Clarkson said he felt "a bit hurt really".Jeremy Clarkson should have known better: you can't trust anybody these days; they all have a book in them. Quite who would buy a ghost-written autobiography of someone who is only famous for his anonymity is anyone's guess. But then, Tony Blair's Journey, mysteriously named after a naff seventies band, has become something like the best-selling book in the history of the universe, so there is no accounting for taste.
"It was such a shock. It was horrible actually because I liked him and he came round to my house and had drinks and all that time he was writing a book," he said.
Graham Beattie has some extacts which show that Blair would have benefitted from a ghost writer:
"the blunt and inescapable truth is that though Saddam definitely had WMD, since he used them, we never found them. The intelligence turned out to be wrong ... We admitted it. We apologised for it. We explained it, even. "The mistake is serious; but it is an error. Humans make errors. And, given Saddam's history, it was an understandable error. "So the aftermath was more bloody, more awful, more terrifying that anyone could have imagined. The perils we anticipated did not materialise. The peril we didn't materialised with a ferocity and evil that even now shocks the senses."Now read on... or, move Blair's book to the crime section.
We can at least be grateful to Mr Clarkson for revealing to us the wonder that is Witney TV; and for giving me another excuse to post this promo, in the hope that one day all bookshops will be like this one:
8 comments:
I used to work in a bookshop on Saturday mornings but sadly I never had female customers who looked like that. I just got Paul Holmes, who would stand at the other side of the shop and shout comments about the books at me while I was serving customers.
On the plus side, I never had wimpy English musicians mooning about.
Wimpy Scottish musicians, Stephen. Much as I like Belle and Sebastian, I am just here for the gamine.
I worked in a bookshop on Sundays. Unfortunately, it was a technical bookshop and I was on the automotive desk, so I hardly met female customers at all.
Oh yes of course they were Scottish. I did know that, now that you remind me. I was just trying to avoid saying "British". I did like the way that people in Wales bristled at that word - they said that only the English used it.
The bookshop reminds me very much of Smiths in Manchester St, Chch, where someone _might_ notice if you went to sleep on a couch of books, or they might not; where all manner of surprising and wonderful titles could be found. I have no idea if it's still standing.
Yes, absolutely: Smiths is a wonderful place. I do hope it survived.
I visited Smiths in July, and was astonished to find they were in the process of moving (to a single-story shop a block further down Manchester St). This was disconcerting as I've been going there when I get the opportunity for 30 years and it's always looked exactly the same (in fact, I expect some of the books were in stock the whole of those 30 years). There was an old geezer at the front counter helping them out by handing customers a large paper shopping bag and telling them to come back to the counter with $10 when they'd filled it. I didn't have any trouble filling it and only the requirement of getting the purchases into an Air NZ ATR 50 prevented me filling up a few more shopping bags.
Presumably the new premises, being a lot smaller, will impose a requirement for more restrictive stock control than previously - which is probably a much superior business model but is also slightly disappointing on a personal level. I too hope it's come through unscathed.
Yes Smith's Bookshop is alive and well having survived the earthquake. We are open for business as usual at 117 Manchester St. ironically we had to move out of the original building because the Council wanted to earthquake strengthen it!
Gail
Yay! Long may you prosper
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