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Balearic club promoter and erstwhile Manumission icon Allister Logue has died after falling beneath a tube train at Charing Cross.

The silver-haired 56 year old make-up artist’s death, which press reports suggested was suicide, prompted a rash of heartfelt tributes from some of the key figures from Ibiza’s alternative Bohemian elite, reflecting his status as one of the leading characters on the island’s club scene of the last 25 years.

Describing him as ‘a mischievous soul always ready for adventure laced with a straight vodka’ Claire Manumission spoke fondly about the key role he played in Manumission parties, leading the legendarily flamboyant processions around the island for over 10 years.

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“Allister possessed a beauty or strangeness far beyond anything we could sit down and imagine for ourselves. Unique, irreplaceable, individual, a fabulous creature from a mythical time, a time that no longer exists but that we were fortunate enough to live through together. He is a part of us, part of a time gone by, a lost time, a lost world,” said Claire.

“ Love you Ali… Forever in my heart and in my high heels . . . As you so often told me, I would have been nothing without you,” she added.

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Manumission dancer Gabby Sanderson (nowadays better known as Ibiza Rocks resident DJ Tart With A Heart) described him as ‘flamboyant, creative, eccentric, an Ibiza character, nay legend’ and predicted his ‘legacy will remain’.

“You were a pain in the arse, but you were our fabulous pain in the arse,” she told Skrufff.

“Dizzy, a diva, an outrageous personality with a kind heart and a sensitive soul you masked in silks, sequins and outspokenness. Ibiza won’t be the same without you. I wouldn’t have been the same without you . . . My friend, our friend, forever. Allister Logue,” she said.

Legendary former Manumission DJ Andy Carroll concurred.

“Allister was a larger than life eternally slight Ibiza character you could either love or be indifferent about,” said Andy.

“Most people I know from ‘La Famalia Manumission’ loved Allister. In his Manumission years I would see him first in the girls’ dressing room doing his ‘super-star’ hair and make-up styling and then when the lipstick, powder and paint was completed he would spin onto the bar in the Coco-Loco, twirling and carrying on into the sunrise, at Carry-on @ Space, Bora-Bora and beyond.”

“Always ready with a dry comment and a sharp wit, we will forever remember Allister and his Ibiza town side-kick companion (his pooch) Chupito with fond memories,” said Andy.

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Alternative islanders Lenny Ibizarre and Skrufff contributor Barefoot Doctor also paid tribute using similar language to all three of the Manumission team.

“This is such a tragedy,” Lenny Ibizarre told Skrufff. “Allister Logue was an icon of the Ibizan night. He had flair and was loved by all. He will be dearly missed.”

“He was a brave, outrageous, courageous soul, who always spread a good vibe, at least whenever I met him’,” said Barefoot Doctor.

“He was a shoosher-upper (booster) of the atmosphere and we all need one of them from time to time,” Barefoot continued. “And though I’m sure when your number’s up, it’s up, whether you kill yourself or let life do it for you, it does feel tragic and he’s certainly missed by the many who loved him here in Ibiza.”

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Dave Gilmour’s official online blog has issued a convoluted statement about the role the Pink Floyd guitarist played on the Orb’s upcoming album Metallic Spheres in which the writer concluded ‘(David) was working on an album with The Orb. Sort of.’

The blog posting followed months of online rumours about the Pink Floyd/ Orb collaboration which appeared validated on Dave Gilmour’s main site this week when a picture of the album’s artwork appeared bearing the artist name ‘The Orb featuring David Gilmour’. However, Gilmour’s semi-official blogger insisted it isn’t quite so.

“David is not working with The Orb on a new album, contrary to some reports,” the blog posting declared.

“But you may remember that he had been in the studio jamming with Martin “Youth” Glover in recent months, who was at the time working on an ambient mix of the ‘Chicago’ re-recording . . . Alex Paterson was not involved in the sole jamming session and the only plan initially was for David to play guitar on that one track – ‘Chicago’.

However, as it turns out and as you can see, the result of that jam session has now been spread across the next Orb album, Metallic Spheres, which will be released as ‘The Orb featuring David Gilmour’,” he added.

