My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.

What other developed democracy has such a ridiculous and squalid history of intolerance? From the imprisonment and roasting of heretics, witches and poachers, to the censorship of literature, art and television: from St Alban through Wilde, Joyce and Lawrence I think we can point with pride to as grim a catalogue of intemperate, bigoted repression as any nation on earth.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.

Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.

As I say I don't want to kill myself, I just wouldn't mind dying.

There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.

Sometimes there just isn't enough vomit in the world.