A Little Slice of Post-Punk Music History: How Lieutenant Lush Became Boy George

Annabella Lwin and George O'Dowd (Lt. Lush)

Photo by Kevin Cummins (1981)

 

Sex gang children gang up on you, jump on top, on top of you 

Make love, make love, make love to you, one two three four five miles high

 

 

I.

 

Not a lot of people know - even among those who might possibly care to know - that before finding pop stardom as Boy George with the band Culture Club [1], 19-year-old George O'Dowd was briefly an associate member of Bow Wow Wow. He even twice performed on stage with them under the name Lieutenant Lush. 

 

To understand how that came about - and to uncover the origin of this rather odd-sounding alias - we must travel back to Paris in 1980. There we find former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren trying to engineer his next move.  

 

Keen to discover a fresh sound, McLaren chances upon the Burundi beat. In his mind, this connects him to the primal origin of rock 'n' roll, just as images of Geronimo and Black Beard suggest the possibility of a new, more romantic look to go with the music - part Apache, part pirate, and - crucially - post-punk.  

 

At the same time, McLaren was also hoping to find financial backing for his own film company - Tour D'Eiffel Productions [2] - which would specialise in porn projects aimed at a pre-teen audience. Paul Gorman writes (disapprovingly) that McLaren's thinking in this area was shaped by his "radical political grounding" and the "countercultural conceit" [3] that children should be accorded full agency. 

 

These projects included 'The Mile High Club', for which he had written a speculative script "revolving around an orgy on an inflight plane" [4], featuring such colourful characters as Jimmy the Hoover and ... Lieutenant Lush [5].        

 

 

II.  

 

After agreeing in the winter of 1979 to act as a mentor and creative consultant to Adam Ant for a four-week period and receiving a fixed fee of £1000, McLaren worked closely with the Ants - guitarist Matthew Ashman, drummer Dave Barbarossa, and new bassist Leigh Gorman - soon bonding with them. 

 

In fact, McLaren grew so close to the three musicians and recognised their puppet potential that he decided they should "provide the backdrop for a younger and more easily manipulated performer" [6] than 25-year-old Adam. And so he persuaded the band "to announce to Ant that they no longer wanted to work with him" [7].

 

The band then embarked on a lengthy but fruitless and frustrating audition process in an attempt to find a suitable lead singer. Fortunately, fate lent a hand when talent scout Dave Fishel encountered 13-year-old Annabella Lwin singing along to the radio at a West Hampstead dry cleaners where she worked. 

 

Impressed by her vocal ability and her youthful good looks - her warm skin tone the result of her bi-racial heritage (Anglo-Burmese) - Fishel persuaded McLaren to audition her. 

 

Shortly after, despite the fact she was completely untutored "and was largely unaware of pop music beyond a liking for Stevie Wonder" [8], Annabella joined the group and suddenly - magically - everything seemed to fall into place. They had the sound, they had the look, and now they had the teenage singer that McLaren desperately wanted (his Eliza Doolittle). 

 

However, that old showbiz maxim about never working with children (and their interfering mothers) soon came back to bite McLaren and the older members of the band and it wasn't long before they began thinking of a possible replacement for Annabella ... Enter George O'Dowd ...  

 

 

III.  

George was always going to be a star. But it's also indisputable that meeting McLaren and briefly working with Bow Wow Wow in 1980-81 was an important stepping-stone for his career. For although his association with the band only lasted a few months, it catalysed the formation of Culture Club.

 

Apart from growing impatient with Annabella, McLaren hoped that by recruiting George to the band's lineup he could inject something extra into the mix; perhaps a little more visual drama and queer romanticism (McLaren was obsessed at this time with homosexuality as a challenge to heteronormative values). 

 

McLaren gave George the stage name Lieutenant Lush. His role was to provide a soulful, vocal presence that would contrast to the band's signature Burundi beat and punk energy. He only performed live at two of the band's shows, but immediately stole the spotlight - which didn't go down well with Annabella and the boys and it was immediately obvious to McLaren that either she had to go or George had to go.

 

Whether he tossed a coin to decide who should stay and who should leave, I don't know. But it was George who was shown the door in the spring of 1981. However, as in the case of Adam Ant, this dismissal was ultimately a blessing in disguise. 

 

Confident that he could hold a tune and command a stage - and keen to have his revenge on Malcolm and show him what a mistake he'd made in sacking him - George decided to form his own group. And this group - whom he considered at one point naming the Sex Gang Children [9] - would find global fame as Culture Club - once they found their own identity and stopped trying to sound like Bow Wow Wow [10].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Culture Club had their first big hit with the release of the single 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me', which got to number one in the UK and number two in the US. The track was taken from their debut album Kissing to Be Clever (Virgin Records, 1982). It's not my cup of tea at all - but George looks good in the video directed by Julien Temple.   

 

[2] French speakers will point out that this is a misspelling (whether deliberate or otherwise) on McLaren's part; that the company's name should technically be 'Tour Eiffel', and not 'Tour D'Eiffel'. I reproduce an image of the company letterhead in a post titled 'From the Office of Malcolm McLaren' (26 Oct 2022).   

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 437. For Gorman, these and related projects to do with underage sexual activity "represented the development of the most tiresome, not to say misguided and divisive, aspect of McLaren's creative outpourings" (437).  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 436. Another of McLaren's proposed film projects mentioned by Gorman was 'The Adventures of Melody, Lyric & Tune' - "a musical about the three titular fifteen-year-old girls featuring songs written by McLaren" (437), including a track that Bow Wow Wow would later record, 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' (it's included on their debut mini-album Your Casstte Pet, (EMI, 1980) and features on various compilation albums). 

 

[5] As this is a post about Lt. Lush and not Jimmy the Hoover, I don't want to say too much about the latter here. Not that there is much to say and details are vague. Originally conceived by McLaren as a kids' comic character (and an expert in the art of oral sex), there was no person as such. 

      Later, McLaren would put together a band of this name intended as a support act for Bow Wow Wow. They joined the ranks of one-hit wonders thanks to the single 'Tantalise (Wo Wo Ee Yeh Yeh)', released in June 1983 (Innervision Records). Again, it's really not my cup of tea - and I'm not particularly taken with the band's look in this video directed by Derek Jarman.     

