One of the things that really depresses me about post-graduate fine art education in London is that the Nazi thug Martin Heidegger has become central to the teaching of many theory modules on practice-led courses. Heidegger wasn’t your ordinary Nazi party member, he not only wanted to introduce the Fuhrer-principle into the German university system, he actually attempted to take on the position of spiritual leader of National Socialism – which had he been successful, would have placed him above Adolf Hitler (the political leader) in the Nazi hierarchy! Heidegger’s so called ‘philosophy’ is clearly rooted in the same rotten shit as Nazi politics, and as a consequence it is so reliant on etymology that aside from the fact that it is a puerile waste of time, it is probably also completely pointless for those who don’t speak German (the overwhelming majority of fine art post-graduates in London) to read very much by him.

On Saturday night I read at Volatile Dispersal, a festival of art writing held at the Whitechapel Gallery. The event proved so crowded and popular that it was hard to take very much in. I found this ironic because after I’d used my FaceBook account to remind people about the event (I list all the public events I’m doing initially on my homepage), among the comments I garnered were the following: “I like the idea of ‘art writing’; its the best phrase I’ve ever come across (Barry Watten?) to describe the efforts of those of us who spend anywhere between 5 to 50 to 75 hours on one text, which is little more than a page, only to have said text become tucked away appropriately in a ‘slim volume’ which no one in their right mind will pay 10 dollars for when all is said and done… go boy!

A few days ago I got an email from Michael Morgan, who’d acted as press agent for Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (the greatest burglar ever and one of my mother’s cousins to boot): “I wonder if you could find time and get in touch with me regarding a story about ‘Ray the Cat’ in Wales on Sunday on 1st November?” I replied: “I have to go into The City on Friday, if you’re still based around Dalston maybe we could meet at the The Masque Haunt (the Wetherspoons on the corner of Old Street and Bunhill Row) at 3pm on Friday?

Back in 1970 this allegedly ‘serious’ documentary about witchcraft sneaked a lot of full frontal nudity past the British censor and was then screened in sex cinemas for the enjoyment of the dirty raincoat brigade. It acts as a kind of companion piece to Derek Ford’s Secret Rites, since both feature Alex Sanders (as, indeed, does Angeli bianchi, angeli neri AKA Witchcraft 70, but that’s an Italian mondo movie not an English ‘documentary’). As the self-styled King of the Swingers (oops, sorry, I mean witches), Sanders camps it up as much here as he does elsewhere; unfortunately there’s a lot less of his rib-ticklingly softly spoken voice than in Ford’s short.

A 34 year-old Bristol based research scientist called Dr Brooke Magnanti has outed herself as the ‘real’ author of the Belle de Jour blog and books. These texts ‘documented’ the life of a high-class London call girl. Dr Magnanti claims her writing is an authentic record of the time she spent working as a prostitute to fund the final phase of her PhD research. I haven’t looked deeply into the various proofs that Dr Magnanti is Belle, but plenty of news journalists have and they seem convinced by them. So while I can’t say with absolutely certainty that Dr Magnanti is Belle, it seems to me to be rather unlikely that she isn’t.