Book learning #81. Brief encounters by Gyles Brandreth.

I'm almost, slightly embarrassed to add this to the strange and varied list of books in this blog.
First of all, there's Brandreth himself. Mad jumpered nutter from telly in the 1980s, failed Tory MP from the 1990s and resident bon hommeur of the Sunday supplements, not even the Sunday supplements that I occasionally read.

Then there is the sort of cobbled together clump of the Sunday supplement essays and interviews that this book consists of. I think I'll go back and publish all my semi decent blog entries from the last eight years, shove on the bookshelf in a regional airport and see how it does. Can't be any worse off? Surely?

But finally, there is the fact that whilst I literally shat my way through this book (nothing says 'good loo read' like a hundred odd, shortish interviews and anecdotes with the great, the almost great and the completely unheard of), I did actually quite enjoy it. Brandreth, although a Tory, would probably be able to talk his way past me into a re education centre rather than the firing squad. He seems to be a pretty decent chap and he write reasonably well. The subjects were, by and large, interesting and open to his probing. There were also one or two moments of classic hilarity. The trip to Copenhagen in 1971 was an outstanding piece of comic writing.

I do rather hope that I will read something weighty very soon to shove this book off my blog front page.
File under 'guilty pleasure'