A young scribe named Nigel Something-or-other from the Telegraph has done his obsequious best to help keep the Hitch 22 gravy train chugging along by meeting up with this visibly putrefying bag of partially pickled rancid meat at Paddington and accompanying it on the 10:50 to Oxford in an attempt to pick up enough quotes to pad out what has proved to be one of the stodgiest puff pieces I've seen on Hitchy in ages.
Before we even get into the body copy, the sub-head has already given the game away, declaring; "Christopher Hitchens, 'right wing Leftie' and raconteur, hates God and bores. But most of all, he hates losing an argument..." Yes, we all know he's an incorrigible bag of contradictions, that he gets away with telling the most frightful anecdotes without being interrupted except by the occasional sommelier, that he is filled with self-loathing that he vents by raging against the Creator, that he could and does bore for England, and that doesn't so much lose arguments as get hopelessly and irretrievably lost in them.
But between acting as flatterer and flunky to the old tossbag, Nigel does manage to cram in some useful observations on the state of the Hitch, to wit to woo;
As he’s checking in, he rather deftly dispatches me to the bar, a suggestion rather than an order, one made almost under his breath, as if he is talking to the concierge: ‘I imagine there’s time for a Johnnie Walker Black Label, no ice, Perrier on the side.’ We sit outside so as he can light up a Rothmans and, for the next 45 minutes or so, unless you hear otherwise, you must assume he is always lighting one up (that’s a line from a Martin Amis novel, by the way).....
He draws on his cigarette. ‘I don’t have any terrific self-esteem issues but I do sometimes realise I’ve been too lucky and that I’m over praised. It makes me nervous. I have this sense of being overrated.’ A sip of Scotch. ‘Another insecurity is that I never like to lose an argument, even a domestic one. Even when it might not matter.’
All this and it"s barely midday and with lunch with Richard Dawkins to look forward to. Whatever happened to the new improved Healthy Hitch we saw on the pages of Vanity Fair not too long ago.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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