by Carlo Gallucci

If you play with extreme sex you'll risk hurting yourself, or at the very least you'll become ridiculous. That's what happened to our sapient competing mag. Last week (issue #34) the readers of Panorama bumped into a two-page spread interview with a bad boy, featuring his portrait. The piece was introduced by the promising half-title 'New Gurus', and the intro stated that the guy is known all over the world as 'Reverend William Cooper' and that 'his books sell like hot cakes'. 'Panorama found him'. The following piece was a long, well-written and intriguing story of how the journalist had intercepted the lurid author of Sesso Estremo. Pratiche senza limiti nell'epoca cyber (Castelvecchi Edizioni) [Extreme Sex. Practices Without Limits for a Cyber Age] "at the 2nd floor of an old building in Soho, London". Castelvecchi is the same publisher of Luther Blissett and I Mignotti [a book on Rome's male prostitutes, t.n.].

At this point, those who haven't yet been reached by the flowing propaganda of that smart guy Alberto Castelvecchi must be informed that the name of Blissett, the old-time unlucky AC Milan soccer player, is used by a group of intellectual sappers who want to "fuck the media". Their most famous work is Mind Invaders (Castelvecchi), and Luther Blissett is the collective signature of those who want to "strike with terror the sanctuaries of the power". Of course the head is Castelvecchi himself [Ha! Ha! Ha! Ouch, my sides...t.n.], the trendiest alternative publisher, but anyone can use the alias for actions of "cultural sabotage". Even the guy who penned the interview with Cooper (labelled as "One of the gurus for the 2000's") could have used it.

Alas, he didn't, thus the readers of Panorama found Franco Recanatesi's real name at the top of an unrealistic account of the conversation with the unreal master of body piercing, branding, bondage, sado-maso, fetish and so on. They also knew that Cooper's real name is Chris, that he's the "son of a rich businessman", that he took a degree in anthropology and social sciences, that "multitudes of fans crowd the venues of his conferences, visit his Internet site and devour his books". Trouble is, Cooper doesn't exist.

The author of the fake interview might not be aware of it, or maybe he pretended not to know. Certainly the readers couldn't have a clue, and so couldn't the magazine that consented to warm up a broth cooked last year. Yes, the piece on the self-styled pervert had been commissioned by another paper, who sent the author to London and provided him with an interpreter and a photographer. The sleazy photographic session climaxing with one Betty Marenko's scratched back (she's also known as Helena Velena) was the work of top photo-reporter Massimo Sestini. At that time the interview wasn't published and ended up in the file of rejected pieces. No-one would have heard of the story hadn't Panorama published it pretending it was news. At the beginning of the article Cooper was described as "a nice guy with dark cropped hair and manicured nails, wearing a black round-necked jumper". The photo confirms this description. It's a pity that another portrait published by Liberazione was completely different.

The communist newspaper published its scoop on 17 October 1996. Thus the red rag's piece appeared after Recanatesi's interview but before its publication on the Mondadori magazine. This was the description of the pervert: "A 39-years-old fair-haired Englishman with cold blue eyes... he doesn't like being photographed or having interviews". The conversation allegedly took place in Rome, under Bernini's St. Peter colonnade, a frame which perfectly suited Cooper's memories: 'During our pre-AIDS orgies we used to cut each other and lick the dripping blood, having orgasms while drinking it all together'. The accounts palmed off to the magazine are far more quiet; 'I had sex with dogs and sheep, but only with their consent', and 'In the countryside young girls stroke the sex of donkeys or masturbate by rubbing themselves with little rabbits'. Unfortunately there's no recorded proof of the appearance of yet another Reverend in Milan at Leoncavallo, where he chatted with some local squatters by intercession of Alberto Ibba of La Rivisteria. Many others will turn up.

Yet it'd have been sufficient to read a few pages of that much hyped book (seven editions in less than two years) to understand what is the truth. At page 30 Cooper mentions both Luther Blissett and the only person he misses, LB's creator Harry Kipper, "who spent his life sabotaging the media".

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