 

[6-7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 448. The only thing more creatively daring (if commercially reckless) than pushing Adam out of his own band, was making Rotten walk the plank in January 1978 at the end of the Sex Pistols American tour. 

      To his great credit, Ant licked his wounds, assembled a new band with the brilliant guitarist Marco Pirroni, and, putting all the ideas that Malcolm had given him into practice, he went on to find global success. His first big hit single in the UK - 'Dog Eat Dog' (the opening track on the Adam and the Ants' album Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) - featured the Burundi beat and significantly outsold the debut single by Bow Wow Wow - 'C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!' (although, of course, selling records and becoming a successful pop group really wasn't the point as far as McLaren was concerned). Both are fantastic songs, though it's the latter - with lyrics by McLaren encouraging home taping - that has the more subversive political edge. Readers can decide for themselves which they prefer by clicking on the links provided.      

 

[8] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 451.  

 

[9] This provocative phrase - sex gang children - was a favourite of McLaren's; one that he coined after reading The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971), a novel by William S. Burroughs. He incorporated it into the lyrics for the Bow Wow Wow track 'The Mile High Club', which can be found on several compilation albums, including I Want Candy (EMI, 1982).  

      Whilst I think we can all agree that George wisely chose not to go with this as the name of his new band - drummer Jon Moss was having none of it - it was picked up by his friend Andi for his own gothic punk outfit (at that time known as Panic Button). 

      The Sex Gang Children would not achieve the level of commercial success achieved by Culture Club, but they did establish themselves as Batcave favourites and influenced the later dark cabaret scene. Their only studio album - Song and Legend (Illuminated Records, 1983) - reached the top of the UK Indie Chart and produced the brilliant single 'Sebastiane' which is ten times better than anything Culture Club came up with - Eat your children baked in a pie! 

 

[10] As Paul Gorman says, Culture Club soon transcended their influences and we have to acknowledge that Boy George, like Adam Ant, showed huge strength of character (as well considerable skills as a songwriter and performer). McLaren later dismissed him as "strictly a commercial enterprise" lacking any subversive edge, which may be true, but it sounds a wee bit like sour grapes. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 476.   

 

 

Visions of Malcolm

Malcolm McLaren as played on screen by David Hayman (1986), 

Mark Gatiss (2010), and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (2022)

 

 

I. 

 

I am not an actor. Not in any professional sense, at least. But I imagine that portraying a well-known public figure whose persona is established in the cultural imagination is particularly difficult because the audience already knows how they look, move, and speak.  

 

Rightly or wrongly, viewers will scrutinise the performance in order to assess its accuracy and if something feels off - perhaps only in the smallest detail - this can make the whole thing seem fake and awkward. 

 

Getting the voice right - but without sounding like one is simply doing a comic impression - is perhaps the hardest thing of all. Nevertheless, there are some actors who enjoy the challenge and have an almost chameleon-like ability to play famous real-life figures; one thinks of Michael Sheen, for example, who has given legendary performances as Tony Blair, Brian Clough, and Kenneth Williams [1].  

 

Whether Sheen has some supernatural ability to get under the skin of others and channel their essence - or is just a consummate professional who does intensive research, works closely with voice coaches, and has the kind of features and physique that lend themselves well to different roles - I don't know. 

 

But he's an immensely gifted actor and it's a shame he hasn't played Malcolm McLaren as I think he'd do a great job. He even has the slightly goofy grin, naturally curly hair, and Aquarian-white complexion needed for the role. 

 

Still, who knows, maybe one day ... And in the meantime, we have three other actors to discuss who have given us their on-screen versions of Malcolm: David Hayman, Mark Gatiss, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster ...

 

 

II.  

 

Of the three, Scottish actor David Hayman faced perhaps the greatest challenge when preparing to play Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986). For he had to embody someone who was a still living (and still notorious) cultural provocateur. 

 

Because Malcolm was such a distinctively animated character, Hayman could not rely on simply reading a standard script outline for his interpretation. He was obliged to meticulously study many hours of filmed interviews with McLaren in order to try and master his accent and intonation which was an amusingly camp mix of art school affectation and cockney [2]. Obviously, he also attempted to get McLaren's theatrical hand gestures and mannerisms spot on too. 

 

Primarily, however, Hayman focused on capturing McLaren's mercenary energy, portraying him as a scheming, detached observer of events who viewed human tragedy purely from the perspective of marketing and media. In Cox's film, he gleefully delivers a line describing Sid Vicious as a fabulous disaster rather than a mere bass player. 

 

That's not entirely unfair or inaccurate, but it does mean we are not shown anything of McLaren's greatest asset - his charm. 

 

Malcolm possessed a very powerful, highly contradictory kind of charisma that he used to captivate, influence, and, yes, manipulate people. There was a reason that so many individuals bought into what Johnny Rotten would dismiss as McLaren's bullshit and if he prioritised cultural provocation over the well-being and long-term success of the band, well, that's not something that troubles me.  

 

My main gripe with Hayman as McLaren is this: he looked too damn old! Malcolm was a young-looking 31-year-old when Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols in February 1977. But Hayman, aged 37, was a much more mature screen presence in 1985 when the film Sid and Nancy was shot, as can be seen in the above photo. (And note to wardrobe: McLaren never wore Lennon-style sunglasses.) 

 

Finally, it's interesting to discover that a planned meeting on set to film a promotional face-to-face between McLaren and his cinematic doppelgänger was abandoned after Malcolm saw some early footage from the film and was appalled by how the production was shaping up.    

 

III. 

 

Next on our list is Mark Gatiss, who played McLaren in the biographical drama Worried About the Boy (dir. Julian Jarrold, 2010) [3], about the rise to fame of the singer Boy George (played by Douglas Booth) who very briefly sang on stage with Bow Wow Wow (as Lieutenant Lush) [4].

 

With slightly unfortunate timing, the 90-minute film aired on BBC Two on 16 May 2010, just five weeks after Malcolm's death. 

 

Gatiss approached the role differently to Hayman and gives us a markedly different vision of McLaren, whom he portrayed as more of an old-school impresario and natural-born showman who was then shifting aesthetically from punk nihilism to a new romanticism.     

