The man from the Jewish Chronicle confessed he normally did obituaries. Speaking professionally, this is a bad move in the middle of an author interview. The interviewee is likely to feel either that the interviewer knows something about his health that he doesn’t or that the JC does not take him seriously enough to send a regular interviewer. But I was cool, I did not take offence; I simply looked at my watch. He, sadly, failed to spot this. And, I later reflected, my book was about the possibility of immortality, so an obit writer made some kind of sense.

Publicising a book is a strange business. Despair and humiliation walk hand in hand with crazy elation. The D & H are most commonly inspired by television. I once appeared on a morning show with Fern Britten and Philip Schofield and was so horrified at the madness and cruelty of