Seeing BS at CBS

CBS stock has taken a tumble since the Ronan Farrow article about sexual harassment allegations made against CBS bigwig Leslie Moonves.

Too bad Moonves isn't like the late James T. Aubrey, who had "friends" like Keefe Brasselle, who in turn had mob connections.

Speaking of which, I am trying to get through Brasselle's thinly veiled novel about his tenure at CBS called The CanniBalS.  It isn't very good, I will say that.  I don't know if I will be able to get through the 400-page potboiler, as I don't read fiction as a rule.  And then I am getting Brasselle's sequel, called The Barracudas, which like everything else he did flopped.

I may end up getting Triangle, a novel written by Brasselle's ex-wife (his second) Arlene DeMarco, who was once a member of the DeMarco Sisters, a popular vocal group in the 1950s.  Unlike Brasselle, DeMarco actually had talent.  Apparently her novel was much better than the two her ex-husband penned.  Like his books, hers was thinly veiled "fiction." Furthermore, I have read that in her book, DeMarco claimed her ex-husband was not just best friends with Aubrey, who was the head of CBS from 1959-1965 before being dumped, but the two were actually lovers.  I had read somewhere else Brasselle had come out of the closet sometime before his death before going back into the closet of well-deserved obscurity.

I found this article about Arlene DeMarco which was published a year before she died.  DeMarco had numerous health issues.  She was 79 when she died in 2013.

Sometimes We Forget the Past

Germaine Greer was wrong on one point here a few weeks ago regarding the #metoo movement, and that had to do with her feeling women, at least actresses, in the past didn't tolerate sexual assault and harassment from movie bigwigs.  This is simply not true.

She said that "in the old days" women would "slap down" men who assaulted or harassed them, explaining: "In the old days, there were movies - the Carry On comedies, for example - which always had a man leering after women. And the women always outwitted him - he was a fool.

Most of the rest Greer said was true, but historically it isn't true actresses "slapped down" male assault.  The "casting couch" goes back to the very beginnings of Hollywood.  Starlets didn't dare turn down the advances of studio heads for fear they would be blackballed forever from the industry; back then, the industry was extremely incestuous.  The women were afraid they would be tossed out into the street with no money and no work.  Many traveled hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their homes and their families just so they could get the all-important "break" in the motion picture industry.  They couldn't speak out, either, and it was for the same reason.  A woman like Patricia Douglas was a rare exception.  She was the woman who was raped at a 1937 MGM salesman convention by one salesman, and she tried to fight the studio in the courts.  The rapist was never charged, and she lost every step of the way.  Author David Stenn made a movie about her, Girl 27, a film I mentioned a few days ago.  But Douglas was the rare exception of a woman going public, and she did shortly after she had been raped.  Most women kept silent for fear of financial ruin and fear of their reputations being destroyed.

Almost all  the big studio heads during the "golden age" of the Hollywood studio system employed the "casting couch," with the very worst them being 20th Century Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck.  He was a total pig, which is an insult to swine.  There really are no words harsh enough to describe this creep.  He must have had a "short man" complex--he was diminutive--and felt he needed to assert his power in other, more vile ways.  He married silent film actress Virginia Fox, who was no relation to the head of Fox Studios.  He never divorced her despite his rampant harassment of women and his cheating on her with much-younger mistresses.  As an aside, she was with him to the end of his life, after he suffered from a stroke and needed constant care, and after she threw out his last girlfriend, one Genevieve Gilles.  He eventually died of pneumonia in 1979, the last of the "golden age" Hollywood moguls.

But back to his vile treatment of women.  You can find lots and lots of articles about Zanuck on the internet and a number of books about his life and career.  This article from October mentions Harvey Weinstein and his membership od the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which dumped him, while looking at what Zanuck did decades ago:

Over at the Beverly Hills public library on Friday, Harris’s Dark Legacy book was still on the shelf. In it, any interested reader could learn that Zanuck – governor, benefactor, three-time recipient of a lifetime achievement award – went through contract actresses like tissue paper. “He was not serious about any of the women,” wrote Harris. “To him they were merely pleasurable breaks in the day – like polo, lunch, and practical jokes.”

Actresses were routinely summoned to a small part of his large, green-paneled office suite, in which he kept the casting couch. This was hardly a secret. As Harris wrote: “Anyone at the studio knew of the afternoon trysts.” Gossips said the studio shut down for a half-hour at 4 p.m. every day, while Zanuck had his way.

