I don't read much new fiction. I think the last contemporary novel I read was 'Trainspotting' and the one before that was probably Tom Wolfe's rather patchy 'Bonfire of the Vanities'. No doubt I've missed out on a lot of good books as a result, but over the years I've developed a distrust of the publishing industry which makes me shy away from fiction written roughly post-1980. A give-away line in a recent magazine interview with a moderately talented Scottish tv comedienne reminded me of why I feel like this. The line was: 'she has been asked to write a novel'. Yes, that's how it works these days. People have seen you on the box, so they're bound to want to read your novel, aren't they? Oh well, I suppose like the rest of us she's got a novel buried in there somewhere, but if she's too busy to excavate it I'm sure the publishers will be able to ghost-write something suitable to which she can append her D List Celebrity moniker. After all, as Marcel Duchamp proved when he signed the Empire State Building, it's the signature that counts.