Using the word “logistics” in this context is totally meaningless, and meaninglessness is utterly annoying and rumtunculous in my book.
Another thing I hate is those irritating newspaper columnists who, instead of developing a consistent train of thought on one subject, fill their 800 words with lots of little snippets of stuff, often with no point to them.Another thing I hate is the Olympics, which are going on in Australia at this very moment, except of course it’s night over there, which is why I’m drunk and still in my pyjamas.I hate the bloated nationalism of the Olympics; I hate the trivial pastimes that they try to pass off as sport, such as synchronised swimming and ballroom dancing: sport should be majestic, titanic contests between individuals or against the clock, not these mere hobbies.I hate the twee perviness of some of it, too – for instance, why do some gymnastic events feature only emaciated little girls, with no corresponding male event? And, of course, the widespread and undetected use of drugs makes the whole thing pointless.It would be a better idea, given the present state of things, to have a Drugs Olympics, where the point is actually to take drugs. You could have such events as Coke-Snorting, with subdivisions for rubbish-talking, teeth-grinding, bad-comedy-programme-commissioning and heavy sweating. You could have Crack-Smoking, Heroin-Injecting and a Burglary-and-Mugging Marathon. Of course, such is human nature, that there would soon be a scandal when a competitor was found to have not taken drugs.Another thing I hate is Chinese takeaways that use that extruded substitute chicken stuff in their dishes. I don’t pay £1.27 for chicken in black bean sauce to eat stuff that tastes like the polystyrene nuggets your stereo comes packed in (I’m not doing that twice.)Another thing I hate is Fascism I’m sorry, but I do.Another thing I hate is the Olympics.. oh, I’ve done that one.. It’s a funny place, though, Australia is.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time out there working on movies or doing stand-up comedy tours. Now most visitors to that country see only the sunny surface, the scenery, the beaches, the superficially easy-going nature of the inhabitants, but, as a bestselling author and columnist, I’m perceptive enough to look below the official picture that Australia presents of itself, and I definitely think that it’s a funny place.One bizarre phenomenon that I’ve noticed through working there is that when you meet an Australian married couple who are the same age, and you observe them over a period of time, say several years, there is this weird thing that goes on whereby the man seems to become more and more youthful in appearance as time progresses, while the woman gets correspondingly and increasingly haggard.I’ve noticed this time and time again in Australian couples (for example, did you know that Germaine Greer is married to Jason Donovan?), though I have no real explanation for it except to say that there, the men often have an immature quality to them, while the women work in uranium mines.One of those haggard/adolescent couples were involved in organising my last stand-up tour of Australia, in 1996, a husband-and-wife team. Now, through some mix-up, these two still owe me something like £5,000, and my agent has never been able to get in touch with them to sort it out.I had resolved to forgo the money, when I happened to be watching the funeral of Michael Hutchence, which was shown live on Sky News from the cathedral in Sydney, Australia. The camera panned over all those present, and there, sitting in the congregation, was the man who still owed me all that money.What was I to do? I picked up the phone, but who could I call? I wondered, did they have that thing at funerals that they have at weddings? Where the vicar says, “Is there anybody here present who knows any reason why this person should not be buried?”Could I find out the vicar’s mobile-phone number before the service ended, or was there some kind of telephone hotline I could use, like the one connected to the state governor’s office right up to the time of an execution in America, just in case the highly unlikely situation occurs in which the person being executed is actually guilty of the crime they’re being judicially killed for?But of course there wasn’t, so I didn’t bother..

This news has come in the very same week that two high-profile British authors, Fay Weldon and Frederick Forsyth, have opted to reach their readers directly through the internet The idea, Forsyth has said, is to cut out the middleman. This news has come in the very same week that two high-profile British authors, Fay Weldon and Frederick Forsyth, have opted to reach their readers directly through the internet. The idea, Forsyth has said, is to cut out the middleman.
Gollancz, publisher of George Orwell, Ford Madox Ford, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, Updike’s Rabbit, Run and many others, was a middleman of the old order, and not too many people will be surprised that the list bearing his name will now cease to be a major player in the market-led book business of today. Like many other independent publishing houses that built their reputation in the middle of the 20th century, Gollancz was swallowed up by a large conglomerate and reduced to the status of an imprint that provided an impression of seriousness and a declining turnover.No doubt, there will be sad mutterings from traditionalists. A business that feeds unhealthily on its own myths, publishing tends to look back to a long-lost golden age dominated by titans of flair, ego and brilliance – Gollancz, Fredric Warburg, Michael Joseph, Allen Lane of Penguin, and then André Deutsch, George Weidenfeld, Billy Collins and Tom Maschler.In fact, while those men may have belonged to smarter clubs than their editorial counterparts today, there is little evidence that they were more high-minded or intelligent. Certainly, many of them were not over-scrupulous in their dealings with authors.

In one of his letters, Philip Larkin complained that “whereas Mr Watt, my agent, and Mr Faber, my publisher, have Daimlers and country cottages now and for evermore, I, the author, without whom they would be nothing but a heap of desiccated dogshit, haven’t a Daimler nor a country cottage now, and as far as I can see, never will have.” VS Naipaul described publishers as “common, lying, low class and foolish”.Yet, in one sense, the old-codger view of publishing history has validity. Those men represented a time when editorial judgement mattered above all else, when books and literary careers were launched and supported by the enthusiasm and faith of an individual. Today’s authors are at the mercy of marketing types in publishing and book chains, who see an editorial view of the text as something to be considered after computer records have been consulted and publicity angles assessed. The result is the increasingly hysterical and short-term approach to book production.Independent publishers are a threatened species. The highly successful Fourth Estate tumbled willingly into bed with Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins earlier this year. André Deutsch, a list that once boasted such names as Mailer, Updike, Vidal and Naipaul, is being flogged off by the Kingfisher group.Things get bigger, it might be said.