Kirjahaku

At 9.30pm on 2nd October 2008, BBC2 will air the first in an 8-part adaptation of Beautiful People. Produced by Jon Plowman, the man behind The Office and Ab Fab, this is the charming and funny memoir of escaping a bonkers family and following your dreams Simon Doonan's childhood was a curious mix of small town boredom and bright light city dreams. Growing up in a working class area of Reading with the mad-cap Doonan clan – Mother Betty, Father Terry, blind Aunt Phyllis, grandmother Narg and Grandfather D.C. – he yearned to get out and find the Beautiful People whom he imagined lived fabulous lives of glitz and glamour. This is the story of how Simon eventually finds a way out and escapes to London with best friend Biddie Biddlecombe. Along the way they stumble upon punks, drunks, ladies of the night, the long arm of the law and all sorts of camps, vamps and outrageous scamps. But does he ever find the Beautiful People? Or could they be the ones he left behind…?

In this funny and poignant memoir and cultural history, the television personality, columnist, and author of Drag pays homage to Lou Reed’s groundbreaking album Transformer on its fiftieth anniversary and recalls its influence on his coming of age and coming out through glam rock.In November 1972, Lou Reed released his album, Transformer because he thought it was “dreary for gay people to have to listen to straight people’s love songs.” That groundbreaking idea echoed with the times. That same year, Sweden was the first country to legalize gender-affirming surgery, and San Francisco struck down employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.Sometimes an artistic creation perfectly aligns with a broader social and political history, and Transformer—with the songs “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Perfect Day,” and “Vicious”—perfectly captured its time. “Walk on the Wild Side” was banned on radio across the country but became a massive hit when young people threatened to boycott stations that would not play it. The album's cover featured a high-contrast image of Lou, flaunting a new mascara'd glamrock incarnation, shot by legend Mick Rock, thereby underscoring his intention to create "a gay album."In Transformer, Doonan tells the story of how Lou Reed came to make the album with the help of David Bowie, and places its creation within the course of Reed’s life. Doonan offers first-hand testimony of the album’s impact on the LGBTQ+ community, recalling how it transformed his own life as a 20-year-old working class kid from Reading, England, who had just discovered the joys of London Glam Rock and was sparked by the artistic freedom of Warhol’s The Factory. Transformer was a revelation—hearing Reed’s songs, Doonan understood how the world was changing for him and his friends.A poignant, personal addition to modern music and LGBTQ+ history, Transformer captures a pivotal moment when those long silenced were finally given a voice. As transgender icon Candy Darling, highlighted in his lyrics, told Reed, “It’s so nice to hear ourselves.”Transformer includes approximatively 16 pages of black-and-white and color photos.

Simon Doonan knows that when it comes to style, the gays are the chosen people. A second anthropological truth comes to him midway through a turkey burger with no bun, at an otherwise hetero barbecue: Do the straight people have any idea how many calories are in the guacamole? In this hilarious discourse on and guide to the well-lived life, Doonan goes far beyond the secrets to eating like the French—he proves that gay men really are French women, from their delight in fashion, to their brilliant choices in accessories and décor, to their awe-inspiring ability to limit calorie intake. A Gucci-wearing Margaret Mead at heart, Doonan offers his own inimitable life experiences and uncanny insights into makes gay people driven to live every day feeling their best, and proves that they have just as much—and possibly better—wisdom, advice, and inspiration beyond the same old diet and exercise tips.So put down that bag of Pirate’s Booty and pick up this fierce and fabulous book. From slimming jaunts through Capri in the evening to an intrepid “Bear” hunt (if you have to ask, you have to read this book and find out for yourself), Gay Men Don’t Get Fat is the ultimate approach to a glamorous lifestyle—plus, you are guaranteed to laugh away the pounds!

'Simon Doonan’s CAMP 100 is majestic, life-enhancing, packed with info and bang up to date. And, yes, I am featured. Surprised?' - Alan CarrCelebrate the unapologetically, outrageously CAMP with this vivacious party of 100 people, objects, art movements and much, much more. What do Grace Jones, Benjamin Disraeli, Salvador Dali, K-Pop and a giant art nouveau vase covered in fairies and stuffed with peacock feathers have in common? Answer: they are all, wildly, completely and utterly ... Camp. Yes, C-A-M-P, that strange, hard-to-define quality.Over the last few decades, Camp has been tucked up in her four-poster, fast asleep. But now, having been roused from slumber by Anna Wintour for the 2019 Met Ball, Camp is back, and she might just be the thing you need to make sense of – and add some humour and irony to – this crazy, all-too-serious world.In this hilarious, era-defining book, author and cultural commentator Simon Doonan gets to grips with Camp. Who is she? Where did she come from and where did she go? Why is she back? Just who is Susan Sontag when she’s at home?! Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book includes 100 entries that are completely and unapologetically Camp – of course Dynasty, poodles and RuPaul are here, but vampires, tattoos, Queen Victoria and even cake? Absolutely. Doonan makes the Camp case for these as well.The Camp 100 is a manifesto like no other, a manifesto to turn down the temperature dial and take the world a bit less seriously. In seeing ‘Camp’ in the most unlikely places, this book might revolutionize the way you see the world entirely.