In the early 1980s, a Fox rep, conducting a private tour of the studio’s Century City lot, matter-of-factly described subterranean passages which, he said, were used by actresses who didn’t want to be seen on their sex trips to and from Zanuck’s office. The Underground Railroad, this was not. In fact, Zanuck’s record of harassment leaves something of a Confederate monuments problem at Fox today: Can anyone offended by Weinstein’s behavior feel entirely comfortable in Fox’s beautifully appointed Darryl F. Zanuck Theater? Or should it perhaps be renamed for an executive or producer who treated women better?

There is a bit of hypocrisy there, isn't there?

Here is another article about the vileness of Darryl F. Zanuck.

Probably Time to Ditch Beauty Pageants as Relics of the Past

I had an inservice to attend yesterday, so I got lazy and didn't put anything on the blog.  These days if I don't find anything worth sharing, why bother to blog?  Years ago I used to spend hours and hours a day on this blog, but now I have cut it down to size.  Blogging is a major time suck if one isn't careful.  Besides, I have other things I have been doing.

Anyway, there is a good article in Feminist Current which asks why the Miss America pageant isn't being eliminated although it has been recently embroiled in an email scandal.  People have asked that question for many years about beauty pageants in general and the moth-eaten Miss America pageant in particular.  The meat market atmosphere of the contest, which, despite claims of it being a scholarship competition, sends the wrong message that women need to trade on their looks to get anywhere in our society.

Probably not a great thing to be pushing in the 21st century.

Speaking of which, I did have a lot of fun watching this very old broadcast of the Miss America pageant which aired in 1958, and crowned Mary Ann Mobley of Mississippi as the winner.  She did have a lot of charm on display, so it wasn't hard to understand why she won the title.  Of course, Mobley, who passed away in 2014, had a long career in acting and was married to actor and talk show host Gary Collins.  I had forgotten that singer Anita Bryant was a finalist in the same pageant.  She was second runner up.  She went on to fame as a singer, and then infamy in around 1977 with her campaign against LGB (no "T" then of consequence) rights ordinances in Dade County, Florida.  Her political activity pretty much killed her career.  She ditched her husband, Bob Green, who she said was the one who put her up to the crusade and later married somebody else, but  her career never fully recovered.

It was also fun to watch a seasoned newscaster, Douglas Edwards, as the anchor or whatever.  He was assisted by Miss America of 1955 Lee Meriwether, who also became famous as an actress.  She is around 83 (!) years old now.  For quite a few years she was married to Frank Aletter, who I mentioned on this blog a couple of times, first when he died in 2009, and then recently when I discussed the DVD release of the hideous 1960s sitcom It's About Time.  As an aside, it really gets me that the title of the show often omits the apostrophe in almost all the episodes.  The word "it's" instead gets "its," and it's the shits when the wrong spelling of the contraction of "it" is used.  No matter if it's "it's" or "its" or even the nonword "its'," it's still a shitty show.

I mostly looked at the old Miss America broadcast because I was interested in watching Bert Parks.  The show was never as charmingly tacky ever again after he was fired in 1979.  The organization wanted a younger look, and old Bert, who had started hosting the festivities in 1955, simply couldn't make the grade anymore.  Johnny Carson spearheaded a protest more or less tongue-in-cheek over the firing, but Parks never was reinstated.  He died in 1992, but he is still remembered as being practically synonymous with the pageant.

It and other pageants are relics of a time long past, but they will probably stick around for the foreseeable future.

I Don't Think a Man Now Could Get Away With Writing This Piece of Crap

I couldn't believe it when I read the translation of the "letter" by a few French women and co-signed by others, including actress Catherine Deneuve, saying women should shut the fuck up and let men sexually assault and harass them at work and elsewhere, even when it is illegal either criminally or civilly.

I don't know what French law is regarding workplace harassment and harassment in other environments, but this letter is incredibly, incredibly backwards. I doubt sexual harassment is legal in France, either. The letter is mindboggling in its vileness, in its stupidity. Shame on any woman who signed this and basically disregard the workplace rights of the vast majority of women who do not have the luxury of an extravagant lifestyle and have to earn a living.

Fuck these women, every last one of them.