 

Hayman's McLaren was cruel and calculating: Gatiss tapped into the lighter side of his character; flamboyant and eccentric, a man with wild hair and waving hands who could charm the birds from the trees; less arch-manipulator and more a shrewd and inspiring mentor to young artists such as George (and before him Adam Ant).     

 

Reflecting on playing real public figures like McLaren, Gatiss later revealed that his philosophy is not to attempt an exact impersonation, but to try and convey a suggestion of the person without letting the truth get in the way of the story being told. 

 

In other words, whereas Hayman gave audiences a darker, perhaps psychologically more realistic version of McLaren, Gatiss delivered the performative, larger-than-life figure who wished to cause trouble and make cash from chaos in the name of fun rather than malice.

 

Critics and viewers rightly praised Gatiss's performance. Writing in the Financial Times (21 May 2010), John Lloyd described it as a "vividly cynical cameo". Again, my only issue would be that Gatiss was just slightly too old for the role and his McLaren seems to be based more on a mid-rather than an early '80s version of the character. 

  

 

IV.

 

The most recent actor to try on McLaren's tartan bondage suit is Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played him in Danny Boyle's six-part miniseries Pistol (2022) [5]. Arguably, his was the standout performance of the entire show - salvaging an otherwise Disneyfied production - and he cleverly pitched it somewhere between David Hayman's hard-edged version and Mark Gatiss's high camp take on the character.

 

Rather than frame McLaren as a detached puppet master, Brodie-Sangster and series writer Craig Pearce actively tried to avoid making him a one-dimensional villain. Brodie-Sangster aimed to show why it was that young, working-class kids would willingly follow him in the first place, highlighting McLaren's genuine, infectious passion for a cultural and artistic revolution.

 

Because he has so much more screen time to develop the character, Brodie-Sangster is able to both experiment with the role and relax his way into it. He later admitted that he found playing the part not only a lot of fun, but liberating for him as an actor.  

 

Physically, Brodie-Sangster had a distinct advantage over the earlier actors who played the part. For he actually possessed the slight build, youthful face, and naturally boyish energy of the real McLaren. Also, during filming he was the exact same age as Malcolm in 1977 and that certainly helped. As does the fact that he pretty much nails the distinct, slightly high-pitched, breathless cadence of McLaren's vocal delivery [6]. 

 

There's a joy in his performance and no trace of tiredness. Having said that, McLaren's character isn't softened too much or emptied entirely of its more Machiavellian aspects. And whilst it's arguable whose performance is best - Hayman's, Gatiss's, or Brodie-Sangster's - the latter's is certainly my favourite.   

In sum: without possessing the uncanny power of Michael Sheen to transform into the character being played, each of the three captured a vital facet of a McLaren who spent his entire life ensuring that nobody could ever completely pin him down.

 

V. 

 

Finally, to end on an ironic note, it might convincingly be argued that the best performance by someone playing McLaren was given by McLaren himself in Julien Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

In fact, so good was his hyper-stylised performance in this film that there are still people to this day who take it for an accurate representation - i.e., who miss the fact that McLaren was acting and that he wasn't aiming to expose the truth about himself but construct a self-satirising myth; that the film was a fictionalised narrative in which McLaren played the version of himself that he wished to be - not a documentary, ffs.    

 

The film's relentless cynicism was so perfectly tailored to McLaren's public persona that audiences completely fell for it - believing the lie that the Sex Pistols project was merely a manufactured, art-school scam used to sell bondage trousers from 430 King's Road. 

 

In later years, McLaren regretted being too good an actor. Being mistaken for his role as The Embezzler proved to be burdensome, when it meant that the public, the press, and cultural historians refused to see him as an avant-garde artist, but only as a fast-talking fraud and flamboyant failure.  

 

 

Malcolm McLaren as Malcolm McLaren (The Embezzler) 

in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Sheen played Blair in three works written by Peter Morgan: The Deal (dir. Stephen Frears, 2003), The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears, 2006), and The Special Relationship (dir. Richard Loncraine, 2010). He played Clough in The Damned United (dir. Tom Hooper, 2009), and Williams in Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! (dir. Andy De Emmony, 2006). Sheen has also played other famous faces including David Frost, Chris Tarrant, and Prince Andrew.

 

[2] One could write an entire post trying to describe McLaren's unique accent and intonation. His voice bridged the gap between his Jewish North London roots and his art school education. Thus, he retained the flat vowels of Estuary English, but stretched them out theatrically. 

      Sometimes, he spoke breathlessly at speed; at other times he spoke quite softly and deliberately as if drawing you into a secret. The pitch would go up and down depending on his level of excitement and this gave the delivery its camp and comic aspects. The most notable thing, however, was how he spoke about popular culture with the elevated vocabulary and conceptual framing of a French intellectual, creating a surprising juxtaposition and making him a highly articulate and amusing storyteller.

 

[3] Click on the link provided in the main text and go to 1:02:22-1:08:10 to watch Gatiss's short but memorable performance as McLaren. 

 

[4] Bow Wow Wow were the band McLaren assembled and managed after the Sex Pistols. George O'Dowd - who would become known to the world as Boy George - was, at that time (1980), a nineteen-year-old "gender-defying club kid noted for his soulful singing voice, sassy demeanour and outrageous appearance". O'Dowd's relationship with McLaren and the band was, however, extremely short-lived and he made only a couple of appearances on stage with them. See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020). The line quoted is on p. 471. 

  

[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... Readers who want to know what I think of this show can see the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021). 

 

[6] Brodie-Sangster noted in promotional interviews that he found McLaren's voice the hardest element to capture, describing it as a mix of a salesman's hustle and an intellectual's lecture, delivered with an almost childlike glee.

 

 

Love Kills (Or Sometimes Just Lies Limp): Sid and Nancy 40 Years On

Sid & Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986) 

An official theatrical film poster

 

 

I. 

 

Sid and Nancy - also known by the working title Love Kills [1] - was released 40 years ago. 

 

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 1986 and was first shown in London at the Limelight Club on 20 July, before going on general release in UK cinemas the following month.

 

It's a biopic directed by Alex Cox, who co-wrote the script with Abbe Wool, starring Gary Oldman as the Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and American actress Chloe Webb as his punk paramour Nancy Spungen [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Oldman is a talented and versatile actor - not one of my favourites, though I don't dislike seeing him on screen - but his initial decision to turn down the role of Vicious (not once, but twice) was one I wish he'd stuck by. 

