Paris Hilton

I have sold the same numbers of copies of my first book as Paris Hilton has of her first album. I leave you to try and guess how many that might be. I suppose you are either thinking that must be a lot or, if you have heard the Paris Hilton album, you might be thinking that it is awful and that no-one could have possibly bought it. Should I resort to Hiltonesque publicity stunts? I remember going into Waterstones in Birmingham about a year ago to see if they had my book on their shelves (the kind of sad, narcissistic things authors do) and I walked into Jade Goody fans waiting for the arrival of Britain’s Britney to sign copies of her autobiographical tome. I wonder if she read a few passages from it to entertain the hordes. Now that would have been worth watching. The English language massacre live from Waterstones, New Street.

My New Year’s resolution is try and avoid using exclamation marks. The more I see them used, and the more I look back at my writings and assess my own use of them I realise what they are for. They are a cue for the author to say to the reader ‘I have tried to write something funny here, which hasn’t hit the mark so my use of the exclamation mark is a suggestion to you that you might like to chuckle a bit more than you would have done but unfortunately a bit less than I had hoped you might when I wrote it’. In other words the exclamation mark is a humour substitute.

I have used up a year's supply of cynicsm in my first blog of the New Year. All will be joy from now on. A happy one to all readers.

London was great for a month and now I am back in Pezenas, France. I have a month before the travels begin to write the book I want to write. ‘The Idea’ is coming…

Song of the day: The Cinematic Orchestra album ‘Motion’