Ian Kilmister, known as Lemmy, was a convinced Thatcherite. He took an intelligent interest in Anglo Saxon kings. One of his favourite bands was Abba and he was "addicted" to P.G. Wodehouse.
To most people, though, Lemmy, who died after Christmas, was famous as the hell-raising frontman of the heavy metal band, Motorhead (cited in the Guinness Book of Records as the loudest band ever), with a reputation for living harder and faster than anyone around him.
He smoked 40 a day, claimed to have slept with a thousand women and to have consumed "industrial quantities" of drugs and alcohol, his favourite tipple being Jack Daniel's and Coca-Cola, which was often consumed non-stop from breakfast time onwards. "Don't let him give any blood transfusions," a doctor he knew once said. "It'd kill normal people."
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There is something "cathartic" about the antics of true hell-raisers, says Rowan Pelling in The Daily Telegraph: it's as if they booze, seduce, brawl and trash hotel rooms so the rest of us don't have to.A good example is John Bonham, the Led Zeppelin drummer, who rode a Harley-Davidson along a hotel corridor before dying, aged 32, after downing 40 shots of vodka. "Such tales may not make you feel proud to be British, but do surely mean we'd be assured of gold if debauchery was an Olympic sport."
Lemmy never expressed regret for his way of life. "I'm responsible for my actions I did it, whatever I did," he wrote in his autobiography, White Line Fever, in which he said of his conquests: "I've had my share and yours too!" Legendary hell-raiser Oliver Reed was similarly unapologetic. "My only regret," he said, "is that I didn't drink every pub dry and sleep with every woman on the planet."
I doubt Lemmy or Reed would have paid much attention to Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, whose Christmas message to us was that we should confine ourselves to three units of alcohol a day. Oh dear, said The Daily Telegraph columnist Michael Henderson. She obviously wouldn't have approved of Graham Greene, who wrote that "the third drink was the sign of intent. It signified that the drinker, having got his eye in, intended to play a lengthy innings".
Oddly enough, says Henderson, drinkers enjoy drinking. And why not? "You may speak for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, but I come from a long line of dead people and I don't expect to be the first to beat the shaker."
On the subject of writers and drink, John Carey reviews a book in The Sunday Times about how much authors can make (The Prose Factory, by D.J. Taylor). The number of authors who died destitute or deeply in debt is alarming, and includes Cyril Connolly, Angus Wilson and John Braine. But Kingsley Amis, after hiring a good agent in the 1970s, made "spectacular sums". This was lucky. In the month of February 1993 alone, Taylor finds, he spent £315 on taxis, £432 at the Garrick Club and £1,038 on drink.
Tabloid money: Alex Salmond's losing bet with The Sun
"Regular readers will recall my bet with AlexSalmond on oil prices falling below $50 a barrel bythe end of 2015,"says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun."In the event, they closed at $37.28. To his credit,the former SNP leader sent me this note: DearTrevor, I sent £100 to The Sun/Cumbrian floodappeal credited to you and will make an equivalentpersonal donation to the North East of Scotland just for balance! Best wishes, Alex'."
"I hope you will join me in raising funds to erect a statueof Sir Cecil Rhodes the liberator of Africa in a prominentposition in every UK university campus," says Rod Liddlein The Sun. "A pompous little South African studentwants the statue of Rhodes removed from his Oxfordcollege, because he was a colonialist. Up yours,mate!" A statue would be good for students because itwould "act as a counter-balance to the self-flagellatingliberal bilge rammed down their throats" at university.
Fashion models Cara Delevingne and Kendall Jenner(pictured) are planning to launch their own clothingbrand, saysThe Sun. It will be named CaKe after theirfriendship tag, which they trademarked in the summer."They both see it as a bit of fun," said a source, "but aresecretly confident it will do well."