 

For one thing, he was already 27 when filming took place in 1985, which makes him too old to play a character who died aged 21. Also, by his own admission, he had zero interest in Vicious and punk subculture, wasn't a fan of the Sex Pistols, and found the entire story surrounding Sid and Nancy banal. 

 

Ultimately, Oldman only accepted the role at the urging of his agent and after learning that he was being offered a £35,000 fee to star in the movie [3]. 

 

However, to be fair, he did throw himself into the part with all his characteristic intensity once he agreed terms. Amusingly, he lost so much weight in such a short period in order to play Vicious that he was briefly hospitalised with malnutrition [4]. And at least Oldman came from a relatively working-class background, unlike posho actor Louis Partridge who played Vicious in Danny Boyle's ludicrous six-part mini-series Pistol in 2022 [5].  

 

Oldman - who went on to become an Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor - now rarely mentions Sid and Nancy and casually dismisses his own performance in the film.  

 

 

III. 

If Oldman, at 27, was just a tad past it to play Sid, Chloe Webb, pushing 30 when she took on the role of Nancy - who died aged 20 - was way over the hill (certainly by punk standards). 

 

So again, whilst she does a reasonable job, I think it would have been better - or at least more daring - to have cast 20-year-old Courtney Love in the role - one for which she submitted a video audition and was genuinely passionate about. 

 

Cox was deeply impressed by Love's youthful enthusiasm - and her acting ability - but eventually caved in to pressure from the film's financial backers and investors who insisted on a more experienced actress in the role. 

 

He did, however, create and write the minor supporting character of Gretchen for Love (a fictional New York junkie friend of the punk couple) so she could still be part of the project and this marked her debut feature film appearance (several years before she formed the band Hole and met Kurt Cobain).      

 

 

IV. 

 

Although Sid and Nancy failed to recoup its production budget at the box office, the film was received positively by most critics [6] and has since developed a cult following. Strangely, however, it is rarely shown on British TV and I don't think I've seen it other than at the cinema back in August 1986 - when I was less than impressed, as this diary entry makes clear:

 

Sophie and I woke up late. After lunch, we set off on a nice sunny day to King's Road. Boring! Nothing (and no one) caught my eye. From Chelsea to Kensington Market and Hyper Hyper. Still found nothing to excite. Everything seems to have stagnated. But perhaps that's a good thing - a precursor to a change of some kind. Or maybe not.   

      Got to Leicester Square at five-ish. Had something to eat in Pizzaland and then went to the cinema. It had been my intention not to see Sid & Nancy, but felt a strange obligation to do so - and Sophie had bought the tickets. The two main parts were well-acted, so kudos to Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. Other cast members were less convincing - particularly David Hayman as Malcolm and Andrew Schofield as Rotten. 

      Ultimately, I came away asking myself what was the point of such a film other than to echo the 'Just Say No' anti-drugs campaign? The only thing worse than the ridiculous ending of the film was Joe Strummer's soundtrack. [7]

 

As I say, I don't think I've since re-watched the film - though I'd very much be interested to do so, one day, just to find out if it's as bad as I remember it. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Director Alex Cox used the title Love Kills throughout the writing and development process. Why this title was dropped (or relegated to the status of a subtitle) in favour of the more prosaic Sid and Nancy, I don't know, but one suspects there was probably external pressure to do so coming from the film's producers (particularly after a letter was received from a party claiming to own the title 'Love Kills' and threatening legal action).

      Clearly, it must have been a decision made late on, because by then Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash) had already written the film's title track and 'Love Kills' was released as a single from the film's soundtrack in July 1986. Fans of Strummer will doubtless disagree, but it's a shit track and, personally, I much prefer the song written by Dee Dee Ramone also called 'Love Kills' and also dealing with the tragic story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. This track can be found on the Ramones album Animal Boy (Sire Records, 1986). 

 

[2] For my own take on these star-crossed lovers, see the post titled 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You' (30 Dec 2020). For a rather more personal take on the story of Sid Vicious see 'Sweet Sixteen' (8 Feb 2022). And for a longer post in memory of Ms Spungen, see 'The Last of the Groupies' (26 April 2022).   

  

[3] I know there will be readers thinking that £35,000 doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was considered a significant sum to pay a young and relatively unknown theatre actor at the time. Oldman has since revealed in interviews that he was only earning around £80 a week working with the Royal Court Theatre at the time - and that was in a good week (sometimes his income would fall to half that). Thus, for Oldman, £35,000 was a small fortune - one that allowed the purchase of a modest flat in London. 

      Readers need to also remember that Sid and Nancy was an independent British film - not a big-budget Hollywood movie. Total production costs were only around £2.7 million.   

 

[4] For those who might want to know the secret of such dramatic weight loss, apparently the knack is to live on a diet of nothing but steamed fish and lots of melon. 

 

[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... See the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021). 

[6] Roger Ebert, for example, gave Sid and Nancy full marks in his review (25 Oct 1986). He concludes that Alex Cox has all the makings of a great director: "He and his actors pull off the neat trick of creating a movie full of noise and fury, and telling a meticulous story right in the middle of it." The review can be found on rogerebert.com  

      Thirty years later, Peter Bradshaw writing in The Guardian (4 Aug 2016) was equally enthusiastic, insisting that Sid and Nancy is a "welcome corrective to bland punk nostalgia" and calling it "Alex Cox's Beckettian masterpiece about those two prisoners of futility" and undiagnosed dysfunction.  

 

[7] This is an edited and slightly revised entry in The Von Hell Diaries (Sat 23 August, 1986). 

 

 

Bonus 1: the original trailer to Sid and Nancy (1986) - enhanced version by HD Retro Trailers.  

 

Bonus 2: the trailer for the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Sid and Nancy (Studiocanal, 2016). 

 

 

Old MacDonald's Data Farm (AI, AI, Oh!)

 

 Old MacDonald's Data Farm (AI, AI, Oh!) 

(SA/2026) [1]

 

'We live in a world where there is more and more data, 

and less and less meaning.' (Jean Baudrillard) [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Technically speaking, a server farm is not the same thing as a data centre - even if they are commonly used by people as if synonymous. 

