Stephen Fry

And you look out of your window and you crane round and there are nearer buildings in the way.

So you can't quite see it.

But there's a phenomenon in New York traffic, which is wonderful when it goes right.

And that is the synchronization of the traffic lights.

So if all the greens go at the right time, all the way down to Herald Square or whatever it is where you're going down to, you can look out through the back window across the parcel shelf and you see traffic.

the Empire State Building launching up and up and up as the buildings that are nearer fall down to their right size.

And so it's like a Saturn V rocket launching and launching and launching.

And the further away you get, the higher and higher and higher it is until it's just dominating the entire cityscape.

And it was like that in 1900.

Wilde was nothing.

He was destroyed.

His reputation had gone completely.

But as each decade passed, the pygmies that were closer had suddenly fell away.

And he became more and more of a symbol of all that's right and good in art and life and friendship and all the issues that, you know, you turn to him for.

Here's a thought.

Again, pondering on what Wilde, as he lay dying in Paris, may or may not have thought that posterity would do for him or say about him.

His body lies in Père Lachaise, the famous cemetery in Paris, and there's the sarcophagus by Jakob Epstein, and it's really...

Wonderful.

But a few years ago, you may recall, the Irish government and the French department responsible for the upkeep of Perlechers raised a sum of money to restore that monument.

And the reason it needed restoring was that the surface of the marble had become corroded by the number of kisses.