The virtual presence of Gilmour’s guitar playing (and vocals) on the album is sure to provoke massive additional interest from the armies of devoted Pink Floyd fans and provide a welcome boost to the career of Orb mainman Alex Patterson, long one of dance culture’s most esoteric and idiosyncratic characters.

Chatting to Skrufff in 2004 he singled out Orb hits Little Fluffy Clouds and A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain as ‘the two main cornerstones of The Orb’ adding ‘If it wasn’t for those two tracks we wouldn’t have got anywhere, the other tracks would have been seen as being just good tracks’.  He also revealed he had no intentions of quitting music (‘If I had the money I’d love to become an explorer and go on adventures, to find ancient cities in the jungle; but it’s not the 19th century”) and shared intriguing opinions on the afterlife.

“Our own egos have to believe that something happens after death, because we’re much too intelligent just to die,” said Alex.

“What we need to find is some kind of formula that gives us longevity in life so that we can actually reproduce the real power in our brains. But it that happened, we’d all become genuine supermen and there would be far too much of an overspill of population. So right now it’s still about keeping that formula from ancient alchemy, down.”

Jonty Skrufff

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UK etiquette bible Debretts published seasonal travel advice for people vacationing in hotels, this week, and as well as advising polite travellers to refrain from ‘helping yourself to towels, fixtures and fittings’ said tipping virtually everyone  is virtually compulsory (at least in smart hotels).

“Give a small gratuity (i.e. one or two pounds, euros, dollars, etc., as appropriate) to bellboys or porters per piece of luggage if they take your bags to your room,” Debretts editor Jo Bryant recommended.

“Doormen should be tipped upon checking out if they have helped with taxis or luggage. A banknote may be left in your room for housekeeping,” she added.

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Notorious party animal and bad boy globetrotting DJ Kris Menace surprisingly agreed explaining ‘my Mum runs a hotel so I know what they expect from their guests.’

“I’m somebody who takes a great deal of care about etiquette. I always try to be friendly, I know how you have to behave differently in different situations and I know how to dress for special events,” Kris continued.

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“As far as tips are concerned, I always carry my bags on my own and never want other people to carry them for me,” he said. “I hate that role-playing thing. I’m still young and I can carry them by myself, though I always give a tip if they try to help me anyway.”

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International non-stop touring type Paolo Mojo also agreed, telling Skrufff ‘I always tip hotel staff, and I tip generously.’

“And I never forget to tip the housekeeping staff, either.” Paolo added, “ Although I often have to tell them I don’t have cash on arrival which is fair enough if you’ve just landed at the airport in a foreign country. I do pride myself on finding an ATM and tipping anybody who gives me good service.”

Paolo said he learned his hotel etiquette on the job admitting he was ‘incredibly naïve’ when he first left the UK.

“I remember my first time in a hotel in New York I tipped the bellboy one dollar – I didn’t even realise the notes were different denominations – as I’d seen a 10 dollar bill in my wallet from the cash machine and assumed it was the same thing,” he recalled.

“The guy gave me a sour look and said ‘gee, its my lucky day’. You can always count on a New Yorker for a good comeback.”

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“Last week I was physically attacked when I was with some friends on Hackney Road. It was by some narrow-minded morons who seemed to want any excuse to vent their anger. There is a real underlying tension here in London and it’s often targeted at the queers and dress ups.”

Chatting about his latest brush with homophobic thugs, Caligula promoter Jim Warboy is impressively insouciant, particularly since just two years earlier  20 year old London art student and ‘dress-up’ Olly was left crippled after being stabbed 7 times and left for dead by a Bengali street gang, yards from where Jim was punched.

Though random street crime sadly continues to represent a real threat for clubbers in Shoreditch and Hoxton, Jim and the hundreds of flamboyant fashionistas flocking to his club du jour Caligula remain undeterred and as Jim points out, local police are increasingly helpful.

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“The police responded very quickly and they are taking this kind of situation very seriously now. I also had a lot of help from the staff at the George and Dragon nearby and it’s good to know that there is some sense of community and support around the area,” he says.

