Royal Updates

Most Fascinating MBE Recipient of The Year :

April Ashley who was Britain's first transgender model received her MBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. Looking for all the world like a Dowager Duchess straight from the set of Downton Abbey, Ashley received the honour for her services to transgender equality.


Ashley married Lord Rowallan in 1970 but the potty peer was granted an annulment on the claim he didn't realise April was once a Liverpudlian sailor.

The Shuttle once accompanied Ms Ashley to a Berkley Square Ball where she kept the late Princess Margaret occupied in conversation whilst we assisted pop singer Marilyn over the fence.
Ashley says she had a string of Hollywood lovers including the late Michael Hutchence. On the night of the Berkley Ball she snared a handsome young city  type gent and had her way with him in the Shuttle's Fulham living room. As we escorted him to the door when he left to go to his city bank job in the morning he asked:"I know she's famous, what is her name again?"... " oh yes she was a James Bond girl,.just tell you pals at the bank you've been banging April Ashley all night" we replied.

Wackiest New Political Party

Proud Monarchist , the fragrant David Flint has announced the launch of a new political party CANdo to bring back capital punishment, a tougher line on refugees and all the other policies of the US Tea Party.
Confirmed bachelor Flint also wants a referendum on gay marriage and has voiced his support for wacko Senator Corey Bernardi who reckons legalising gay marriage may lead to bestiality and other such outrages.

Flint has been joined in his endevour by right wing mining magnate Hugh Morgan and our favourite shock jock Alan Jones who was recently ordered to apologise to the Muslim community on his radio program by ACMA which co-incidentally Flint was forced to resign from when he was head of the media watchdog and was discovered writing passionate  letters of support to Jones whilst he was being investigated by ACMA during the infamous Cash For Comments scandal.

""I've been called a perma-tanned Indonesian-born blow-in" says Flint of his critics. Indeed, the Shuttle well remembers a much younger Flint blowing into the infamous Paddington gay pub the Windsor Castle when he was just a mere lad.
Best Diplomatic Appointment

Bringing style back into diplomacy. It seems almost certain that Vogue supremo Anna Wintour will be appointed by Barack Obama as the American ambassador to the Court of St James.

Other famous Ambassadors to Britain include Australia's Sir Les Patterson !

getting it wrong again..

The increasingly tiresome 20 to 1 gets it wrong again.

Hosted by the amiable Bert 'Moonface' Newton, the show that has a bunch of minor celebrities commenting on other celebrities, including this character who claims he is "king of the UK paparazzi', Darryn Lyons whose rainbow coloured hair still doesn't detract from his pudding shaped face.

Lyons made a gaffe to rival the dud TV show he fronted in Australia and his autobiography that was launched in a blaze of publicity and was soon forgotten.

Moonface Bert above pudding faced Darryn (right)

Guffawing that Bond girl Caroline Cossey was exposed as the "first sex change " to appear in a film (For Your Eyes Only) in 1981, Lyons ignores the fact that one of the most famous cases of gender reassignment surgery, April Ashley appeared in The Road to Hong Kong with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 2 decades before.

The story appeared in Duncan Fallowell's 1982 biography of Ashley, April Ashley's Odyssey.

April's auto-biography The First Lady (published by the distinguished John Blake) had to be pulped when it was discovered to be a re-hash of Fallowell's book. Ashley had claimed affairs with Michael Hutchence, Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif amongst other notables although most denied it .

April should have taken Shelley Winter's advice to a gal pal who needed more lovers to spice up her book when Shelly advised.."if they're gay or dead just say they were lovers and they'll never deny it". At least she was right in Hutchence's case.

# Lyon's Big Picture agency and others like Splash could be badly affected by the new law signed in California today by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that will severely restrict the intrusive actions of the "stalkarazzi' as they are known. The law will put the onus on photographers agencies and publishers of material equally with large fines making them all liable to law suits from aggrieved celebs who claim their privacy has been breached. Which isn't often in Hollywood where the norm is to have your publicist phone ahead to alert the media when one is out on a private shopping excursion.But it does give stars even more control over their public image.

Most LA agencies only have themselves to blame. For the last 10 years they have been loading up unemployed immigrants with cameras, sending them out into the streets en masse to surround a star's house or car to cause havoc. Payment for any resultant photograph is filtered down to the increasingly desperate snappers. Something had to give.

for those about to visit Nu Zulund...

If you haven't discovered the writer Duncan Fallowell then you are missing something important. His book about his travels in New Zealand, Going As Far As I Can is a must read if you are about to hit the snow-fields or anywhere in that amazingly beautiful country. NZ is every bit as sensational as seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy which only showed a fraction of some of the glorious countryside. Much like Britain or Ireland but without the motorways.

Fallowell's book hit a few raw nerves in NZ itself but was generally viewed as one of the best travel books about any country...and anyway, we all know most Nu Zelunders are barking mad and talk funny but there must be a reason HRH The Queen owns extensive properties there.

Fallowell's wikopedia entry reports " Graham Greene did not like his first novel but thought it belonged to the 21st century. William Burroughs relished his books " . That's a bit like a recommendation from the Gods.

Now Britain's most infuriating blogger Madame Arcati brings news of Fallowell's new venture, a ghost book named The Visitor. She has a creepy video on her site, set in a rambling old house to introduce the novel and drum up interest.

One commenter on Aracti's site asks where it was filmed. The house looks similar to Sherston, the home of the late Lady Edith Foxwell which the Shuttle spent many a weekend at.

The strange figure who arises from the sofa at the end -believed to be Duncan Fallowell, reminds us of the greeting we always got from Lady Edith's butler-similarly relaxed and always delighted when guests arrived. Being in that he always phoned ahead to request they bring the odd dozen bottles of mixed spirits ( Edith's credit having been cut off at the local village vinter).

You will have to visit the Madame Arcati blog to see Fallowell's spooky video but here's another of his we like-talking about drugs at Oxford.




ps: Duncan Fallowell also wrote a biography of April Ashley, the former Liverpudlian sailor who became one of the world's most famous sex-changes . One of the Shuttle staff often visited April in her house in Hay-on-Wye and once accompanied her to the Berkley Square Ball in the days it was still smart-only to be featured the next day in a photo in the Daily Mail and a piece by the late diarist Nigel Dempster as "April Ashley's new Toyboy".

For some strange reason, Ashley's auto-biography recently had to be pulped over a misunderstanding with her publisher and Shuttle associate John Blake-described by the magazine Private Eye as the "distinguished London publisher". You can get other Blake book titles from his website which features exciting titles like "Katie and Peter - Too Much In Love by  Emily Herbert (yes, a tome about that mystery couple),, Jade - Fighting to the End by..err Jade Goody (I guess before the end came), and our favourite Global Warming and Other Bollocks

For more of Duncan Fallowell's great books, go to his website.

pps: thank you for the many emails pointing out the shocking spelling and grammar errors that appear on the Social Shuttle but we must point out that both Shuttlers suffer from slight dyslexia, are often hungover or just plain drunk when hitting the keyboard. Errors are eventually corrected when our charming assistant Sally arrives in the early afternoon. But feel free to mock the afflicted-we can take it !