In fact, #MeToo has led to a campaign, in the press and on social media, of public accusations and indictments against individuals who, without being given a chance to respond or defend themselves, are put in the exact same category as sex offenders. This summary justice has already had its victims: men who’ve been disciplined in the workplace, forced to resign, and so on., when their only crime was to touch a woman’s knee, try to steal a kiss, talk about "intimate" things during a work meal, or send sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their interest.

This frenzy for sending the "pigs" to the slaughterhouse, far from helping women empower themselves, actually serves the interests of the enemies of sexual freedom, the religious extremists, the reactionaries and those who believe — in their righteousness and the Victorian moral outlook that goes with it — that women are a species "apart," children with adult faces who demand to be protected.

Men, for their part, are called on to embrace their guilt and rack their brains for "inappropriate behavior" that they engaged in 10, 20 or 30 years earlier, and for which they must now repent. These public confessions, and the foray into the private sphere or self-proclaimed prosecutors, have led to a climate of totalitarian society.

How old are these dumb women? I know Deneuve is around 74 or 75 years of age and is a product of her time of the 1960s, but how old are the rest of them, and what is THEIR excuse if not age? Much of this "letter" reads like 1960s-style bullshit from the "sexual revolution," which didn't benefit women at all. The verbiage sounds like it comes from that era, like "puritanism."

I hope there is a major pushback on this. It is outrageous.

Update: Apparently there have been lots of denunciation over this idiotic "letter."

A group of around 30 activists, led by prominent feminist Caroline De Haas, responded on Wednesday with a scathing critique, published on France Info.

They accused the signatories of deliberately mixing "seduction, based on respect and pleasure, with violence."

"Sexual violence is not 'intensified flirting,'" they wrote. "One means treating the other as your equal, respecting their desires, whatever they may be. The other is treating them as an object at your disposal, paying no attention to their own desires, or their consent."

The Woman Must Have Never Read "The Feminine Mystique"

This passage is just bizarro, as far as I am concerned:

Beyond creating a climate where harassment could thrive, capitalism reaped the benefits of this dynamic, since many women left male-dominated fields with higher-paying jobs for lower-paying positions in teaching, nursing, or social work where they would be less likely to have to deal with a harasser. As AASC put it in an article in Radical America in 1981: “Sexual harassment is possible because sexism is an integral part of capitalism … Occupational segregation … props up the system of depressed wages for women workers.”

That is not why women were pushed out of male-dominated jobs. They never were in those fields to begin with, except during the Second World War. That passage is such a screwed-up thesis I don't even know where to begin. I don't know WHERE this idea comes from. Women who try to enter male-dominated jobs are often sexually harassed where previously they were BARRED from entering for the most part and they are often harassed in FEMALE-DOMINATED workplaces (I have seen this happen quite often, and does this idiot of an author understand sexual harassment is rife in nursing and in teaching, for example), but that has NOTHING to do with women going into female-dominated work, which appears to be denigrated by this author. The denigration of female-dominated work just angers me, and shame on this author for worshiping male-dominated fields. I am sick and tired of reading bullshit about skilled careers like teaching, nursing, and social work as if they are crap jobs. Furthermore, I wish people would be accurate. During WWII, women went into the factories and did so-called "men's work" because the men were off to war. They did the jobs well without any problem. However, the war ended, and women had to be coerced out of those jobs, even fired, to make room for the returning servicemen. That is well-established fact. The passage also completely and totally ignores the concepts of the family wage, primary and secondary earners, and male "sex-right," which is the reason sex discrimination, the wage gap, and the denigration of female-dominated work exist. I have said it repeatedly: the reason women are denigrated in the labor force is because men want it that way to coerce them into marriage and men get sexual access and free domestic labor in return. Not complicated.

This woman needs to read The Feminine Mystique.

She could have written an article without making shit up out of whole cloth.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I have heard the stories about GHWB for years, including the supposed longterm relationship between him and aide Jennifer Fitzgerald. Nothing new. Since the man is now 93 years old, I don't think at this point the public at large is going to be sympathetic to any women at this late date. That is just reality. This could very well backfire and be used against any Democratic candidates for next year.