“Dressed up people have always been targets of these morons and it’s always worth following your common sense in how to minimise the amount of hassle you get. The most important bit is that nobody should have the right to deter someone amazing from being themselves,” he urges.

12 months after it started, Jim’s club Caligula, (which he co-promotes with Brazilian stylist and man-about-town Leo Belicha ), attracts London’s most flamboyant and glamorous crowd (including Bjork last week) though Jim himself is remarkably quiet and unassuming. A constant fixture on London’s alternative queer scene since co-running Matthew Glamorre’s uber-influential club of the noughties Kashpoint, he’s dropped the latter’s (dreadful) experimental music emphasis and equally significantly its door policy which banned anyone who failed to dress to excess.

“The door policy is important at Caligula, as it should be at any club. But door policies come in all shapes and sizes,” he muses.

“Caligula has always been known for having a very mixed crowd. We have a very fashionable crowd but also attract many other people who aren’t that interested in fashion. One of the key ideas behind Caligula from the start was to create a diverse crowd. I believe that’s where the interesting things happen in London. It is too easy to end up with a club for of the same ‘type’ of people. Why shouldn’t we have a club which pushes beyond the boundaries? I love seeing gay boys dancing with straight boys, trannies getting bottles of champagne off City boys, and seasoned veterans swapping ideas with the fresh faced newbies,” he smiles.

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And music-wise they’ve also avoided the cheesy pop and achingly amateurish DJs booked by most of London’s club kid parties of the last few years, instead inviting guest DJs such as Secretsundaze chief James Priestley and uber-cool Brazilian techno god Renato Cohen, backed by residents Jim and London based Brazilian Monica Soldan.

Renato Cohen & Monica Soldan

“Renato had come to Caligula earlier in the year and wanted to play for us. He completely understood that Caligula is not a techno club and that the music policy allows a lot of freedom for DJs to experiment,” Jim explains.

“Although he’s known as a techno DJ he’s actually extremely versatile and has been playing sets in Sao Paulo that incorporate other genres like disco for example. His set at Caligula was incredible and he managed to take people on a real journey through a range of ideas.”

“The music policy at Caligula is broadly Disco, Hi-NRG and house but the fact we have a dancefloor club at our new home at Basing House means that we can now push it deeper. The music is not completely retro – we play lots of current new music too. There is a certain vibe at Caligula – usually involving a good amount of vocals – and we tend to have sets that mix things up a bit. There is no point in us trying to recreate a music policy that people can get at loads of other club nights,” he notes.

“Are we pushing dubstep or tropical? No,” he smiles, “they’re not really genres that conjure up the mood of Caligula. Our crowd aren’t really into that thing.”

“One of the amazing things about London is that it’s a big, diverse city and people can have the option to go to all sorts of nights. On top of the disco and Hi-NRG background to Caligula we are pushing in more acid and old school house that is reminiscent of older, sleazy New York City clubs mixed with that twisted East London vibe that brings it up to date.”

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A new study of British people’s eating habits has revealed that as well as indulging in ‘delayed-gratification techniques’ such as eating one crisp at a time and sucking on sweets rather than crunching them, one in six routinely lick their plates.

“The way we eat and how we treat food can often give away more about us than a ten minute conversation,” study chief and body language Judi James told Sky News, “Whatever your eating habits are, this study shows that Brits have a meaningful relationship with their food,” she added.

The appropriateness of ditching cutlery was addressed by the Guardian several years earlier in an article headlined ‘What’s wrong with licking your plate?’ in which style guru Peter York was surprisingly in favour.

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“I use my fingers because, I’m afraid, I’m greedy,” the author of seminal 80s style guide the Sloane Rangers Handbook confessed.

“And I’ll tell you a ghastly secret: when dining alone, I sometimes lick my plate - delicious gravy and juices! But I would never do it in front of someone.”

Fellow British social commentator Victoria Mather instead identified other table manners restaurant faux pax.

“This American habit of stabbing food, cutting around it, then shovelling it into your mouth is just too ghastly for words,” she complained.

