Radio Ulster :: Listen Again

So, I was sitting in a bar in Newcastle on Friday, eating a not very appetising ‘sandwich’ and reading a book. The book was flat on the table in front of me and I was holding it in place with my non-eating hand. The left.

Two tables away, also to my left, men in their twenties and thirties, four of them, drank and chatted, pleasant and placid. It was a nice bar. Expensive. I eavesdropped for a while, but when they started talking about football I dismissed them as lesser mortals and returned to my book. I even flared a nostril to the accompaniment of a deliciously supercilious eyebrow. I may even have given a tiny shake of the head. But subtle.

Then, a page or two later and the words ‘the most depressing book ever written’ filtered back through from their world to mine. Automatically I lifted my head and I lifted my book and I said, ‘You’re not by any chance talking about this, are you?’

And they were! That very book. Unseen! On their lips! Isn’t that incredible? I don’t know. It struck me as a wonderful thing. For a humble book to have its own personality so profoundly engraved upon the ego-psyche of the zeitgeist that all known culture becomes perversely unbound within it.

It took me a long time to come up with that sentence. I’m very proud of it. It’s wholly meaningless. And yet it seems to crave meaning, like a blind man fondling his own face.

Do you know, I don’t mind telling you: I’m a little bit intoxicated. I’ve had a couple of cheeky cheroots and half a bottle of wine. This probably accounts for the fact that I’m suffering an overwhelming temptation to use the term ‘market penetration’.

So this book, yes. The stuff of delightful barroom coincidence and powerful synonymy with harrowing, near brain-melting sadness.

I said ‘synonymy’! For real. Did I use it right? Don't care. Tomorrow, I may say ‘synergy’.

That’s a book though. That's what I'm talking about. That right there. Imagine that.

Oh, I haven’t even said what it was yet. It was My Booky Wook by Russell Brand.

Of course, of course, of course, I jest. I’m sorry. I feel full of vim tonight. I don't know what it is. I think it might be the spirit of Egg Wallace in me after having watched the first quarter-final of Celebrity Masterchef earlier.



Alma had recorded it for me with her futuristic telly. She doesn’t find it as funny as I do – partially because she’s not always stoned – but she recorded it anyway. And watched it with me, slightly alarmed by my cackling. Isn't that nice? Yes, it is.

So anyway, the book in question was - obviously - The Road. I’m only about halfway through but already I’m shaken half to death by it. Every time I pick it up, I’m filled with a terrifying dread. I keep talking to strangers about it. Oh, I even mentioned it on the radio today to the absolutely charming Marie-Louise Muir on Radio Ulster.



But it was cut. Probably just as well. Marie-Louise said she hadn’t been able to get past the first chapter, because of the sadness. The great wuss.

But she was delightful to chat to. I was sat in a little booth with beautifully snug headphones, and she was hundreds of miles away in another country, but so warm and friendly that it almost felt like she was sitting in my lap.

Last night, by the way, I was trying to think of things to say in this interview – special little things that would amuse me and maybe a couple of other rather frivolous people. In the end I decided it would be hilarious if I could slip in some of the slang from The Wire, so I wrote on my hand: ‘mos def’, ‘no doubt’, ‘true dat’ and ‘feel me?’ Unfortunately I failed. It’s really hard, once you’re involved in a conversation. I did however manage to sneak something in. It ain’t no thing. In fact, it's rather half-arsed, and it lacks the killer 'feel me?' at the end... but still, I listened to it for the first time just now and I glowed with childish pride.

Tiny things.

If you’d like to listen the wholly adorable Marie-Louise Muir put it to me that I may in fact be ‘the Brad Pitt of bloke-lit’ - I so wanted to offer ‘the Brad Pitt of dick-lit’ as an alternative, but I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do - then you have seven days to listen here. It’s the first item.

It's still rather painful to listen to for me, but despite the many things I hate about my voice, I do like the way that I keep sniggering. I sound like such a happy little person.

Maybe I am!



Oh, and of the four guys in the bar, the ones I dismissed as footiefied cretins, two of them had read The Road. One of them kindly said he'd say no more about it as he didn't want to spoil it for me. The other one had no such qualms. He told me outright: 'The butler did it.'

That'll teach me.