“Messalina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking the palm quite worthy of an empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the most notorious of the women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute; the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day, at the twenty-fifth embrace.” Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, 77AD. Scylla, the prostitute, arrives at the palace and is told that she is not being paid, this contest is for honour and reputation. Scylla responds “I’m a professional, my lady. I work for money. The honour I leave to you.” *** “To ..read more

Jeune femme des Iles Sandwich dansant,  1822, Jacques Arago (1770 – 1855) Kuini Liliha, this 17 year old hula dancer, an ali’i, a noble woman of O’ahu Island, was depicted by Jacques Arago in 1819 dancing the sitting hula. Hula, of course, was also performed standing – one way or the other, the dance would express, often with overt lasciviousness, the spoken word in gesture, posture and body movement set to song or chant. The modern version of hula is somewhat less explicit. Kuini Liliha’s front tooth had been knocked out with a rock in mourning for her King. Her short haired fringe, han ..read more

Lighting Up, Brigitte Bardot (1934 – ) “I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals”, Brigitte Bardot, 1973. Eh bien, alors… *** On Friday 14 June 1940, closely ordered long columns of grey Nazi troops stomped cheerless down a desolate Champs Elysée. It was their victory parade. Paris had surrendered once more to the Germans. *** Brigitte was six, her sister, Marie-Jeanne “Mijanou”, two years old – the only children of Louis “Pilou” and Anne-Marie “Toty” Bardot. The Bardot family was seen as haute bourgeoisie, living in the sma ..read more

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900   As the savvy but occasionally sanctimonious butler Jeeves said of his nitwit master Bertie Wooster’s frightful ex-fiancée Florence – “It was her intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not like Nietzsche, Sir. He is fundamentally unsound”. Carry on, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse, 1925     Between the two of them, Jeeves and Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse KBE had made their point perfectly clear to their vast audience across the totality of the English speaking world – in 1925. Jawohl, mein Herr *** Following the catac ..read more

Nu Bleu : Souvenir de Biskra, Henri Matisse, 1907   Pierre and Ferdie were having a long and indulgent boys’ holiday, a pair of blasé boulevardiers escaping their tedious Paris stomping ground. In rather less restrictive Italy, they stumbled on a notorious friend: André had just returned from newly colonised Algeria. It was here, he told them in lurid detail, that he had lost the last vestiges of his virginity to a tantalising Berber dancer. Her name was Meriem. Full of fire and lustful determination, the two friends set off to find wondrous Meriem at her home of Biskra, a remote an ..read more

  Well, we think we have Wegovy as the manufacturer Novo Nordisk announced the release of this semaglutide product to the UK this morning, 4 September. As you probably know from the press, doctors have been forbidden to prescribe the previous semaglutide products, Ozempic and Rybelsus, for weight loss, but are able to do so for the treatment of diabetes – if available, which it isn’t in meaningful quantities. The new semaglutide (exactly the same) product, now called Wegovy, is licensed by the FDA in the US and approved by NICE in the UK for use in weight loss. Apparently the majority of ..read more

  Auguste Rodin whimsically dismissed his latest effort with a casual Gallic shrug as “a sculpted knick-knack following the usual formula”. In 1889, when the public had first set eyes on the larger than life marble of the ill-fated Paola and Francesca of Dante’s Inferno, there was a critical furore – opinions raging from “totally obscene” to “divinely beautiful”. This over-preened version of Le Baiser, “The Kiss”, is Danish, one of the three made in Rodin’s lifetime. It was commissioned in 1900 by the supercivilised brewer Carl Jacobsen for his sculpture  gallery, Ny Carlsberg Glypt ..read more

  I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine, Since for me, you were born too late, And I for you was born too soon. God forgives him who has estranged Me from you for the whole year. I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine. Well might I have suspected That such a destiny, Thus would have happened this day, How much that Love would have commanded. I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine. Charles, duc d’Orléans at the Tower of London, 1415, aetatis suae 21.   On 24 November 1394, Charles was delivered into the midst of the murderous Hundred Years’ War ..read more

Teresa Mary O’Shea, our very own “Two Ton Tessie from Tennessee”, was born in Cardiff to the son of Irish emigrants, a gasworks labourer, and his Lancastrian wife, Nellie. In 1919, at the age of six, she appeared on stage as “The Wonder of Wales”, and, at the age of eight, won a talent competition, tying for first place with an entire Welsh choir. She never looked back, fast becoming hugely popular on the music hall stage, singing risqué songs (“I’m Ready, I’m Willing”, “Nobody Loves a Fairy When She’s Forty”), dancing, joking, playing her blinkin’ banjolele. Very loud. Very stout. Having tra ..read more

  As my granny would say, “I have a cold in the nose, dear”. She meant, of course, that she had a runny nose, coryza in medical Latin – in other words, she was discharging clear mucus from the nares, arising from acutely inflamed mucosal epithelium of the respiratory tract! The respiratory tract is the most common entry point for viruses, and there are quite a lot of these: for instance – adenovirus (a cause of the common cold), measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), enterovirus D68 (which causes a polio-like illness), influenza A and B, rhinovirus (the predominant cause of the common ..read more