 

So, what's the difference? 

 

Well, a server farm is a collection of computer servers connected together to handle shared computing tasks or large workloads. A data centre, on the other hand, is the physical building or facility that houses the server farm and includes the heavy infrastructure needed to keep everything up and running smoothly. 

 

I've sometimes heard people refer to a data farm, but apparently this is not a recognised term within the tech industry but rather a convenient blend referring to both the server farm and the data centre that contains it.  

 

 

II. 

 

Whatever we choose to call them, these monstrous facilities for storing, managing, and disseminating data and training AI models are becoming a familiar sight and their number is set to be significantly expanded across the UK [3], despite mounting concerns from the people obliged to live within their digital shadow. 

 

I don't imagine the local wildlife are best pleased either by this development, but in Britain today their survival is no longer even a consideration amongst politicians in thrall to the global tech giants like Google and Microsoft and the corporate investment firms like the Blackstone Group who build and operate the data centres on their behalf. 

 

As a spokesperson for HM Government made clear, data centres are central to the UK's economic future - designating them critical national infrastructure. 

 

And so very real environmental concerns can quietly be pushed to one side, even if the scale and location of these centres - average-sized facilities are around 40,000 square metres and often built on agricultural land in rural areas - significantly alters the landscape.

 

I know it's convenient to bank and shop online, stream movies, and store shit in the cloud, but I would happily abandon all such activities if it meant these water-guzzling digital farms could be blown up in the morning, before the entire world is reduced to mere data and life is sacrificed in the name of ever-more processing power.  

 

As Baudrillard might say, we are exterminating physical reality just to sustain a digital utopia in which human beings are replaced by chatbots and artificially intelligent machines process an infinite amount of data in order to generate an endless amount of content, but without ever providing a new vision of chaos.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The photo to which I have added figures is by the American photographer Stephen Voss. It shows a data centre overlooking Tippett’s Hill Cemetery in Sterling, Virginia, and was taken in December 2023. 

      Voss has been documenting Northern Virginia's huge number of data centres for the past few years and illustrating how they impact on the communities that now exist in their shadow. Some of these photographs feature in a piece in U.S. News: In Pictures: The Uncanny Landscapes of Data Centers (28 April, 2026). Readers who would like to know more about Voss and his work can visit his website: stephenvoss.com 

 

[2] The line is from Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (The University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 79. Note that I am slightly modifying the translation for the purposes of this post - replacing 'information' with 'data'. 

 

[3] There are currently around 480 data centres in the UK and their number is set to increase by almost a fifth over the next five years, according to figures shared with BBC News. See the report by Zoe Kleinman and Krystina Shveda (15 August 2025) on the BBC News website: click here. 

Depigmentation: Notes on How Schopenhauer, D. H. Lawrence, and Frances Cress Welsing Constructed Whiteness

Schopenhauer, D. H. Lawrence, and Frances Cress Welsing 

 

Forced into a strange world, Caucasians are almost an abnormality; 

analogous to white mice, or at the very least grey horses. 

 

 

I. 

 

The tragic case of Jason Arday is unfortunate for many reasons - not least because it gives reactionary morons the opportunity to sneer at those with an interest in critical race theory and how whiteness as a conceptual identity is constructed and functions within modern society as a cultural and political norm. 

 

This is not an area of research with which I'm overly-familiar. But it does interest and, from what little I have read, it seems to me that there's a good deal of fascinating (and important) work being carried out. 

 

Indeed, if I were a postgrad student today looking for an idea to develop into a doctoral thesis, I would be tempted to examine how Schopenhauer's thinking on skin colour influenced later authors, including D. H. Lawrence, and how it relates also to pseudo-scientific theories to do with race, such as the one advanced by the American psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing in 1970. 

 

Without attempting to provide a detailed proposal for such a project, I'd like to briefly touch on one or two points here that might be central to the above ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Seeking to explain why it is that blonde-haired, white-skinned persons are physically drawn to dark-haired, brown-skinned people - a sweeping claim asserted without any empirical or statistical evidence to support it - Schopenhauer develops a speculative evolutionary theory rooted in his own philosophy of the will (i.e., the unconscious drive he posits as underpinning all reality). 

 

His argument is that sexual attraction is no more a free personal choice than anything else in this life and that it rests upon the instinctive desire not only to procreate, but to ensure that biological deviations from the original human type are balanced out in the offspring. As he believes whiteness to be an example of such a deviation - almost an abnormality - it is perfectly natural, therefore, that white people seek out partners of colour. 

 

Schopenhauer concludes his thinking on that exotic plant that is the white man by insisting that in no region of the world is the latter indigenous - "not even in the vicinity of the pole" - and that consequently "a white man has never originally sprung from the womb of nature, and that thus there is no such thing as a white race, much as this is talked of, but every white man is a faded or bleached one" [1]. 

 

 

III.

  

One of the people most influenced by this line of thinking was the young D. H. Lawrence, who would go on to develop his own (idiosyncratic and slightly crackpot) racial philosophy in which whiteness is viewed not only as an unattractive skin tone, but a malevolent form of ideal being responsible for the destruction of the natural world and the triumph of money and machinery. 

 

According to his former girlfriend Jessie Chambers, Lawrence was obsessed with Schopenhauer's work in the period he was writing what would become his debut novel, The White Peacock (1911). She may have been the one to borrow a copy of the German philosopher's essays from the local library, but it was Lawrence who read and re-read the book and left annotations in the margins. 

 

And one day, as she recalled in her memoir published five years after Lawrence's death, whilst arguing with her and her brother on the subject, Lawrence declared that "white skin is not natural to man" and that therefore, for him, "a brown skin is the only beautiful one" [2]. 

 

As Laura Ryan says, for Lawrence "dark-skinned peoples were closer to the 'blood-consciousness' he prized, while whites, too much consumed by their minds and anaesthetised by the deadening mechanisation of the industrial world, were doomed" [3]. 

