Will Self's Blog, page 20

Real meals: Me and my (subversive) spoon

Yup, you read me right: one of the “names” the Kellogg’s website actually suggested that punters might like to personalise their free cutlery with was . . . Butt Munch.

There was, for a while, a certain amount of tension; then it faded, as tension does. We’re all experimental animals, really, subject to vivisection by means of a scientific method we ourselves promulgate. The electric plate is charged, we yelp and try to struggle over the wall – but once we realise our struggles are futile we...

Stacey Solomon: ‘what a lovely young woman’

When the first British series of Big Brother aired in the early 2000s, the commentariat fell over each other’s Hush Puppies to condemn this storming of the cultural gatekeepers by Essex girls and Scouser boys intent on fame at any cost. As the Observer’s TV critic at the time, I was among these Cassandras, all of us reaching into our grab-bag of quotations to pull out the same, shopworn one by Warhol: “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” We decried the way Peter Bazal...

Real meals: Red Ochre Grill

The atmosphere in the Red Ochre Grill is distinctly chilly – not exactly what you would expect in the middle of a desert. There was an early-bird discount of 20 per cent for guests of the attached hotel, if you booked before 6pm for a table before 7pm; but we screwed up by 15 minutes and the maître d’ was emphatic: we’d have to pay full whack. Now I’ve been sitting over the remains of my kangaroo and macadamia salad for a full half-hour, waiting to pay the inflated bill, and my temperature ha...

‘Corbyn could last a matter of weeks’

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_EBwWQ4GOM

Will Self discusses Jeremy Corbyn with Matthew Parris on Channel 4 News.

Newsnight discussion

You can watch Will Self on Newsnight discussing the Queen, at about 24 minutes in, here.

PM interview

Will Self talks to PM’s Mark Colvin to discuss the state of serious publishing.

Tea with Oliver Sacks

Read Will Self’s tribute to the late Oliver Sacks in the Guardian here. You can also read Will’s recent review of Sacks’s autobiography, On the Move: A Life here.

Croydon – strange, poetic and beautiful

Will Self on Croydon and the suburbs, promoting the Doughnut festival on Saturday in Greenwich.

Radio National interview

Listen to Will Self in conversation with Michael Cathcart during the Melbourne writers festival here, taking in Shark, the future of the novel and much else besides.

‘Frankly, Australian cities don’t interest me’

An interview with Will Self in the Sydney Morning Herald can be found here.