Naked Beauty

Lucian Freud died yesterday aged 88. He’s meant to be the nation’s favourite artist – but you either love or hate him. I fall into the first camp. I love his eye for the naked, raw truth in all its glory and very often, gory ugliness.

I’ve always been fascinated by the high campness and fetishism of performance artist, Leigh Bowery. So was Freud. His portraits of Bowery, who knew he was HIV positive, and would later die from an Aids-related illness, capture a seedy realism and destructive force.

Whereas with Kate Moss, the exact opposite is true. He paints her nude with no props whatsoever, other than her pregnant, naked beauty.

Perhaps the greatest painting of all is The Benefits Supervisor, a large Sleeping Venus. It’s raw and timeless.

Big fleshy nakedness brought out the very best in Freud.

Hail to the V!

Funny, very funny, but flawed, oh so flawed.

Now I don't advocate not washing, but Napoleon didn't return to Josephine because her cradle of civilisation smelt like a bloody rosegarden. He asked her not to wash 'til he got home from battling it out with the Russians. And in medieval times, it would have been extremely hard to wash around that damn chafing chastity belt. As for the Egyptians...where did they wash their nile deltas safely with all those asps around?

Anyways, attraction is carnal and based on smell and eau naturale is good and sexy and as we gals know, anything that's floral and overperfumed is a guaranteed thrush giver. But for some reason, the Americans are obsessed with body wash this and douche that. While we Brits are not quite so uptight about using the same wash for the northern and southern hemispheres.

Will Summer's Eve go down well over here? No, but it did make me titter!

People Power

It's working...first there was a trickle led by Ford. Now there's a rush of brands stampeding towards NOTW exit gate. Big brands know they cannot be associated with such dirty deeds or their customers will boycott them too.

Power to the people, we can condemn with our voices and vote with our feet by walking into the newsagents and not buying NOTW (not that I do anyway). Anyway, thank you Roy Greenslade for your 5 action tips:


1. Boycott the paper. Treat it just as the people of Merseyside did when The Sun ran its infamous Hillsborough story in 1989 following the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters.

2. Pressure advertisers and media buyers not to buy space in the News of the World and to withdraw ads they've already booked.

In last Sunday's issue, the advertisers included Tesco, Aldi, Currys, the Body Shop and Xtra-vision.


3. Back the call for an independent public inquiry into the whole hacking affair. It will be officially launched tomorrow at a meeting in the Lords.

Among the organisers are media academics, lawyers, MPs and peers. More information will be found soon on the hackinginquiry.org website.

There are so many aspects to this saga that require proper investigation: the roles of the paper and two police forces; the activities of various private investigators; the response of the Press Complaints Commission; and the relationship between the paper's publisher, News International, and senior politicians.

4. Demand to know who has been, and is, paying the legal expenses of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages on behalf of the News of the World.

News International has consistently refused to confirm or deny that it is funding Mulcaire. Note clauses 15 and 16 of the editors' code of practice, which is the PCC's "bible". So...

5. Ask the PCC if it has inquired of News Int whether it, or any of its associated companies, has been responsible for paying the legal fees of a convicted man? If it has not, why not? And is it therefore time that it did so?