(The Guardian (2006): What’s wrong with licking your plate?)

(What should I do or not do when I am eating in Britain? ‘Never lick or put your knife in your mouth . . . Never use your fingers to push food onto your spoon or fork. . . ‘)

Customised dishwashing gloves (pictured above)

Jonty Skrufff

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Alisson Gothz: “There’s a new sensation in Brazil right now and it’s called “Atacar de DJ”, which means the act of someone “pretending to be a DJ” only for a night – or even just for a few minutes. This new fever has been embraced by the media and now all celebs are jumping into the bandwagon – specially those who aren’t “real celebrities” like former reality-show contestants and nude calendar girls.

In the 80’s, if you happen to be a sub-celebrity in Brazil, you used to say that you were a “model, mannequin and actress” just to fill in the blanks on people’s heads when asked about your profession. Today, everybody is a DJ. The clubs are packed with sub-celebrities as guest DJs and you can even catch popular TV shows running DJing competitions between actors, singers and dancers to see who has the best performance.

Ana Maria Braga, the hostess of the most popular morning show in the country, recently received DJ classes “live on air” between cooking classes and gossip sections. Fausto Silva, whose show takes over three hours every Sunday afternoon, also threw a DJ competition which was something like  “DJing With The Stars”.

Of course most of them play only using very basic CD-Js and mixed CDs, but… who cares? The trick here is to laugh about it. Popular bloggers are celebrating this new hype by creating funny and totally sarcastic tributes to all these budding DJs:: a very funny one is http://mnbppf.tumblr.com/, whose title means “Hand On The Button, Strike A Pose!”, a joke about the fact that ALL of them repeat the exact same pose when DJing – which makes us wonder  if a DJ is nothing more than being a button-pusher.

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Needless to say, the biggest sub-celeb DJ superstar from Brazil is Jesus Luz, Madonna’s toyboy who’s also producing his own tracks right now with the help of Paul Oakenfold. Jesus, as a DJ, has proven to be a complete disaster: it’s not rare to see shots of him pretending to play while the equipment is still unplugged or with a professional DJ hidden behind him while he shakes his booty. The other DJs aren’t quite fond of him either, since he’s known to overcharge his booking fees based on his popularity, ruining the chances to other artists to perform in the same events.

Well, let’s how long this new hype is going to last….

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Young people posting private and personal information on social networking sites could find themselves virtually unemployable, Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt warned this week (Daily Mail).

The search engine supremo said advances in technology mean those posting party pictures or any information about themselves deviating from the norm could be excluded by corporations to the extent that they’ll need to change their entire identities, he predicted.

‘I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,’ Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal. “I mean we really have to think about these things as a society.”

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His predictions came less than a year after US cops were revealed to be routinely trawling social networking sites for evidence of law breaking with some using fake Facebook profiles of sexy girls to spy on young people, including clean cut college students they suspected of underage drinking.

One such student, Adam Bauer, 19, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, described accepting a friend request from an unknown, though attractive girl, in an interview with local newspaper the Lacross Tribune which was followed several weeks later by an unexpected demand from police to attend his local station.

At the station he was presented with printouts of photos of him holding a can of beer taken from his private Facebook account and was promptly charged with underage drinking. Though Adam denied the charges, he was subsequently ticketed and ordered to pay a US$227 fine.

The Tribune said Adam was one of ‘at least 8’ young Lacrosse people snared in similar social networking police scams, which local policeman AL Iverson said were justified because such pictures ‘glamorize alcohol consumption and binge drinking’.

“Law enforcement has to evolve with technology,” PC Iverson added, “It has to happen. It is a necessity —not just for underage drinking.” (Lacrosse Tribune)

Jonty Skrufff

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Barefoot Doctor: “Yes it’s better to have no friends than fake friends. On the other hand, it’s always good to be friendly with everyone but naturally attaining to a genuine sisterhood or brotherhood level friendship implying a balanced, healthy degree of reciprocity with someone is rare.

Hanging out with people who are just taking from you and giving nothing back is best avoided, but if you find yourself in that position, don’t be too downhearted as everything you give with a good heart will come back to you multiplied from someone or other further down the line.

