James Newhouse - A Real Don Juan

I have to admit, I know bugger-all about Giacomo Casanova. Except that his name translates into English as James Newhouse (don't names always sounds better in Romance languages? Mine would be Tommaso Guerriero).

My good mate Sam (Samuele Rubinetti) asked me if I could address the myth of Mr Casanova. Was he, as history would have us believe, a 'man-whore'?

Because that is certainly what he is famous for. Whether you know the intricacies of his life or not, chances are that, when you hear that name, you think of a guy who has slept around a lot. A bit like Don Juan (or Don Giovanni, in Italian). The difference is, Don Juan was fictional. But Casanova was the real thing.

Jimmy Newhouse led a pretty darned exciting life. Born in Venice in 1725, he spent 73 fun-packed years carousing around Europe, hatching schemes, sleeping with women, educating himself, being arrested, gambling away his fortune, and generally not focusing on any one thing for too long. Reading about his exploits, one thinks immediately of an 18th-century Cosmo Kramer - constantly flitting from project to project, from lover to lover, having a grand old time, and always landing on his feet.

But was he a 'man-whore'?

In his memoirs, he mentions 122 sexual encounters with different women (with a few not-so-boastful implied encounters with blokes).

Now, 122 may sound like a lot. But that still only averages out to two a year, from when he was first fondled by a female friend at age 11. And there are plenty of other, more contemporary figures, who have probably had as many, if not more: Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty jump to mind, as well as basketballer Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed he'd slept with 20,000 ladies. Wow.

But it's not just about the quantity. In his lengthy discussions of his seduction technique, he states the importance of love being one-on-one (no orgies for our Venetian friend); of the value of attentiveness and conversation; that alcohol and violence are not tools to be employed by the truly great lover; and that the greatest conquests were those preceded by some sort of chase (one night stands would not have been his favourites).

So, it seems that Cassie slept with a very large number of women, but treated each as a sexually/emotionally/intellectually-fulfilling relationship, to be savoured over a quite lengthy period of time. Unlike the conventional image of a man-whore, which would look more like Keith Richards, pepped up on goofballs, shagging fourteen underaged groupies in a Miami hotel, whilst wearing a leather g-string and 10-inch dildo, and simultaneously snorting coke off a dwarf's thigh.

The other thing to remember is that the main source for our information on Casanova's wondrous sexploits is his very own, 12-volume autobiography - The History of My Life. Running to 3500 pages in its unexpurgated form, the book pretty much recounts every single experience in Giacomo's time on earth.

This isn't selling yourself along the lines of a modern-day cash-in memoir such as Britney: My Life (by Britney Spears and Some Proper Author, 44 pages). This is pure, unadulterated, 12-volume, self-promotion by the multi-talented celebrity of his era. So we can probably take some of what he says with a grain of salt.

He did lots of amazing stuff, and lived a rich and fulfilling life. Along the way he had lots of wholesome sex. The he wrote a big, fat exaggerated account about it.

In fact, if Casanova was anything, he was a self-obsessed celebrity with ADHD, who thought he could do absolutely anything if he put his mind to it, who had an obsession with sex.

Kind of like Madonna.

One lump or two?

Hitler, has only got one ball
The other is in the Albert Hall
Himmler, has something sim'lar
And poor old Goebbels, has no balls, at all



We've all heard that ditty - or a variation on it - at some point, probably in some god-awful World War Two film where the Brits have stiff upper lips and a doughty, pipe-smoking officer, and the Nazis are all...well, a bit shit.

The song is known as the Colonel Bogey March, and most of us - me included - probably think this delightful little piece of poetry has at least some basis in fact. I mean, Hitler did have only one testicle, didn't he? Sure, the other wasn't on display in a large British concert venue, but Hitler was sexually not all there, so to speak. Why else would you invade Poland, and eat vegetarian food, and rant on about the raw deal the Aryans were getting, whilst having untold millions of untermensch slaughtered?

I'm still a big believer in the two Hitler sex myths. As in, these ones:

1) Hitler only had one ball.
2) Hitler was into some WEIRD sexual stuff. Like watching people shit on each other.

God, they're good, aren't they?? They just explain so much. But are they true?

Let's do Myth #1 first. Was Hitler monorchic?

Well, apparently, yes. The evidence suggest he received an injury to his groin (whenever you hear this on Sports Tonight, read: bollocks) during WW1. Also, his commanding officer during this war has stated that a routine VD exam showed Hitler was missing his left testicle. The Soviets released the results of an autopsy during the 1970s also saying as much, but this postmortem has been largely dismissed as a pile of Brezhnev-era bullshit. I mean, whatever was left of the Fuhrer's smoking corpse when the Commies picked it up was probably sans-bollock because of the hasty attempt to cremate it.

Apparently, his doctors during the 1930s and 1940s did not note his missing organ. But, let's be honest, if you had been Hitler's personal medic in 1940, would you have drawn the mad bastard's attention to his loss?

The other theory is that he had syphillis, and had lost his little boy due to the onset of the late stages of the disease. The associated madness could explain his rather erratic behaviour between the years of 1919 and 1945.

Some say the above song was written by the British government as a propaganda tool, designed to send Hitler around the bend by reminding him of his impotence. Myth? Or the most extreme form of bullying ever witnessed in international diplomacy?

Did it even matter? In one online forum, I found this comment:

"Like Miranda said on Sex and the City... "Women don't care. We care about nice arms, great eyes, a big dick... I've never once heard a woman say: 'He had such a big full scrotum.'"

I guess only one person could have ever told us. Eva Braun. And he had the poor bitch poison herself with cyanide.

OK. Myth decidely neither proved nor disproved. What about the second one?

Was Hitler some sort of weird sexual fetishist?

From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for this. There are a lot of quasi-Freudian analyses, usually by Jewish guys called Dr. _berg, who assert that Hitler's over-protective mother fuelled his later obsessions with the anal/faecal/buccal regions, and this was why he was such a cad.

Look, he was an arsehole. You don't need to be into amputee-sex or tranny porn to be a headcase. Looking for sexual motivation behind his actions kind of denies the basic inhumanity of his character. And anyway, some of the nicest folks I know like being pooed upon.

I have found it difficult to find any real proof of Hitler's preoccupation with poo, wee or bums. And, as a British citizen, I have to admit that my entire sense of humour is based around these three things, so hey, what's the problem?

My verdict? No watching people shit on each other's chests for sexual gratification.

Also, he fancied his niece. This one is pretty much true. Sounds gross, but Hitler's dad did marry his niece, and together they spawned Adolf. So he wouldn't have found it too weird.

Hitler had two balls. But possibly he had syphillis. He didn't have much sex, but that he did have was with a blond Aryan girl.

Debate over.