The week leading up to publication is a strange time for any author. You subject yourself to doing everything from BBC Radio Hebrides to reviewing the Sunday papers on TV, as long as they’ll give your latest book a plug. Mind you, most of them want to talk about anything except the new book. The Alan Titchmarsh Show wants to know whether I trained to be an auctioneer; the Daily Mail are more interested in how Mary (my wife) conquered cancer; The Telegraph are determined to learn more about a murderer I knew, who’s just got his MA, while the Times are keen to find out how often I attend debates in the House of Lords. It was ever thus.
You may consider Castiglione: Lost Genius at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace at 6 p.m., followed by Urinetown: the Musical at the St James Theatre at 8 p.m., an odd double bill for one night, but the venues had the convenience of being a couple of hundred yards away from each other, though I doubt if Her Majesty realises it. I enjoyed both, even though the contrast could not have been greater. However, it was E.W. Swanton who once said of Geoffrey Boycott taking three days to score a century for England, ‘Some very strange things pass as entertainment today.’
Mary and I start this morning with an hour in the gym, assisted by Jacqui, our New Zealand trainer, who only smiles when I groan. As I can now anticipate the pain, I groan a few moments before it’s about to happen, but Jacqui has now worked that out as well, so I don’t get away with it. For those fascinated by detail, I do 20 minutes’ running on a treadmill at 6.4mph,
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