THE LAST TIME I WENT TO Cheltenham, I was interviewed by Professor Lisa Jardine about my third novel, which led to a finely balanced discussion about history, truth, Jewish identity and personal responsibility. On the previous occasion, I was interviewed by John Walsh about my second novel, which led to a lively debate about love, irony, and the politics of Diana, Princess of Wales’s death. The time before that, I did an hour and a half of stand-up, which led to a woman coming back to my room, who then sold her story to The Sun.

Say what you like about being a comedian and a novelist, it leads to a wide spectrum of experiences. However, I have to admit that, as far as Cheltenham goes, the last is the more defining. Now, whenever I go to the festival, however much I might be looking forward to a searching hour of literary deliberation, once I see those Neo-Classical pillars framing the entrance to the town hall, all I can think about is Rachel W — for that was her name — and how she ran away after little more than a dry kiss, pleading boyfriend-inspired guilt; only to reappear photographed looking hurt and bewildered in a hotel dressing-gown, on a piece of fax paper handed to me by a man who came into my dressing-room in Preston three days later from the super, soaraway Sun.

I had apparently spent the night with Rachel: I had apparently stripped down to my football socks; I had apparently left without a word, or even a chorus of Three Lions. Due to various technical issues — lack of truth, etc — this particular kiss-and-tell was never published. At the time, this was an enormous relief.

However, when, now, I take my place at festivals, I sometimes wonder what, if I was a single man without children once again, I would do for groupies. Because the sad truth is that, whilst obviously rock star will always be the top job for bedpost notching, comedian isn’t far behind: author, sadly, is a long way down the list, well past footballer, celebrity chef, politician and possibly even local dignitary.

Maybe in America, the ones with rock star names, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Dave Eggers, are rock’n’ roll enough to attract them: but most of the time at literary events in Britain the front rows are a sea of blue rinses. Where are the literary groupies? A cursory glance at English literature shows us that not long ago nothing became a beautiful woman more than throwing herself at some laudanum-chomping Man of Letters. Whether it be Lizzie Siddell, Lady Caroline Lamb, or the Dark Lady himself, the list of muses reveals that, before the pop stars carved out this territory for themselves, all you had to do was throw a few couplets together and some bit of top-class totty would be falling over herself to die of consumption for you. Now it tends to be someone keen to tell you how your novel alone got the entire book group through the menopause.

I have made this worse by writing a novel with a vaguely Holocaust theme. First, this means that the audience becomes even more decrepit — some are so old now that that number on their arm could be their age — and second, you’re starting from a point where it’s much more difficult to move the subject in a bedwise direction. When I did stand-up, women coming up after the show might say, for example, “you know that bit about anal sex . . ?” Now, it’s more likely to be “you know, my grandfather was killed in Auschwitz”. Try suggesting a drink back at the hotel from there.

Oh well: as a virtually married man, it makes life easier. Of course, novelists are, in general, very keen on sex, so I presume it is going on, just that the tabloids aren’t interested. You can understand this. If Rachel W had dry-kissed Julian Barnes and run away, The Sun would have had to make up something about how he’d stripped down to his period Victorian socks; how he’d sent her away without even a reading from Flaubert’s Parrot. If Jodie Marsh forsook footballers and boy-band members for one night and copped off with, say, Vikram Seth, she’d have to be in tabloids afterwards saying: “He was A Suitable Boy, all right. He kept going and going, longer than all three volumes.”

Of course, Rachel W should have gone for Martin Amis, because then the headline could have been “The Rachel Papers”, with pull-out quotes such as: “He offered me Money. It was an amazing Experience. We did it Yellow Doggy-Style. Turns out it’s not just Einstein who’s got a Monster. Now I’m just hoping that I don’t have to go and get myself one of them Dead Babies.”

Have I gone too far?

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