I think now there is real danger that this "me-too" movement is going to be co-opted by the GOP to use against Democrats next year. The Republicans are nothing if not astute. The warning signs are everywhere. As I mentioned elsewhere, the vile Caitlin Flanagan piece in the Atlantic, replete with long-debunked "scandals" against Bill Clinton being repackaged and twisted as some history of sexual harassment on his part despite the fact he never did it, was the opening salvo of what is going to happen next year. Since Roy Moore of Alabama is in trouble politically because of the allegations against him, now the GOP is starting to hit back in the remote chance Moore doesn't win election there. We are seeing it with Al Franken, and some self-described feminists are calling for his head. The timing is extremely suspect. The GOP just got a major drubbing in Virginia in the last couple of weeks, and now they are in panic mode. The GOP figures that if Moore loses in Alabama, what can we do to offset it? Enter the Franken scandal. If he is forced out of office and there is a special election, who do you think is going to win? Hint: It won't be a Democrat. The GOP would see such a victory in their column and a loss in AL as a wash.

Pretty obvious here what this is all about. Be careful what you wish for.

It is clearly a concerted campaign:

Roger Stone says Senator Al Franken's time in the barrel is about to come #sexscandal

— Stone Cold Truth (@StoneColdTruth) November 16, 2017

From what I have seen here, I, too, don't think Franken should resign.

Snip:

When you combine these things — an awareness that the Democratic Party is no more or less than best of two, and an understanding that men in power frequently exploit women — it becomes difficult to believe that Franken is the only sitting Democrat with a history of harassment, abuse or assault. The recent #metoo campaign demonstrated how normalized unwanted kissing and groping are in our culture. Donald Trump was caught on tape crudely admitting to both of those transgressions, and we made him our president. According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 1 in 3 women experiences some sort of contact sexual violence in her life. Sexual harassment and assault are simply too widespread for Democrats to respond to Franken’s offense with only Franken in mind: We need to respond in a way that helps us develop a protocol for meaningful change.

It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, appoint a senator who has not (as far as we know) harmed women. If I believed for one second that Franken is the only Democrat in the Senate who has done something like this, with or without photographic evidence, I would see that as the best and most appropriate option. But in the world we actually live in, I’m betting that there will be more. And more after that. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans.

It looks like Al Franken has been set up.

Lies and Liars

There is nothing worse on the face of the Earth than a fucking liar whose aim is to rewrite history. Flanagan is a piece of human shit, a disgrace, to LIE about the politically motivated "bimbo eruptions" made by the Scaifette crowd against Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

She is counting on people too young to remember the Clinton years or people who didn't follow the "scandals" closely.

Bill Clinton didn't commit any crimes; the GOP did by abusing the legal system to attempt a coup on a sitting president.

People who swallow her bullshit should read Susan McDougal's account of what those years were REALLY like, The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk. That woman is a national hero because she refused to lie to the inquisitor Kenneth Starr. The work by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason should be read.

The Lewinsky thing was really a big nothingburger but for a partisan "friend" in the Pentagon to relay the info back to Clinton's enemies.

It was ALL bullshit, and they have NO relevance to the current sexual harassment and rape scandals. Hell, why is Trump still in office except perhaps as a buffer against the really bad shit backing Mike Pence?

I have written about Flanagan's shenanigans here.

She is a right-wing hack.

Everything Old is New Again

Of course, it is all Bill Clinton's fault.

It takes a lot of nerve for the Clinton-hating Washington Post, which peddled Ken Starr's and the Scaifettes' smears for years, calling it "news," to publish this garbage. The paper hasn't changed its tune twenty years later.

The reason the paper, indeed the entire Beltway corp of "journalists," hated the Clintons is for the stupidest and most petty of reasons. It is because the Clintons, especially Hillary Clinton, wouldn't kiss the ass of the queen Beltway whore herself, Sally Quinn, whose only claim to fame was the fact she slept her way to the top.

You can read my bile about Quinn and company from this oldie but goodie from 2008.

It's Probably True

Fox News propagandist Roger Ailes is being sued for sexual harassment.

It isn't like he is centerfold material. Given the way women are sexualized on that network, it comes as no shock.

But Fox isn't alone.

I get really disgusted at the various cable "news" organizations employing what is in fact sex discrimination against women journalists and/or hosts by forcing them into sleeveless dresses, dresses that look like cocktail dresses rather than professional work wardrobes, ruinous high heels, even the showing of cleavage. Meanwhile, the men are dressed professionally in conservative dress with suits and ties. There is no attempt to sexualize the men. This is clear sex discrimination in dress codes. The news is not porn, and women should not be forced into porn-style attire. The women in these organizations should sue.

