(source: Paramount Pictures) Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's is from GlamourDoll! What exactly is "camp"? Wikipedia defines it as: "an aesthetic and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element." In other words: too much... but in the best possible way. The term itself dates back to late 1800s Victorian times. Fanny Park (Frederick) and Stella Boulton (Ernest), both born male, performed in drag and lived as women both on and off stage. They were arrested in 1870 for "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence" (Victorians were, unsurprisingly, no fun), but were ultimately acquitted. In a letter, Fanny described her “campish undertakings,” giving us one of the earliest recorded uses of ...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today’s article is by SpiceDong , the concluding chapter in their epic three-part Ava Gardner series! The first part is HERE and the second part is HERE . In October in 1957, a group of friends invited Ava Gardner to visit the Peralta Ranch, an estate dedicated to raising Lidia bulls. She had been drinking, and on a dare agreed to get on a horse. The steed got spooked by a bull, threw her off - and she fell, hitting the right side of her face. The ranch hands quickly intervened and kept the bull from goring Ava as she lay on the ground. A photographer with a high-speed camera just “happened” to be there and captured the whole scene.  Afterwards, Ava suspected someone in her circle may have tipped the photographer as to her whereabouts, and that everything had been a set up. The photos (seen below) fetched high sums, causing a media frenzy. Paris Match was ...