Gyles Brandreth

Is this the same sort of time?

And Interview was the magazine run by, owned by... Yes, I don't think... It was called Andy Warhol's Interview.

And I... If you'd done the algebra, you wouldn't have made that mistake.

Your friend Debbie would not have made that mistake.

Our conversation is about your early years, so we don't really get into the triumph of your first books, which are bestsellers, but I'm intrigued.

You wanted to be a writer, and then you stopped publishing.

because of writer's block that has continued.

Just unpack a little of that.

But you brood about it still or not?

Or you've just accepted, I don't write anymore, so there we are.

No.

I talk instead.

Because you love books.

One of the reasons that you're here today is because I very much wanted to meet you, because I've admired you for a long time, because of your ability to talk.

When I first came to America in the 1960s, on late night television, I discovered James Baldwin as a person who talked.

I realised after I'd seen him talk that I already owned one, if not two, of his books, but I hadn't really read them.

I had never been so captivated by a human being talking as by James Baldwin.

And years later when I discovered you, I thought, hmm, there's an echo of that.

You are...

We are similar ages.