 

This is an idea that Lawrence holds on to in one form or another throughout his life and writing career; we find it in the early novel Women in Love (finished in 1916 but not published until 1920); we find it in the mid-period novel The Plumed Serpent (1926); and we find it in his final novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

In the latter, for example, during an extraordinary rant about the women he has known, Mellors tells Connie that the only modern women who "'really 'come' naturally with a man'" are black women - although, as he then adds, black women don't ultimately appeal to him as they seem "'a bit like mud'" to his white sensibility [4]. 

 

This echoes what Lawence also told Jessie many years before - namely, that while he finds blackness beautiful, he doesn't automatically desire it; in other words, he could separate attraction and aesthetic appreciation [5]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

I'd like now to show how Schopenhauer's writings on human pigmentation connect to the idea of whiteness as a mutation or genetic deficiency in the work of Frances Cress Welsing ... 

 

If Lawrence's racial philosophy can be described as idiosyncratic and slightly crackpot, then Welsing's pseudo-scientific ideas to do with melanin set out in her 1970 essay 'The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism' [6], can fairly be characterised in far harsher terms. 

 

An expanded version of the above was later included in her controversial collection of essays, The Isis Papers (1991), where she asserts that white supremacy is driven by a fear of genetic annihilation and that racism, therefore, is a defensive reaction on behalf of defective albino mutants long-ago expelled from Africa to the biological superiority of people with high levels of melanin [7]. 

 

I kind of wish I was making this up - and some readers will think I am making this up. Unfortunately, that's not the case: these claims were not part of some outrageous satire, but made in all seriousness. Welsing also suggested that the human immunodeficiency virus was a form of biological warfare unleashed on the black majority by white people and that the latter were also responsible for drug use and homosexuality amongst African Americans. 

 

All of this feels quite a long way from Schopenhauer and yet, as we saw earlier, his philosophy does at times lend support to such thinking. Like Welsing, for example, Schopenhauer argues that black is the authentic colour of humanity and that whiteness is a biological deviation from such. 

 

However, Schopenhauer viewed this loss of colour purely as a physiological effect shaped by climate rather than a genetic deficiency and his scathing critique of whiteness as an identity tied to ethnonationalism [8] has more in common with later critical race theory than to Welsing's racial essentialism which (thankfully) plays no part in mainstream debate today [9]. 

 

Ultimately, Schopenhauer and contemporary theorists agree that building an identity around skin colour - black or white - is ultimately foolish and even Lawrence quickly realised after spending time in Harlem and reading black fiction that the negro is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man and that even his most cherished illusions concerning "the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [10] are a lot of stuff and nonsense. 

 

 

V. 

In sum - and to return to where I began - I think the argument made by black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and yes, Jason Arday, that racism is not a black issue but a white problem, is a strong one which deserves serious critical consideration. 

 

In other words, the gaze needs to be shifted from the victims of racism to the creators and beneficiaries of racial hierarchies. I know that many white people are made uncomfortable by terms such as white privilege and white bias and often don't wish to see how whiteness operates as an unspoken, invisible norm against which all other races are judged. But, frankly, that awkwardness can't be helped and shouldn't be apologised for. 

  

Notes 

 

[1] The crucial passage by Schopenhauer in which he considers human complexion, is located in the section of The World as Will and Representation titled 'The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes' (Vol. III, Book IV, Chapter XLIV). 

      Click on the link provided to read online courtesy of Project Gutenberg, who have based their EBook on the three-volume sixth edition of Schopenhauer's classic study trans. R. B. Haldane and John Kemp (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909). Schopenhauer's text originally appeared in German as Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818-19). An expanded second volume was added in 1844.

 

[2] See Jessie Chambers, D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111. This memoir was originally published in 1935 by Jonathan Cape Ltd (London). 

 

[3] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 39. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 204. 

      As Laura Ryan (2019, pp. 39-40) says, this exchange "illustrates Lawrence's othering of the black female as simultaneously representative of the 'real sex' both he and Mellors prize and a kind of degraded sexuality". In other words, in just one short statement Lawrence manages to both praise and denigrate "the presumed ultra-sensuality of black women", thereby betraying his ambivalence on the racial question (and romantic ideas of primitivism) more widely. 

 

[5] That seems (on the surface at least) a rather non-Lawrentian thing to do - something that enforces the mind/body split that he elsewhere seeks to overcome. 

 

 [6] This essay can be found in The Black Scholar, Vol. 5, Issue 8 (1974), pp. 32-40 (published online 14 April 2015). 

 

[7] Melanin is the natural bodily pigment that gives colour to skin, hair, and eyes.  

      I'm not a biological anthropologist, but I know a man who is and he tells me that lighter skin pigmentation is actually an advantageous evolutionary mutation allowing adequate synthesis of vitamin D by early human populations who had migrated out of Africa into regions with much less sunlight. 

 

[8] Schopenhauer famously hated tribalism and nationalism, even though he still maintained  Eurocentric, deeply racist beliefs that Africans were intellectually inferior that were very much in line with the pervasive biases of 19th-century European philosophy. 

 

[9] Just to be clear on this point: whilst the Cress Theory examines whiteness, it does so from a completely different perspective to contemporary CRT. The former relies on the belief that race dictates behaviour and is biologically determined. In contrast, the latter relies on the understanding that race is a fictional, legal, and political category - something socially determined but not essentially fixed - that was invented in the 17th and 18th centuries by the ruling class in order to justify slavery and colonialism.  

      Further, contemporary studies also focus on institutional advantages and systemic biases (i.e., questions to do with power) rather than the physical presence or absence of melanin. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308.

 

  

Sniffing Out Otherness: D. H. Lawrence and His Racially Sensitive Nose

D. H. Lawrence and his nose: described rather unkindly by 

Mabel Dodge Luhan as 'podgy, almost vulgar' [1] 

 

I.  

 

In a recent post [2], I mentioned how the sense of smell was very important for D. H. Lawrence. 

 

Indeed, without saying as much, one gets the impression that, like Nietzsche, he located his own peculiar genius in his hypersensitive nose, the nostrils of which formed "the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs" [3] - and you thought them merely two small holes!

 

For Lawrence, our sense of smell is rooted in the lower centres of the body - the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion - and the shape of the nose depends on "the direct control of the deepest centres of consciousness" [4]. It is not simply determined by an interplay of anatomical structure, genetics, and evolutionary adaptation to climate. 