However if you persist in consorting with fakers and takers, it will eventually drain your energy and run interference on the way things are going for you. The best gauge is your own intuition – stay sensitive to what you’re feeling there (in your waters, as they used to say in the old days).

Whenever around anyone you’re unsure of, if you feel discomfort, anxiety and or tension close off and walk away. But do so graciously, as no points are won through confrontation with someone who isn’t being themselves and doesn’t care about you anyway.”

Questions by Skrufff.

Discover the Taoist super-skills and find out more about the Barefoot Doctor HERE

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A new study by dating portal OKCupid.com has revealed that both men and women who own iphones have had more sexual partners than those owning Blackberrys while those with Android phones have just over half as many lovers as their more seductive Iphone counterparts.

OKCupid discovered that men members turning 30 have made love to an average of 10 people while women have had 12.3 partners compared to a tally of just 6.1 lovers for male Android owners of the same age.

“Finally, statistical proof that iPhone users aren’t just getting fucked by Apple,” OkCupid spokesman Christian Rudder commented.

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The figures (at least for men) paled in comparison to the (self reported) findings of London magazine Time Out in their latest sex survey which revealed that the average man claimed 26 conquests on their bed post last year. However, Time Out pointed out that the relatively high average figure for men concealed significant anomalies.

“The figures were skewed by the 13% who claimed between 50 and 300,” Time Out reported, “More than half the men surveyed have had between 1 and 14 partners.”

The high scoring London statistics struck a chord with data from a recent study of elite students attending Cambridge University which revealed that almost half the students admitted to having sex with two or more partners within seven days, with one in five having three or more during the same period.

Over one in four also boasted of having a one night stand ‘at least once a term’, the Telegraph reported, adding up to at least 9 sexual partners for many typical 21 year olds graduating after a three year course.

“Cambridge is not the work-obsessed, sex starved misery pit it is sometimes portrayed to be,” study chief (and student) Ali Lewis, from student newspaper Tab commented when the findings were revealed. (Telegraph)

(Time Out Sex Survey: 2009; the results: ‘27% of respondents said their favourite sexual fantasy involved more than one partner. Multiple partners Ideal configurations ranged from ‘threesomes’ and ‘foursomes’ to ‘a huge orgy’ and a ‘threesome with her sister or mum (sorry)’.’)

(Joy of Sex manual, not really safe for work!!!)

Jonty Skrufff

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Red Cross officials have revealed that incidents of jellyfish stings amongst Ibiza bathers have dramatically plunged this season after unusually strong winter storms reduced the salinity of water surrounding the island’s beaches. (Ibiza-Spotlight).

The fearsomely painful stingers instead turned up in their thousands close to the El Perellonet beach near Valencia this week, stinging over 700 people in one day. Fox News reported that the Valencia stingers are unusually small and virtually invisible, though pack a powerful punch for swimmers unlucky enough to touch them.

“In the five or six years I have been in this job, I have never seen anything like this,” local tourism chief Juan Carlos Castellano told the US news organisation.

Details of the jellyfishes’ decision to avoid the Balearics came as the Guardian revealed that struggling tour operators are slashing prices to holidays in Ibiza, with potentially 50% discounts likely to be available in September when school holidays are over.

Travel analyst Bob Atkinson from travelsupermarket.com suggested discounts of around 30-40% are already on sale, particularly on self catering packages.

“At the moment, where they are really struggling to give it away is the Balearics and Greece,” he told the Guardian.

“Tour operators hold out as long as they can, but right at the last minute, two or three days before, they are dropping prices down as much as they can. If you are the ultimate flexible customer, you can grab a real bargain,” he recommended.

TravelSupermarket were offering 7 day trips with 2 star accommodation in San Antonio from £222 and 3 star accommodation (also in San Antonio) from just £275 person (including return London- Ibiza flights). A week in four star Hotel Victoria in Talamanca outside Ibiza Town (rated highly on numerous online postings) currently costs just £383 including flights.

Jonty Skrufff

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