The Well-Tempered Clavier

Herewith the full match report of the London signing: So many old friends there, going back decades. Some, like my old housemaster, I hadn’t seen in 25 years.
And the nightmare of it is that you’re just talking to someone for the first time in years, and then there’s a tap on the shoulder, and you’re […]

One of the big advantages of having not one, not two, but three book launches is that by the end, I might be able to make a half-decent speech.
Might even have a go without the safety-blanket of my notes.
At the moment though, I almost feel like a US politician on the stump who has to […]

I think I need a course in salesmanship.
 
My patter isn’t too bad. I now have not a bad sales pitch for the book - can give you the one-minute sale, the five-minute sale, or even the full 30-minuter.
 
Ah yes - I can do all that. But it’s then getting the people to buy the damn […]

In the Clavier book, there are a number of unpleasant characters.
 
One of the bit-part stinkers goes by the name of Archie. Now I’m sure it’s not his fault that he gets up everyone’s nose and that he’s a right royal pain - probably not breast-fed properly or something like that - but the upshot of […]

I don’t know  why, but I always find newspaper pieces about myself absolutely puke-inducing.
Not that I’m not grateful - especially now that I’m touting this book.
But the very moment I see an article about me , I can hardly bring myself to read a single cringe-making word of it.
Take today’s Edinburgh Evening News - they […]

There are some disadvantages to being as low-tech as me - in that I have not got the faintest clue how to get a video onto this posting. Gave it a shot and got fed up. So instead of that, I will merely provide you with the link. Thus:
http://video.travelmail.co.uk/?VideoID=eurodisney_edit_320×240
It’s […]

Dear blog-readers - this is not part of the blog. This is in fact a piece of live copy. I leave it here for your delectation … maybe you’ve never seen a piece of genuine hackery before. Basically the Express’ e-mail system had gone down, and I’d needed to file 200 more words on two […]

Just seen the first two reviews of the book - online reviews, which are not quite as heavyweight as newspaper reviews, but interesting nonetheless, as these were the first pukka evaluations of the Well-Tempered Clavier from people who were not in the Coles cheer-leader team.
You can imagine how I was rubbing my […]