report in The National.

When? Some Time In The Future.

20

Warning: ‘I can remember when this was all sand’ post.

This year will be my 20th GITEX. Back in 1988 it was a two-hall show – the second hall was a new feature, the MacWorld exhibition. The exhibitor party was a barbecue held on the small lawn at the back of the Apartments Club, one of the last remaining, marvellous, pieces of ‘70s Dubai. The show was mostly shell scheme stands, pirate software and shuffling brochure-hunters.

I met a teacher while out exploring the town. It was at a low nightclub in the Dubai Marine Hotel. A tiny, dark and pretty crap sort of place. You wouldn’t usually catch me dead in a nightclub, let alone one as ill-favoured as Cavaliers. It turned out the same was true of the teacher, who was only there because her friends had dragged her there. Mrs McNabb, as she is known today, is the product of that rarest of things: a GITEX romance...

Fishy

Gulf News is like a pit-bull on strychnine with this Sammy The Shark story: they've got their jaws clamped on its leg and they're not letting go. It's rapidly turning into a case study media nightmare.

Today's soaraway kilo of dead tree has got a story that is going to escalate the whole thing beyond reason: The Atlantis Hotel was apparently actively searching for a whale shark to put in its aquarium and Sammy was nabbed on purpose!

It's a pretty damning story, if it's true. Gulf News asserts that the 'rescue' story was a lie, that fishermen were sent out to collect specimens of Gulf aquatic fauna to populate the hotel's aquariums and that Sammy was one of a number of fish that were 'caught to order'.

Given the slightly dodgy sounding circumstances of the shark's 'rescue', Gulf News must have felt it was on pretty safe ground with this one.

It's almost good enough to forgive them for dubbing the brute 'Sammy'. The key will be whether Gulf News can keep this story going - and whether this latest revelation will be picked up by other news media.