"I had a little dig at Hemingway and got some wonderful letters back from his fans in fantastic macho prose. On the other hand, I wrote a piece saying that I wasn't convinced of the genius of Dorothy Parker. This in The New Yorker, mind you. Not a sausage. When I went to Hollywood for an Oscars soir?e I was the only hack, so I presumed it was going to be like The Wicker Man, that I'd be taken out into the garden and set on fire. Of course, the actors were all exquisitely polite. And most of them came up to my navel, so you end up putting your drink on their heads. I felt like Gulliver. They're very charming, the implication being, 'Please don't presume that what you said matters to us'.

'I tend to send my copy in on deadline, which by New Yorker standards is tacky. It has to go through three or four proofs. The fact-checkers proof; the grammarians proof. And it is amazing. Someone does go to see the film, to make sure I'm not lying. If I'm reviewing a Tim Burton film and I say that Ewan McGregor's wearing a bright blue shirt, they'll say to me, 'It's more like bright turquoise'. But you should get it right, especially if you're going to have some fun with it. Otherwise it's cheating. The New Yorker is the only place in the world where you can pull a piece to change a comma to a semi-colon. It's a haven for the pedant. I love it."