Getting back to the suit in question, Carlson's allegations are pretty damning.

I didn't know Carlson had been a Miss America. She held the title in 1989. This probably won her the title. She is a very good violinist. By not knowing about her beauty pageant past, you can tell I don't closely follow beauty pageants believing as I do they are relics of a sexist past.

No Other College Will Hire Him

that is if any of them have an ounce of brains. The Marcy case just goes to show that "tenure" on the college level (it doesn't exist in K-12) is not a license to be a sexual harassing asshole.

It doesn't matter how prestigious you are or how much the college likes the money you bring in.

The article is a few days old, and Marcy pulled the plug on his college career.

This idiot thought that because he had "tenure" that meant he could never be fired or be vulnerable to being fired. While college professors have much more job security than say public school teachers, who have NO real job protections, it isn't ironclad. Once you cross that line, and this idiot did, it's over. The college tried to protect him because he brought in so much money, but the outrage by his colleagues in the field forced him out. I do not see any other college hiring him. He can write books and do other things.

The Case Against Tenure in Higher Education

It's crap like this that makes people outraged professors are basically untouchable once they reach tenure--real tenure unlike K-12 post-probationary status.

There is no justification for the prof's assignment. It is downright perverse on his part, and he should lose his job over it.

It is NEVER okay to even suggest students "bare all," even as an option, in a class. This is the very essence of a hostile environment, of sexual harassment.

And this is a PUBLIC university, so there are clearly all kinds of regulations and rules about boundaries between professors and students.

I couldn't believe this idiot of a prof even thought of doing such a thing.

The Right to Freely Move About

This is something men have always taken for granted. They can go anywhere at any time of the day and rarely if ever be bothered. They can be with friends or can be alone. They can go to movies alone, they can travel alone, they can eat out alone, they do anything without a blink of an eye.

Women, from the time they are old enough to walk, are taught they have to be constantly afraid. They have NO right whatsoever being out in public without some man around to "protect" them from others. Otherwise, they risk being assaulted, raped, murdered, or simply catcalled by assholes who have no respect whatsoever for women and their right to bodily integrity. Of course catcalling, the most common kind of sexual harassment, IS harassment. It is NOT complimentary--EVER. This harassment is most common against women beginning in the early teen years and continues for most women into their late thirties and for many never goes entirely away.

It has nothing to do with what women wear or how they look. It is just the fact of their very existence without the "protection" of a man that "justifies" filth being hurled at them when they are simply minding their own business. It's violating their right to personal space.

Women in some Muslim and Hindu countries go through something called "purdah" in order to stay away from strangers and men in general. What women in this country go through is something similar with this catcalling bullshit. The message is clear: Women are not to freely move about.

There was a viral video that came out a few days ago demonstrating just what so many women go through when they try to freely move about and mind their own business. Her case is hardly unique:

"I have been doing martial arts since I was nine, and I have a black belt in tae kwon do ... and I am scared," Roberts told Cooper.

The video has been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube. Despite numerous threats of violence against Roberts, many have been supportive.

What in the HELL is wrong with people that they would make threats against her for merely stating a reality millions of women face every single day?

One of the Dumbest Court Decisions in a Long Time,

and it doesn't even involve the United States Supreme Court. It's in Iowa, of all places:

After working as a dental assistant for ten years, Melissa Nelson was fired for being too "irresistible" and a "threat" to her employer's marriage.

"I think it is completely wrong," Nelson said. "I think it is sending a message that men can do whatever they want in the work force."

On Friday, the all-male Iowa State Supreme Court ruled that James Knight, Nelson's boss, was within his legal rights when he fired her, affirming the decision of a lower court.

Evidently the Iowa Supreme Court has never heard of sexual harassment. This is obviously such a case.

Miscellaneous News

The WSWS has commentary about Roman Polanski's arrest on ancient charges.

