Death of a dandy

In the final interview before his death last week, Sebastian Horsley told Ed Howker about being ‘the high-priest of the dandy movement’, a heroin addict and a self-confessed fraud

His artwork was described as ‘dreadful’, his poetry as ‘pointless’ and he was denied entry to the United States for what the authorities called ‘moral turpitude’. But Sebastian Horsley excelled at failure. When a play of his memoirs opened this month at the Soho Theatre, the book had fallen out of print. Even his death last Thursday, of a heroin overdose, was completely accidental — otherwise, as friends said, he would not have passed up the chance to pen a lengthy suicide note.

When I met him in February, neither of us would have guessed it would be one of his last interviews. Nonetheless, his comments had a valedictory feel. ‘The horror is sounding too serious,’ he said. ‘I’m perfectly aware of how absurd I am.