by Mark Simpson (Originally appeared on Salon.com, April 2003) It’s tough growing up British. Not just for all the obvious Austin Powers-esque reasons, such as our medieval dentistry, endemic mold problems and epidemic dandruff, but for something much more existential. The British are great and enthusiastic believers in Original Sin.… Read More »Why Doesn’t America Love Robbie Williams? When He Love-Hates Himself So?
Thanks largely to a crowd-pleasing musical, the crowd-panicking Mr Bowery’s name is forever linked in the public mind with Taboo, the fin-de-siecle drugs, sex, and dressing-up club in Leicester Square, London, he captained in the 1980s – the decade in which the 20th century and possibly Western civilisation actually ended.… Read More »Leigh Bowery: Decadence in the Dole Queue
by Mark Simpson (Originally published on SHOWstudio.com, 2002) Oscar Wilde famously donned cowboy duds for the Western leg of his tour of the US in 1882, after discovering that his usual dandy garb didn’t go down quite so well in the hard-bitten cattle and gold-rush towns as it had in… Read More »Tailor to the Desert Stars: a Tribute to Nudie
The EditorBusiness Week Sir, As the ‘father’ of the metrosexual (and also apparently of his antithetical brother the retrosexual) my attention was drawn to your cover article ‘Secrets of the male shopper’ by Nanette Byrnes. Since she talked so much about my offspring, it would have been nice if Ms… Read More »Faux-Retrosexual Backlash: Letter to ‘Business Week’
by Mark Simpson (Independent on Sunday, 27 August 2006) Americans are insane. The proof? Well, there’s a host of clinical evidence confirming this self-satisfied Old World view of New World nuttiness, from the invasion of Iraq to American Football – which looks much like the invasion of Iraq, but less… Read More »Sorry, Bono, You’re Too Doubting – why Xstian rock is going to Hell