Is there a Ralph's around here?

Fame

If you google the word "lager", I come up 14th on the list (after "Freedom Organic Lager" and "Lesbian And Gay Employment Rights"). What is fame if not that? Is it possibly this?:

If you google the word "fags", I come up 17th (after godhatesfags.com and biggestfagsever.com).

Fame, I think you will agree.

What a load of cack

...I wrote on here yesterday. All I meant to say was "Oops, I've fucked up another old book". But I somehow turned into Howard Moon.

KILLER OF AGED PAPERBACKS

Rigid and faded, they stand the test of time. For decades they shunt from box to shelf to box to shelf, never read but always hanging onto those sepia pages. Sometimes they are taken out and looked at, but always they are put back again. Until I come along.

I, killer of aged paperbacks.

A fresh kill: a fifty year old Bantam issue of THE LENIENT BEAST by Fredric Brown. The spine tells me its history: if it has ever been read before it was decades ago, and very carefully. I turn the pages, sucking the life out of them. The spine starts weakening. Halfway through and the pages are hanging on for dear life, little adhesive fingers too dry to grip for long.

No one will read them after me. Sad in a way, to reach the end of the line after so long. Should I leave them alone... untouched, unread and intact for another fifty years of shelf life? No, I make them live again. One last hurrah before decomposition. I am not the killer of aged paperbacks, I am their saviour.

What? Books are inanimate objects?

CADS

Have you heard of Crime And Detective Stories? It's a long-running print mag for the true connoisseur of all things crimey and detectivey, with a rather violent nod towards the more "classic" end of the market. Shrugging off that violent nod, like Jonah Lomu taking on England, Bob Cornwell gamely interviews yours truly in the current issue. And he does it with considerable aplomb. Mr Cornwell, of course, is the man responsible for the famous (in my house at least) Fags and Lager review quote:

"300-odd pages of squalor, f-, s- and c- words, extreme violence and drugs, the odd hint of perversity, monstrous sly humour and all with no redeeming social message whatsoever. Whilst through it all strides the probing intelligence of Royston Blake. What more could you possibly want?"