Young Stalin sounds like an instructive and entertaining biography, and I will add it to my reading list. I mention it here, though, simply as an excuse to celebrate the name of the author, Simon Sebag Montefiore. I want that middle name! Granted, Frank Sebag Key does not have the mellifluous multisyllabic beauty of Simon Sebag Montefiore, but it will have to do.
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick; or The Whale is a work of matchless genius, and it may be considered sacrilege to tamper with the text. I can’t help but feel, however, that if the opening line was “Call me Sebag†it would somehow be even better.
Incidentally, I discovered that Simon Sebag Montefiore is married to the sister of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. A rich pap-brained partygoer is an unlikely Hooting Yard heroine, but I have had a measure of admiration for Ms Palmer-Tomkinson ever since, on television a few years ago, she uttered the immortal line “Those are Uri’s underpants. Burn themâ€. Uri being, of course, the dismal charlatan Uri Geller.
The curious may be interested in http://www.uri-geller.com, which includes a wealth of things to look at and ponder. One learns, for example, that Mr Geller’s garden was ‘a centre of healing 1,000 years ago’. One may also peruse and buy gifts — I, for one, intend to add the dinner plate with a design by Mr Geller called ‘Subliminal Fish’ to my yuletide gift list.
Mr Key, I would be happy to ‘call you Seabag’ if you think it would help?
Pantsil Sebag,
I once visited The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. Celebrated paranormalist Uri Geller had lent them his 1976 Cadillac which had been adorned with the application of nearly 5000 pieces of ruined cutlery. This vehicle can also be seen on Mr Geller’s electric inter-web-site.
I am currently analysing all the pictures on the Geller’s site for evidence of ectoplasmic emanations but I keep getting distracted by an inexplicable desire to eat herrings…
Thank you for directing me to the deranged mentalist’s web-site.
I am at a loss to enumerate this man’s talents, as not only is he capable of inexplicable acts of the paranormal, feats of extraordinary litigation, and his vendetta against metal spoons, but he also finds time to design earthenware.
I’m not sure Mrs Shuddery would permit me to replace all our crockery with the stuff that has been designed by Mr Geller, but I can ask. All of our current generation of tableware bares the signature of cockney celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
Interestingly enough, Mr Geller does not supply a range of spoons, which I would have thought would be his hallmark product.
Simon Sebag Montefiore also wrote a novel called “My Love Affair with Stalin” which was fantastic. It was like a cross between lord of the flies and dead poets society. A schoolboy gets obsessed with stalin and forms a gang based on Stalin and his colleagues and has fights with a rival gang who base themselves on Hitler and the nazi party.