Not taking the piss out of Toby Young at all
"What pains me most, looking back, is my falling out with Drew Davies. Andrew and I met whilst dancing at vulgar London discotheque G-A-Y, shortly after he arrived in the UK. He was lodging with a stale-smelling queen in Tulse Hill, I was camped out in the box room at my parents' home in suburbia. The thin-lipped queers and heavily-lined fag hags we called a social group at the time could never have guessed that our serendipitous collision on that beer-sodden dancefloor would result in one of the most powerful publishing partnerships in history.
Towards the end of the last decade, Andrew and I were on my yacht off Bermuda brainstorming ideas for Bone, our achingly edgy, pithy and glaringly intellectual quarterly compendium of social comment, hardcore porn and surgical photography. The relationship had often been stretched to the point of fraying over the years, but we wore our friendship like a favourite, comfortable old sweater, and would quarrel and banter like siblings.
An early Bone front cover
However, two years after the first issue of Bone hit the shelves, our creative partnership was strained, and the publication had become constipated. Andrew believed I was giving too much of myself to my column in Zoo, in which I wittily dissected the sexual relationship between myself and my second husband, society photographer, Marshall Smith-Bronson. Meanwhile, I was growing increasingly frustrated by Drew's ridiculous affair with 19-year-old New York debutante, Candi Weisman. Everyone except Candi knew he was only boffing her to spite the love his life, Diego, who left him when - after a row and a night on the sauce - he scandalously published naked photographs of the two of them in flagrante delicto with Justin Timberlake and a tub of Marshmallow Fluff.
That fateful day, we sat ignoring vodka martinis in the blistering heat, Andrew glaring down spitefully at Candi's nubile curves as she lolled across him, spouting dreadful ideas, oblivious to his shuddering horror as she idly caressed his thigh. I found it hard to believe the moronic girl could be deaf to the thunderous vomiting that emitted nightly from their shared bathroom - personally, I could hear it all the way down the hall. Perhaps the wretching noises were absorbed by the cotton wool between her ears.
Andrew and I in 2008
As he glowered at a passing paparazzo on a jet-ski, I could see my friend Andrew was desperately miserable. But his vindictive and self-destructive behaviour was turning him into a liability, and his insistence on using the ideas of his mindless hate-f*ck were wreaking havoc with circulation. He was utterly unreasonable - I could take no more.
That night, I bundled my Orange Prize for Fiction statuette and a dog-eared copy of Ulysses into a plastic bag, and swam for the beach. I came ashore with nothing but my most prized possessions and a disco hardware fruity print Stella McCartney halterneck bikini. I never looked back. I haven't spoken to Andrew since 2008."
Towards the end of the last decade, Andrew and I were on my yacht off Bermuda brainstorming ideas for Bone, our achingly edgy, pithy and glaringly intellectual quarterly compendium of social comment, hardcore porn and surgical photography. The relationship had often been stretched to the point of fraying over the years, but we wore our friendship like a favourite, comfortable old sweater, and would quarrel and banter like siblings.
An early Bone front cover
However, two years after the first issue of Bone hit the shelves, our creative partnership was strained, and the publication had become constipated. Andrew believed I was giving too much of myself to my column in Zoo, in which I wittily dissected the sexual relationship between myself and my second husband, society photographer, Marshall Smith-Bronson. Meanwhile, I was growing increasingly frustrated by Drew's ridiculous affair with 19-year-old New York debutante, Candi Weisman. Everyone except Candi knew he was only boffing her to spite the love his life, Diego, who left him when - after a row and a night on the sauce - he scandalously published naked photographs of the two of them in flagrante delicto with Justin Timberlake and a tub of Marshmallow Fluff.
That fateful day, we sat ignoring vodka martinis in the blistering heat, Andrew glaring down spitefully at Candi's nubile curves as she lolled across him, spouting dreadful ideas, oblivious to his shuddering horror as she idly caressed his thigh. I found it hard to believe the moronic girl could be deaf to the thunderous vomiting that emitted nightly from their shared bathroom - personally, I could hear it all the way down the hall. Perhaps the wretching noises were absorbed by the cotton wool between her ears.
Andrew and I in 2008
As he glowered at a passing paparazzo on a jet-ski, I could see my friend Andrew was desperately miserable. But his vindictive and self-destructive behaviour was turning him into a liability, and his insistence on using the ideas of his mindless hate-f*ck were wreaking havoc with circulation. He was utterly unreasonable - I could take no more.
That night, I bundled my Orange Prize for Fiction statuette and a dog-eared copy of Ulysses into a plastic bag, and swam for the beach. I came ashore with nothing but my most prized possessions and a disco hardware fruity print Stella McCartney halterneck bikini. I never looked back. I haven't spoken to Andrew since 2008."
posted by Elizabeth at 5:25 PM
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