Dandy in the Underworld

[Josephine]

I see that the controversial Sebastian Horsley has died.

His death came two days after a play, Dandy In The Underworld, based on his own memoir, opened at the Soho Theatre in London.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0r9uCb2xH

His blog http://sebastianhorsley.typepad.com/sebastian_horsley/

Have seen him on a few documentaries about escorting and prostitution and know he was a good buddy of Letitcia who used to post here and a few of us have him attached to our blogs.

A colourful character indeed. R.I.P

[bacchus]

So it goes.

B

[51scotty]

What a tragic way to go, and he was only 47.....somehow I thought he was a lot older than that.

Yes Josephine, Letitcia will be mortified he was a very good friend of hers.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with her a couple of years ago and she told me a few tales about him, one in particular when they both appeared on a documentary prior to the first Belle de Jour series....She had told the producers that Sebastian would make very good viewing as he was very eccentric and outspoken in his views on prostitution and it would be good to have a punters view, so they invited him onto the program.

She was not amused as most of her pre recorded footage ended up on the cutting room floor but Sebastian's was shown, and from what I can remember she told me he got paid but she didn't. lol

Letitcia doesn't seem to post on any of the forums these days, does anyone know how she is??

I still smile when I think about that lunch with her she is an amazingly lady who had me in stitches, and if you read her books you'll wet yourself with laughter.

Letitcia if you do read this, that old dog Scotty sends his love, and the above plug for the book must be worth another lunch sometime.

[johnsix]

An excellent obit from The Chap magazine.
Death of a Dandy

Sebastian Horsley’s body was found on the morning of Thursday 17th June at his flat in Soho, the cause of death being a suspected heroin overdose. Horsley had just witnessed the opening of a new play about his life at the Soho Theatre, which was set to be made into a film produced by his friend Stephen Fry.

Sebastian will be greatly missed by The Chap – he provided the world with a much-needed dose of flamboyance, excess, colour and dandyism. His stance as an anti-fashion, anti-hero, anti-artist with absolutely no care for public opinion or political correctness made him a true dandy in the Byronic tradition. Without Sebastian the balance is tipped even further in favour of blandness, banality, ambition and denim. “There are only two things I cannot tolerate. The first is murder and the second is denim,” he said many times.

A meeting with Sebastian Horsley was always exciting, hilarious, outrageous and largely predictable. He would happily trot out the same pithy aphorisms, many of which he had plagiarised from other sources – though always freely admitting it. He was by turns cattily pompous and wittily self-effacing, describing himself as having “wings of tinsel” at one moment, the next as being a “complete loser.”

Sebastian wrote several articles for The Chap, with mixed reception from the readers. His deliberately provocative opinions were sometimes too much for the more sensitive chaps; yet as a dandy he was accepted by all as one of the few who really belonged to that small group composed of Brummell (whom he loathed), Baudelaire, Byron and Bunny Roger. Sebastian’s final article for The Chap, published only days before his death, was, perhaps fittingly, on his hero Satan, in which he uttered these lines: “The only real power you have in this life is over your own body, so why not drink and drug it to death?”

Sebastian Horsley 8th August 1962 – 17th June 2010
Rest in Three-Piece

[Vespasian]

A man with a sharp dress sense and an even sharper witt. He'll be missed.