Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

‘Not me cousin.’ Lionel reached for the squat cigarette lighter on the bedside table. ‘Me nephew … Now what’s he after?’

‘I’ll give you three guesses. Gimme gimme gimme.’ ‘Threnody’ was noisily brushing her hair. ‘Lesson number one. See, with the press, Lionel, you got to practise the art of manipulation. You call the tune. Not them. You. One step ahead. Like Danube does. See, Danube , she —’

‘Stop going on about Danube! You always going on about Danube!’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

‘ Yeah yeah yeah yeah.’

‘ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Photo shoot who for? What paper?’

He told her. ‘Eight-page pull-out. A fresh approach. Megan reckons it’ll do wonders for me image.’

‘Threnody’ started getting dressed … The vast bay-windowed bedchamber was doing its best to think well of the new occupants; now it looked on with a polite smile at ‘Threnody’’s satin thong and spangled garter belt, at Lionel’s cigar ash in the untouched bowl of muesli and yoghurt …

‘You know, “Threnody”, they can write what they want about Lionel Asbo. I don’t give a fuck.’

‘You say that, Lionel, but you do. Go on, you do.’

‘It’s when they … It’s when they uh, when they suggest I’m not quite right in the head. You know, that I’m not the full quid up here,’ he said, tapping another concavity in his scalp. ‘Or I’m supposed to be thick. Okay, I talk bad, but that don’t mean —’

‘Things’ll be different, Lionel. You’ll get your recognition. I guarantee it.’

‘It’s when they uh, impugn me intelligence. That’s what gives me the right raging hump. You know. When they imply I’m a cunt.’

‘I’ll make them respect you, Lionel. Trust me. I’ll make you loved.’

LOTTO LUMMOX, RAFFLE Rattlepate, Numbers Numbskull, Pick Six P***brain, Sweepstake Psycho, Bingo Bozo, Tombola Tom o’ Bedlam — the Lotto Lout’s been called the lot .

But does the Diston Dipstick have hidden depths? His new heart-throb, thrusting ‘Threnody’, real name Sue Ryan, 29, claims he’s an Einstein — and how can we doubt ‘Threnody’? She’s a ‘poetess’. And she’s got a whole O-level!

Our nationally famous Agony Aunt, Daphne, went to Loopy Lionel’s country seat, in the once-sleepy Essex village of Short Crendon, to offer her counsel to the Chav S***head .

* * *

‘The first thing you notice about “Wormwood Scrubs”, Lionel Asbo’s thirty-room Gothic mansion, is the little picket line of villagers standing guard at the wrought-iron gates. A smattering of ordinary folk. A shopkeeper, a housewife, a retiree.

‘I am early for the midday interview, so, whilst I wait, I talk to them about their grievances. Which aren’t what you’d expect for a lotto lout! No wild parties, no demolition derbies or souped-up quad bikes ripping through the countryside. It’s a bit more subtle than that.

‘True, Asbo is hardly a pillar of the community. That the hamlet’s premier residence, formerly Crendon Court (where Henry VIII once spent the night), is now named after a blighted Acton prison — this rankles.

‘So do the 30-foot steel walls which now gird the 10-acre garden. And the local children are said to be terrified of the two furious pitbulls, Jek and Jak, who are taken on daily tours, or aggressive inspections, of the village.

‘Who, after all, would welcome the influx of the usual rabble that bob along in the slipstream of fame and money? Parasites and predators, and all the “Threnody” stalkers and lookalikes.

‘Local rumour has it, by the way, that “Jek” refers to Jekyll and Hyde, whilst “Jak” alludes to Jack the Ripper. But this sounds a bit too “erudite” for the East End “eejit”. More likely, “Jek” and “Jak” are garbled versions of “Juke” and “Jyke”, the names fished out of a hat by Asbo’s companion, “Threnody”, for the orphaned Somalian twins she long ago stopped sponsoring.

‘What you sense, in the end, is a feeling of general hurt and dismay. A sense that these orderly rural lives are somehow travestied by the intrusion of the jackpot jailbird, Lionel Asbo.’

‘My photographer, the Sun ’s Chris Large (one of the three journalists brutalised by Asbo in August 2009), asks the picketers for leave to ring the buzzer and announce our arrival.

‘Wearing a blue silk dressing gown and, of all things, mid-calf snakeskin boots, Asbo walks briskly up the drive. He welcomes Chris and myself most cordially, then endures a brief heckling from the petitioners at the gates.

‘“You know what I got, Daph?” he says. “Neighbours from hell.”

‘This remark intrigues me. I have come here with an “open mind” — after all, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers! And I ask him, as we walk down the drive, passing the famous Bentley “Aurora”, “Weren’t you a neighbour from hell, Lionel? Back in Diston?”

‘“Me? Never. Except when I was a kid. You don’t want to be a neighbour from hell, Daph,” he confides. “That’s lower class.”

‘Built in 1350, rebuilt in 1800, and completely refurbished in 1999, the house, I admit, is magnificent. Asbo gives me a brief tour: the semicircular drawing room with its nine bay windows, the library with its billiard table and recessed bookcases, the baronial dining hall. Of course, the cultured fixtures and furnishings are those of the previous occupant, antiques mogul Sir Vaughan Ashley, 73, who now resides in Monaco.

‘“I’m going to rip it all out,” says Asbo, and summarises the questionable renovations he has in mind. “Everything’s got to be new. I had my fill of f***ing antiques when I was growing up in Diston.”

‘Then Asbo turns thoughtful. “Or d’you think it suits me, Daph, all this old gear? Trouble is, it aggravates me class hatred,” he says in his inimitable Diston brogue. He turns briefly to Chris. “How’s your jawbone?” he asks without meeting his eye. “You get me cheque?”

‘Carmody, the butler, brings us drinks by the pool — orange juice for me, the signature Dom Perignon for Asbo. But first the photographs! Lionel yells for “Threnody” (we all know how particular she is about those inverted commas! And whatever you do, don’t mention Danube!)

‘“Threnody”, tearing herself away from her odes and her elegies, busily appears, in pink sarong and spike heels. Her dark red hair is tightly drawn back, and bunned — the hairstyle known as the “council-house facelift”. But in the case of “Threnody”, of course, the surgeons have been busy elsewhere.

‘It’s an unseasonably torrid noon, and the sarong is soon removed to reveal a “teardrop” bikini, three dots of yellow against the perennial bronze of her flesh. The young couple strike loving poses. In his blue swimsuit, with the unzipped snakeskin boots, and with “Threnody” at his side, Asbo (not muscular but very solid) resembles a superhero, or supervillain, in a risqué cartoon.

‘“Pop the top off for us, love,” murmurs Chris. “Threnody” isn’t slow to oblige. And there are the famous boobs (first unveiled last year) — more like pottery than flesh, and pointing upward .

‘“They weren’t cheap,” says Asbo. “She told me what they cost. And that’s f*** all,” he adds, “to what she’s blown on her a***.”

‘“Threnody” lingers for a glass or three, and talks about the new line of fragrances she hopes to launch. There is also a new line of what she calls “intimate garmenture”. And of course there’s the next “slim volume” of verse!

‘She gets up and minces about, whilst Chris clicks away. Her boobs and her “a***” (as Asbo so gallantly calls it) provide vivid testimony to the cosmeticist’s skill. But her 18-inch waist is all her own (and how does she find room for such a curvaceous midriff?). What with that face, those strangely noble bones and that wide, intriguingly thin-lipped mouth, well, it isn’t hard to see why Asbo has fallen under her spell.