 

Lawrence - in case you hadn't noticed - doesn't have much time for conventional scientific descriptions of the body and its organs. And he would have hated and despised the modern quest for a perfect nose involving the cosmetic surgical procedure known as rhinoplasty. 

 

For better or for worse, Lawrence would have advised people to keep the hooter they've been blessed with - be it short and snub, long and beaky, high and arched, or thick and squat. For the nose reveals one's true character; that is to say, "it almost inevitably indicates the mode of predominant dynamic consciousness in the individual" [5] and the primary centre from which they live.        

 

If Lawrence had his way, not only would there be human excrement piled up in the streets (either don't ask, or see the post linked to in note 1 below), but kissing would be replaced by nose rubbing, as the latter involves "a more sensitive and a deeper sensual salute" [6] than the mere pressing of lips.   

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, one of the things that Lawrence used his heightened sense of smell for was to sniff out the racial otherness of the passenger sitting next to him on public transport. 

 

In one of his more contentious and controversial passages, Lawrence writes that if "an Arab or a negro or even a Jew" [7] sits down next to him on the train, then that individual is not known to him in a way that a middle-class white Englishman is known: 

 

"As he sits next to me, there is a faint uneasy movement in my blood. A strange vibration comes from him, which causes a slight disturbance in my own vibration. There is a slight odour in my nostrils. And above all, even if I shut my eyes, there is a strange presence in contact with me." [8] 

 

Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he rather likes this - arguing that it allows for a real thought-adventure beyond mere knowing and understanding. And so, rather than simply insulate himself from contact with racial otherness, he affirms the disturbance of his blood and admits that something vital passes from the stranger; "because, after all, there is some peculiar alien sympathy between us." [9]  

 

 

III.  

 

Lawrence's view of race is, then, by no means simple and straightforward. It is, as sympathetic critics like to say, nuanced (by which they mean full of contradictions and inconsistencies). 

 

Despite a misconception that still lingers in some quarters, Lawrence certainly wasn't a conventional racist, even if he subscribed to an essentialised form of racial mysticism that celebrated primitivism on the one hand and what used to be called exotic otherness on the other. As he once told Jessie Chambers, for him, white skin is unnatural and ultimately only black is beautiful (even if not personally desirable to him) [10]. 

 

Having said that, Lawrence often expresses "shock, disgust and disappointment" [11] when he actually encounters people belonging to different cultures or ethnicities - especially "when a people or culture proved insufficiently primitive or different" [12] for the purposes of his philosophy. 

 

It's one thing discovering that Apaches have "an unbearable sulphur-human smell [...] that takes the breath from the nostrils" [13], but it was even more upsetting for Lawrence - the savage pilgrim - to discover "sameness where otherness was to be expected" [14]. 

 

Thus, when he reads fiction written by African Americans or visits Harlem in NYC - "that dismal region of hard stone streets" [15] - it is disconcerting to find that the black man is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man apart from the colour of his skin. 

 

"One likes to cherish illusions about the race soul, the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [16], writes Lawrence, but that becomes impossible when one actually comes into contact with people of colour (or when one's nose is blocked).  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 49. 

 

[2] The post I'm referring to is titled 'On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink' (23 Aug 2026). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 101.

 

[6] Ibid. To be fair, Lawrence may have a point here; the traditional Eskimo greeting - often mischaracterised as mere nose-rubbing - is an intimate gesture where family members and/or loved ones press faces in order to inhale and familiarise themselves with each other's scent. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'On Being a Man', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 214. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 215. 

 

[9] Ibid. 

 

[10] This conversation between Lawrence and Jessie Chambers is recalled in her memoir - D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111.

 

[11] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 40.  

      Dr Ryan's fascinating work in this area has significantly helped shape my thinking in this post - particularly section III - and I look forward to reading her newly published book D. H. Lawrence and Black Modernism: Transatlantic Influence and Confluence (Bloomsbury, 2026). I am also delighted to be contributing an essay on Lawrence's proto-punk sensibilities to a forthcoming collection she is co-editing (with Dr Jo Jones) for Edinburgh University Press. 

 

[12] Ibid. 

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 116. 

 

[14] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (2019), p. 43. 

 

[15] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308. For a lively discussion of Lawrence's visit to Harlem, see the Introduction to Laura E. Ryan's, 'You are white - yet a part of me' (pp. 27-28). 

 

[16] Ibid. 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink

Jaume Serra Cantallops: Bad Smell 

saatchiart.com  

 

'There was a basic perfumatory theme to the odour of humanity: a sweaty-oily, 

sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung 

to all humans equally ...' [1]

                                                                                           

 

I.

 

Although the popular idea that most people in the pre-modern past rarely washed and smelled constantly of sweat, excrement, and other foul odours is largely a myth, it can be agreed that they certainly lived in a far less deodorised and sanitised world than you and I have been reared within.    

 

One can only assume that because everyone lived in the same malodorous human environment, people in the pre-modern past were largely indifferent to the natural body odours of their fellow citizens (although they remained acutely sensitive to any smells that suggested disease). 

 

 

II. 

 

Personally, as someone with hyperosmia [2] on the one hand and osmophobia [3] on the other, I have to confess I'm glad I was born in the modern world - with indoor plumbing, plenty of hot water, and a huge range of soaps, shower gels, and shampoos available. 

 

That, however, puts me at odds with D. H. Lawrence, who argues that vital human sympathy rests upon our natural odour and that "the flow of spontaneous warmth" [4] between people has collapsed today precisely because we have become physically repulsive to one another. He writes: 

 

"While the old sympathetic flow continues, there are violent hostilities between people, but they are not secretly repugnant to one another. Once the heart is broken, people become repulsive to one another [...] They smell in each other's nostrils." 

 

Confirming what I say above, Lawrence then writes in the same text:

 

"It has been said often enough of more primitive or old-world peoples, who live together in a state of blind mistrust but also of close physical connection with one another, that they have no noses. They are so close, the flow from body to body is so powerful, that they hardly smell one another, and are hardly aware at all of the offensive human odours that madden the new civilisations. [...] And this is basically true." 

 

For Lawrence, then, once the blood-sympathy breaks - and only the nerve-sympathy remains - then men begin to smell to one another. This is revealed not only by the fact that we get gleaming white bathtubs, wash basins, and toilets, but in the novels of James Joyce and those "awful advertisements [...] about 'halitosis', or bad breath". 