Commenters from around the country and world are wanting to lynch Polanski, and never mind the pesky facts surrounding his fleeing the United States. From this link is a rare comment of sanity:

Many of the details of this case are frequently overlooked, ignored or lost in the mists of time. At the time of the original case, BOTH Polanski's defense attorney, the prosecuting district attorney, Roger Gunson, the probation office report and the victim's family argued for a plea bargain. At the time of the case, no one initially wanted prison time for Polanski except publicity-crazy and often unpredictable Judge Laurence J. Rittenband. Rittenband changed his mind at the last minute with regard to Polanski's punishment. All sides had agreed that Polanski would serve only 90 days in Chino during a psychiatric evaluation. After 42 days and a psychiatric evaluation of "normal," prison authorities released Polanski fearing for his life and safety. Infuriated and fearing he would be accused for being "soft on crime," Rittenband announced to the lawyers that he planned to put Polanski back in prison contradicting what had been previously agreed upon. Polanski fled to France in 1978 while awaiting sentencing when it became apparent that Rittenband was going to ignore the terms of Polanski's original plea agreement . Subsequent to Polanski's fleeing the US there have been numerous allegations of serious prosecutorial violations including serious violations by Rittenband. The victim received an undiclosed settlement from Polanski and wants the case dismissed. This case will sadly become an international mess, will cost thousands and will ultimately be dismissed. In the meantime it serves as a catnip for a celebrity starved culture.

For those idiots who think it is not Samantha Geimer's case but the state's, how the fuck is the state going to prosecute an ancient case where the victim is not going to be of help in their case, as she wants it dropped? It ain't gonna happen, folks, no matter how much fake outrage there is over this "child molester" getting off the hook.

Not to mention a total waste of taxpayers' money in a state which is damned near broke:

Meanwhile, Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer, long ago announced that she had forgiven the filmmaker for his transgressions and supported various efforts to have the case against him dismissed. I don't think that you'd find many people who would approve of Polanski's behavior, which was disgusting -- he drugged his victim with Champagne and Quaaludes before raping her during a 1977 photo session at Jack Nicholson's house.

But at a time when California is shredding the safety net that protects the poor and the unemployed, not to mention the budget of the public school system, you'd hope that L.A. County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex crime, especially one that Polanski's victim wants to put behind her. As Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," ably chronicled, the original prosecution of Polanski was marred by all sorts of embarrassing missteps and strange behavior, largely by Laurence Rittenband, the original presiding judge.

This damned thing needs to be dropped.
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In case you care to read the From the Wilderness editor Michael Ruppert's sexual harassment case, in which a former employee was awarded damages, it is here.

The meat of the decision is on page 32, with the facts, etc.
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Miscellaneous

Paul Kirk will be interim senator to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

Kirk, 71, is a longtime Kennedy friend and former staff member, a man so close to the family he was chosen as master of ceremonies at Kennedy’s memorial service the night before the funeral last month. An attorney who now lives on Cape Cod, Kirk worked as a special assistant to Senator Kennedy from 1969 to 1977, and is currently the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. He is familiar with many on Kennedy’s former staff and could help smooth the transition.

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A "reformer" of note I guess has to cough up money to pay somebody for having sexually harassed her.

He denies the allegatons.
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It's long overdue for former (1969-1974) Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor to write a tell-all book. He worked all those years in the music business and has virtually nothing to show for it. He's living not just in obscurity but also in squalor, at least compared to his former bandmates:

Mick Taylor is Ronnie Wood’s direct predecessor and the musical virtuoso behind the Rolling Stones’ golden age.

When the band announced six weeks ago that it was switching record labels from EMI to Universal, much was made of the continuing selling power of classic albums such as Exile On Main Street, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers – all made in an astonishingly productive five-year period between 1969 and 1974, when Taylor was the Stones’ lead guitarist.

Naturally Taylor has been shafted out of the royalties of those great albums of which he was such a huge part.

Now, 61-year-old Taylor has broken his silence in an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday.

It is clear that the scruffy, two-bedroom semi where he has lived for the past 20 years hardly fits the image of a former Rolling Stone. The tiny house in a Suffolk country lane is in serious need of repair and redecoration.

‘Yeah, I know it needs doing,’ he said dismissively. ‘I just don’t feel up for it right now.’

Even less edifying is the unopened stack of bills and threats to cut off the water, electricity and gas. The uncut grass, empty cans in the kitchen sink and the ancient car parked in the driveway with weeds growing through its wheels also tell a tale.

The thick-set Taylor has none of the dandyish elegance of Jagger or the outlaw chic of Keith Richards. His once-golden mane of hair is streaked with grey. He is jowly and far heavier than in his prime – the legacy, he admits, of years of drug abuse.

‘People are always asking me whether I regret leaving the Rolling Stones,’ he said. ‘I make no bones about it – had I remained with the band, I would probably be dead.

It's time for some major payback, Mick.