A Robust View

Brown on Mills

Ace parodist and pasticheur Craig Brown is one of the wittiest writers around and I turn first to him in the Daily Telegraph.

His latest razor-job - on the gruesome Heather Mills - is one of the funniest and shrewdest pieces I've come across.

Brown talks about our celebrity culture being,

"much derided, but sometimes it offers us a fast-moving story with all the elements of an epic novel, each new episode unfolding on a daily basis. These stories are additionally fabulous because they are unfettered by the novelist's obligation to be credible.

Often, they reach a climax in the court-room or the coroner's court, with all the additional drama that brings. The Fayed Story is one such, and so was the tale of Robert Maxwell; others have included the Stonehouse, Lucan and Thorpe affairs, and the trials of OJ Simpson, Conrad Black and Jeffrey Archer.

They would be too outlandish for any novelist to contemplate, their protagonists too mad, bad or sad to seem remotely lifelike, their coincidences too bold, their low-lifers too seedy, their grandees too grand, their dialogue too obviously crackpot or comical."

Click the link and read the whole thing.

"Unfettered by the novelist's obligation to be credible", to be sure!

Superb stuff by a master.