 

Lawrence - who is dying of tuberculosis at the time of writing - is also irritated by the modern person's horror for "coughing, spitting, or any of those things" and seems to suggest that he'd rather see human excrement in the street than piles of litter and old rubbish.  

 

 

III. 

 

Again, I'm afraid I have to differ with Lawrence on this last point - and I can't say I'm thrilled by the fact that some local authorities in Europe and the UK are now having to erect signs explicitly asking people not to shit in public and post multilingual or pictogram-based instructions on how to use a toilet correctly. 

 

Some might think of this as cultural enrichment and a revival of an older form of human sympathy, but I don't.  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Books, 1987), p. 154. Note that I have slightly modified the quote.  

 

[2] Hyperosmia is the medical term for an intense or heightened sensitivity to smells. 

      Nietzsche had this condition and exploited it to his philosophical advantage to sniff out moral and cultural corruption, often boasting that his genius lay in his nostrils. See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.   

 

[3] Osmophobia is a specific fear or psychophysiological aversion to (usually bad) odours that can trigger headaches, nausea, and other symptoms of migraine.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 121. All following quotes from this text are also found on p. 121 of this book. 

 

 

For a fun follow up post to this one on how Lawrence used his nost to sniff out racial otherness (25 Aug 2026), click here.  

 

Wood, Gold, and Wax: The Strangely Fishy Tale of Osiris, Isis, and a Missing Member

The cover of Pagan Magazine (2026)

 showing Isis in bird form and the artificial phallus of Osiris  

 

 

I. 

 

The myth of Osiris tells the story of an Egyptian king-god who was murdered by his jealous brother Set, the god of chaos, dismembered, and then magically brought back to life after his devoted wife (and sister) Isis located and assembled all the widely scattered body parts except one - his penis. 

 

Unfortunately, this fourteenth piece had been tossed in the Nile and swallowed by a fish - most probably an Oxyrhynchus or what is commonly called an elephant fish and known for its bizarrely modified mouthparts resembling a trunk [1].     

 

Still, never one to allow a small setback derail her plans, Isis fashioned an artificial phallus to replace Osiris's missing organ. Again, depending on which ancient source text one consults, the physical material she used to sculpt the phallus varies. 

 

Classical accounts most commonly state she carved a simple wooden replacement. However, several regional myths detail her sparing no expense and crafting a mighty golden phallus. Alternatively, Roman-era historians mention her favouring wax to recreate the missing part.

 

 

II. 

 

Now, it just so happens that a German friend of mine custom designs highly beautiful - and highly expensive [2] - dildos and so I naturally asked her which of these three ancient options would actually be best for internal use. 

 

Based on safety concerns and body compatibility, she said that wood is the number one choice - provided, that is, that the item is properly finished with a hypoallergenic sealant (i.e., a skin safe, non-toxic, and non-porous clear coating) to protect against splinter risks and prevent bacteria from building up in the wood grain.     

 

As for which type of wood to use, she recommends a hardwood such as maple, cherry, or walnut (not only are these naturally sturdy, but they retain warmth too).   

 

As for a 24k gold artificial phallus, that would be safe for internal use and arguably the most aesthetically appropriate choice for a god-king. However, gold is not only an exceptionally expensive [3] and extremely heavy metal, but is also an exceptionally soft one that scratches easily thereby allowing microscopic traps for bacteria, so not ideal. So not great in the long run.     

 

That said, either wood or gold is preferable to wax as a material. In fact, my friend was horrified by the thought of using wax. Not only can it melt at body temperature, but it is highly brittle and can therefore easily snap under pressure. Wax is also porous, impossible to properly sanitise, and presents a severe risk of chemical irritation or infection.

 

In sum: my friend says always choose medical-grade silicone or borosilicate glass - though she appreciates these weren't available options in Ancient Egypt and that Isis had to work with what she had at the time.   

 

 

III.

 

According to Ancient Egyptian mythology, once she had assembled all the other body parts Isis attached the prosthetic phallus and magically awakened the latent virility within Osiris's reanimated corpse. 

 

She was assisted in this by her sister Nepthys as well as the god Anubis, who oversaw all things to do with death and essentially acted as a jackal-headed funeral director. Thoth may also have been present, taking notes on the proceedings.  

 

Somewhat strangely, having resurrected her husband, Isis hovered directly over his prone body in the form of a predatory bird, vigorously flapping her wings. In this way, she drew out his seed and they conceived a child (Horus). 

 

Post-coital exhaustion proved fatal to poor Osiris, however, and he promptly snuffed it a second time. His corpse was then completely wrapped in bandages - et voila! the Egyptian tradition of mummification was born [4].  

 

Notes

 

[1] Uncertain of the species, ancient scholars debated whether it could have been a large carp, or perhaps even a catfish, that swallowed Osiris's penis. Whatever the species, by consuming the divine sex organ a fish had literally ingested the generative power of a god and, in the eyes of Egyptian priests, this made it both a sacred and spiritually impure animal. This belief resulted in a religious taboo about eating fish on certain holy days (particularly freshwater fish that had been caught in the Nile).

      It might also be noted, however, that the ancient Egyptians did not view the fish eating Osiris's penis as a total tragedy; it was thought to also guarantee the eternal fertility of the river and that the Nile's annual flooding would make the soil rich enough to grow grain.

 

[2] Her standard designer dildos run between £100 and £500, with bespoke, custom-sculpted pieces starting at £1,000. For the discerning customer, ultra-luxury editions carved from solid rose quartz and encrusted with precious gemstones can cost significantly more.

 

[3] Based on current market rates, my friend tells me a pure gold seven-inch dildo weighing roughly 90 troy ounces would cost approximately £304,000 ($414,000) in raw gold melt value alone. Because 24k gold is an incredibly dense and heavy precious metal, the actual price would vary based on its specific thickness and whether it is hollow or completely solid.

 

[4] Because Osiris had been mummified, his spirit was now tethered to the underworld, meaning he could never again return as a living man. Because of his previous status - even if missing his penis - he was soon recognised as Ruler of the Afterlife and Lord of Silence.