for his life, and only his talent for his work (or so he said, the great show-off). No, I am talking about that extra dimension that every profession seems to be growing, the dimension that is driven headlong before a television camera or a tabloid flashbulb. Traffic wardens, airline workers, doctors, vets, habitual driving-test failures, prostitutes... in fact the general term prostitute is pretty useful. It doesn't matter what you do, they can make you a star. They can arrange it so you can walk along the stretch of life that is perpetually red carpet, paparazzi and video walls. As it is for vets, so it is for writers.

It is not the fault of the writers themselves. I suspect that, by and large, they don't change. It is that there is this huge machinery now in place to bleed everyone dry of any and every ounce of persona that they may possess. And it isn't done in any noble and altruistic way to make these celebs feel good about themselves. It is done because that persona might have money it its blood. It is all about marketing, and branding, and sales.

Of the Hay Literary Festival, David Lodge wrote in the Sunday Times that, "The festival is where literature meets show business. It is the interface between the solitary, anxious, introverted business of writing, and the world of public performance, between the study or the lonely tower and the green room, stage and spotlight.... Most authors now accept, however reluctantly, that to earn their advances they must participate in the promotion and marketing of their books, by for instance doing public readings and book signings and being interviewed about their work." Public readings, book singings and interviews today; falling drunkenly out of the back of taxis on page eight of a tabloid tomorrow?

It's worth remembering too, that the editon of the Sunday Times Culture section that Lodge was writing in was itself little more than a huge piece of cross- publicity for a festival that the paper itself sponsors. What's more, this year's Hay was notoriously hijacked by the presence of one William Jefferson Clinton, who, by the size of the dour, humourless and totally paranoid security detail he brought with him, is apparently under the impression that he is still President of the United States. At least most of the other people at Hay there had the decency to write a book before they turned up, and they didn't charge £60,000 to spout self-serving crap for an hour or so. Admittedly the likes of Rich Hall, Suzanne Vega and the Alberni String Quartet haven't recently produced anything classifiable as literature recently, but at least they're either funny or musically talented, or at least have something that marks them out as not being vain, self-inflated, womanising, hypocritical, charlatan crooks. Even Paul McCartney managed to cobble together a few stolid poems and old lyrics between a couple of covers before turning up to a literary festival.

But stay with me on the subject of Hay. Just over a year ago, whilst still feeling my mind slowly rot away working as a television researcher, I was at the Festival watching Martin Amis in conversation with Christopher Hitchens. At first it felt like Hitchins was having to coax Amis into the limelight, prompt those anecdotes, prod for those witticisms. But pretty soon Amis was off in full flow. And there in front of him were several hundred people under a marquee drumming sporadically with the traditional Hay showers all waiting on his next word, ready to laugh in all the right places, nod at his pearls of wisdom, frown earnestly with his sorrows. Frankly, he was loving it. And so was I. In fact I was enjoying it that much that I got as close to I get as inspired. I thought, "I want to be there, I want to do that. I want to have people read my books and come and hear me speak." I'll not pretend it was the only thing that got me to commit to my writing, to dust out that novel, to really start to try and sell myself (sell what I write, that is), to get at least some money from putting words on paper. But it helped. It fed that desire to be well-known (or for that matter, as a novelist, known at all.)

And where am I now? As frustrated, disillusioned, and running out of money as ever [surely that is exactly what being a writer is about - Ed.]. Not to mention all the boring self-pitying my friends have to put up with from someone who seems to thinks the world owes him a living just because he can string the occasional sequence of... words... together. Thanks a lot, Martin.

But really I shouldn't have been beguiled by this sort of moment of celebrity - I should have known (I do know) the difference between those unreal moments, and the reality of living on nothing and the

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