ELMO KEEP

UPDATE: There’s a longer version of this up on the Awl, should you like to see it!



Dom Knight did a brilliant job hosting Bret Easton Ellis as Oxford Art Factory last night. In among asking (via a question from the audience) if he was “a bottom or a top?” (to which he replied quick as a knife, “I’m versatile”), he raised the Delta Goodrem Question, which resulted in one of the funniest exchanges of the night: 

“Oh man, this is out of control (shakes head). Out of control. I’m in my hotel doing press all day, so I’m moving between the foyer of the hotel, and my room where I’m staying. I keep my TV on Music Max in my room – whoa, dangerous livin’! It’s crazy in that suite! So this video comes on, and there’s this very attractive woman on it, and she’s stomping around, and she’s talking about how this is her life, and her persistence has made a difference. And she’s stumbled and she’s fallen and she’s back on her feet again, and I’m thinking, ‘Really? What is going on with that?’ And she is throwing her hair back and waving her arms around and it’s very dramatic and kind of sexy and I’m thinking, Who is that? I have never heard of this person at all. I have no idea who it was and I tweeted about it that night. And I was just listing what songs I was listening to. And in the morning there was this deluge of replies to me. Things like ‘I have lost all respect for you as an author.’ There was one reply which was like ‘I’m very sorry that she has cancer, but I still think she’s a fucking sow.’ And I’m thinking, “What the hell is this?” And so I go back through it all and then I realise, ‘Oh. It was that Delta Goodrem thing that started this all.’

I did not know that you guys had such a complicated relationship with her, it’s very complicated! And then I played with it a little bit, and it’s gotten out of hand. I’m getting phone calls from Brian McFadden’s manager asking if I can get Delta a job in LA. And I’m like, ‘I don’t really know what she wants to do.’”