www.musicrobot You can get chords and lyrics of thousands of songs It’s such a great way of spreading people’s song.. Off to meet Auberon Waugh, son of the great novelist Evelyn and, it is said, the rudest journalist ever, what with going on about, for example, the horrible working classes and their “ghastly snacks” and a lot of other things I might agree with if I weren’t so hopelessly fond of Panda Cola and Dairylea Lunchables and all kinds of fruit, but only if tinned, and topped with tons of the lovely squirty cream that comes – whoosh! – out of aerosols We might not be made for each other, Auberon and I. I don’t know why he hates the working classes so, and don’t think he even knows “I just much prefer the bourgeois intelligentsia,” he says. Come on, you can be more specific than that, surely? “Well…

their ideas are hackneyed and they’re constantly sucking up to stupidity.” I am glad, I must say, that my What’s On TV is stuffed well down in my bag. Off to meet Auberon Waugh, son of the great novelist Evelyn and, it is said, the rudest journalist ever, what with going on about, for example, the horrible working classes and their “ghastly snacks” and a lot of other things I might agree with if I weren’t so hopelessly fond of Panda Cola and Dairylea Lunchables and all kinds of fruit, but only if tinned, and topped with tons of the lovely squirty cream that comes – whoosh! – out of aerosols We might not be made for each other, Auberon and I. I don’t know why he hates the working classes so, and don’t think he even knows “I just much prefer the bourgeois intelligentsia,” he says. Come on, you can be more specific than that, surely? “Well…

their ideas are hackneyed and they’re constantly sucking up to stupidity.” I am glad, I must say, that my What’s On TV is stuffed well down in my bag.
Anyway, we meet, initially, at the Soho premises of The Literary Review, where he is editor-in-chief and which, this Wednesday, hosts the famous, annual Bad Sex Award, given to the year’s novel with the “worst, most embarrassing or most redundant description of the sexual act”, and which includes nominees such as Wendy Perriam: “He suddenly clamped his mouth to hers. She could taste grapes, red wine, pungent Gorgonzola…”But not, alas, Dairylea Lunchables or squirty cream, which always makes it almost worth it to my mind. I wonder, though, who Auberon would give a Best Sex Award to? “I was much moved by [Alberto Moravia's] Woman of Rome when I was young, but I’ve since re-read it and it’s absolute drivel, really bad.”I’d heard that Bron had, initially, refused to see me because I’d once been rude about him, which would be pretty rich, even if I had, but I haven’t “I’m sorry,” he says. “I got you confused with somebody else.”"You’re the only person I’ve never been rude about,” I protest. “Well, now’s your chance,” he says.True, although I’m not sure I’ll take him up on it We shake hands His fingers feel horribly thin and brittle beneath mine.

I am frightened to squeeze, in case I break them – snap, crunch.I don’t know. What did I expect? Well, someone rather more substantial, I suppose But? He looks shockingly frail Gaunt, too, and fiercely pale “I’m not feeling well,” he volunteers. “If I say something very silly, you will ignore it, won’t you?” We go next door to The Academy Club for a coffee Here, Bron says: “I’m getting old I passed out in this very room recently. You will think it was drink, but it was not.”"Gosh, when did it happen exactly?” I ask.”Um… two weeks ago…”"It was two months ago, Bron,” says Nancy Sladek, The Literary Review’s editor, who I think has come along to counteract his spectacular forgetfulness.”Yes, two months ago,” he says.”What caused it?”"No one knows The heart, probably I don’t think I’ll survive long.

I can feel I’m on my way out.”"Bleeding hell,” I gasp, “hang on for the next hour at least, or I’m well stuffed for this Monday’s interview.”We all laugh, although I’m not sure it’s that funny It’s more a kind of nervous tittering. He says: “Have you got enough now? Can I go?” Bron, we’ve only just sat down! “Oh,” he sighs, unhappily.I ask him what most feels as if it is giving up – the mind or the body? He says: “I’ve lost my power of concentration It’s now as much in the head as in the body The body has never been up to much.” This is true. Indeed, while doing his National Service in Cyprus in the late Fifties, he mistakenly tried to unblock a jammed machine-gun. He received six bullets at point-blank range into his chest and was not expected to survive.