Fred Vermorel in Paris, May 1968

Punk entrepreneur - Westwood

An entertaining and atmospheric account of May 68 from street level, alongside amusing correspondence betweed Fred and the libcom group.

Author

Fred Vermorel

The text is an excerpt from 'Fashion and Perversity - A Life of Vivienne Westwood And the Sixties Laid Bare', Bloomsbury, 1996.

It's the best part of Vermorel's book - which is otherwise composed of portrayals of himself as always the coolest, smartest character around, name dropping, generally worthless theoretical musings and descriptions of the budding 'hip capitalism' of punk entrepreneurs Vermorel, Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood.

The text is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080908045235/http://arkansas.indymedia.org/newswire/display/20287/index.php

We did host the text on libcom.org, until we received an email from Fred's agents, followed by one from the man himself.

Dear [libcom person],

I am responding to your email to my agent (below) concerning your unauthorised publication of a 5000 word extract from my book Fashion and Perversity, 1996.

Firstly, I note that libcom.org is registered to Albert Meltzer, a dead buffoon. That no doubt accounts for its funny smell.

Secondly, I have always considered anarchists to be the nitwits of the left and do not wish my work to be associated with your "movement" or to subsidise or lend any credibility to it.

Thirdly, while declaring poverty, you are running several undeclared nice little earners from your prime real estate in E1.

In short, you must immediately remove my material from your site and apologise in writing with a promise not to repeat the offence.

If this has not been done in two weeks I will be obliged to pop down to Whitechapel and remove property from your premises with a resale value of £3000, being the sum I would charge for the reproduction of that text.

Yours,
Fred Vermorel

Needless to say, libcom is a website and has no property, let alone any "real estate," "prime" or otherwise. We don't earn any money, other than regular contributions from the site administrators and some donations from users. The site administrators own no collective property, and in fact none of us own our own property, as we are all renters.

Comments

what? That's your comeback,

what? That's your comeback, that the man was mistaken? Of course he fucking was! I can't believe this vipers nest of flaming vitriol has settled for a riposte of "No, actually"

come on!

anyway, post it again and

anyway, post it again and tell him to fucking come on then. There is no Whitechapel address to seize property from so good luck with that you old tosser. And if the site is registered to Meltzer, he is somewhat beyond litigation now.

this just gets better and

this just gets better and better. Has anyone actually fucking read that? It's appalling.

I managed two paragraphs

I managed two paragraphs actually reading it, then skimmed the rest picking up the name-dropping. Even as a joke I'd wonder what the value would be of posting it here (other than the "hilarious" request to remove the text). What a self-mythologising fuckwit.

.

WELL HELLO!

vermorel whats the craic?

vermorel whats the craic? why have you deleted your post?

In other news i saw that John Lydon standing outside the premier of yet another fawning docu-wank from Julian Temple the other day, stupid hair, and wearing some kind of shroud. What an embarassment that man is.

I've only just seen that he

I've only just seen that he actually posted here himself - did anyone read what he put?

Hilariously, this article is now the number 3 Google result for "Fred Vermorel "

As Plantagenet? Obviously

As Plantagenet?

Obviously Tacks and I saw it, but given Tacks no longer posts you'll have to take up my faulty recall on the subject.

"So as it stood, my mate Ralph (Rumney), told me he could introduce me to the true Kings of France, Henri IV, Henri V, Louis VIII and Louis VIII, plus the "English Pope" Breakespeare and few dodgy intellectuals I'd had sex with in NY's Studio 54... Embarrassingly for Foucault, he'd loved my Hegelian "Master and Servant" gameplay... but quite how Michel recognised me from that gloryhole I will never know. Edmund White must have told him!!!

But the truth was, I never felt quite so alive as I did when I published this book. It was cutting edge stuff - and given that Gil Holman and Sophie Becker-Ho were soon to be the only people with a memory and no outstanding criminal charges and no recent publications to boot...

Well, if you want to be the King Of Punk, The Eviscerator of Elvis, what would you do? Shit yourself to Death?"

That's pretty verbatim, and baiting, but I'll be fascinated to see how they recapitulate "KING MOB" with its recuperative anti-taig "GORDON RIOTS" pnuckrocr care home for toupees shite... (Actually. I dont care anymore.) Let me know when you're all dead. Do I get to own Angel Alley now?