Wacky chicks are women who turn heads, get people talking and start trends. They dare to wear the outrageous and live life any way they see fit. And now New York Observer columnist and savvy social commentator Simon Doonan trains his most discerning eye on sixteen of these exceptional creatures, and shows how a fiercely embraced sense of individuality can be an inspiration to us all. Doonan interviews wacky chicks like Amy Sedaris, host of Comedy Central's hit show, Strangers with Candy; Suzanne Bartsch, the woman who taught Madonna how to vogue; and lower profile wacky chicks like hip hypnotist Jessica Porter and Isabel Garrett, a freestyle fashion designer working out of a trailer in a Florida nudist colony. As different as they are outrageous, these women share a powerful nonconformist bent, and in these pages offer their priceless guidance on beauty, business, fashion, love, motherhood and unleashing your feminist wacky chick without losing your femininity. Whether Doonan is profiling a celebrity gossip columnist or a park ranger with a menagerie of reptiles, he consistently delivers his own brand of distinctively sophisticated, razor sharp wit. Truly original, WACKY CHICKS is as much a whimsical self-help book as it is a hilarious and heartfelt tribute to these avatars of style and rebellion.

A wickedly funny memoir with echoes of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Beautiful People (originally published in hardcover as Nasty) is now a BBC comedy hit series from the producer of Ab Fab and The Office. Proclaimed "the most brilliant, brash thing in type" by Liz Smith, Simon Doonan's saucy prose has established him as an emerging star among literary humorists. In this break-through memoir, reminiscent of both Sedaris and Burroughs, he revisits the landscape of his youth, and displays the irresistible charm that earned him his dedicated audience. Long before he became a celebrity in his own right--as the author of best-selling books, as the style arbiter of VH1 and America's Top Model, and the marketing genius behind Barney's New York--Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Beautiful People, Doonan returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth, and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mother Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxide hairdo signified her natural glamour; his father Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Chateau Doonan; his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning Simon into a jockey; and his demented grandma Narg and schizophrenic Uncle Ken, both of whom lived upstairs. Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family, or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best-friend Biddie to London, where they hope to find the Beautiful People, that elusive clan who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots. Throughout the memoir--in essays about family holidays, the tart who lived next door, his first job--Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.

Drag is transformation, communication, and, above all, exaggeration, where gender non-conformity is the plat du jour. This fearless book observes this increasingly complex world by exploring drag's journey - from the surprising, to the sophisticated, to the utterly bizarre - through the twentieth century and up to the present day. Fenton Bailey, producer of 'RuPaul's Drag Race', gives an insightful foreword in this new paperback edition. With witty text, dazzling photography, and corralled into thematic chapters, this is the first flamboyant and poignant survey of drag culture. Drag is not just for fabulous queens and drag enthusiasts, but for anyone interested in gender fluidity and the culture surrounding it.

Keith Haring was a revolutionary artist, who transformed the art world during his short but impactful life. Brought to life by Simon Doonan, Creative Director for Barneys New York, this new pocket-sized biography tells his inspirational story.Revolutionary and renegade, Keith Haring was an artist for the people, creating an instantly recognisable repertoire of symbols - barking dogs, space-ships, crawling babies, clambering faceless people - which became synonymous with the volatile culture of 1980s. Like a careening, preening pinball, Keith Haring playfully slammed into all aspects of this decade - hip-hop, new-wave, graffiti, funk, art, style, gay culture - and brought them together.Haring's fanatical drive propelled him into the orbit of the most interesting people of his time: Jean Michel Basquiat envied him; Warhol, William Boroughs and Grace Jones collaborated with him. Madonna and he shared the same tastes in men. Famous at 25, dead from AIDS at 31, Keith Haring is remembered as a Pied Piper, an unpretentious communicator who appeared happiest when mentoring a gang of kids, arming them with brushes and attacking the nearest wall.A series of brief biographies of the great artists, Lives of the Artists takes as its inspiration Giorgio Vasari's five-hundred-year-old masterwork, updating it with modern takes on the lives of key artists past and present. Focusing on the life of the artist rather than examining their work, each book also includes key images illustrating the artist's life. Hardbound, but pocket-sized, the books each sport a specially-commissioned portrait of their subject on the half-jacket.