Like all right-listening folk, I am an implacable enemy of all muzak.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will I in my academic role. However, if I don't believe I'm helping my students towards a fuller and more empowering relationship with the world, then I'll resign.

There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in a spirit of intellectual and creative endeavour - if I believed in progress, I suppose that's what I'd call it.

You may have gathered that I am not the most cheerful of revellers - some characterise me as the death and soullessness of any party but it wasn't always so, believe me.

As the render is to the building, and the blueprint to the machine, so sport is to social existence.

Sometimes the crowd is the madness - at others it's the absence of the crowd that is.