The randy rascal himself

Now, naturally, being such sophisticated blog-readers, I'm sure you don't fritter away your time reading the Red-tops - least of all some obstreperous, bolshy paper like my old tabloid, The Sun.

However, it is rather uplifting to see that - just occasionally - I can call in the odd favour.

Little item in today's Soaraway. Topping their "Whip" column.

And you never know ... it might, just possibly, lead to something:

"Former Eton boy William Coles has written a novel about a torrid affair between a 17-year-old pupil and his 23-year-old female piano teacher at his old school.

"The former Sun Royal reporter says the incident is based on a "true story" - though he wasn't the randy rascal himself. [Randy rascal indeed! Are they stuck in the 1950s?]

"However, one classmate was Tory MP "Bonking Boris" Johnson and Princess Di's brother Earl Spencer - not noted as a puritan - was in the same year.

"Others looking for clues in the book, The Well-Tempered Clavier, will doubtless be Tory leader Dave Cameron, who was two years below the author.

"Now who in this titivating trio can tinkle the ivories?"

My bittersweet publisher

A few weeks back, Tom the publisher asked me what my favourite word was. I replied something like, "Sumptuous" - and then, naturally, asked him the same question.

"I don't know why," he said. "But I just love the word, "bitter-sweet"."

It's an all right word, I suppose. Definitely a bit cheesey, a bit flowery.

Though most definitely not a word I have ever used. EVER.

I shrugged my shoulders and thought no more of it.

Until last night.

Last night, I was just deciding which reading to give at the Havering book fest, and I was going through The Well-Tempered Clavier in detail for the first time - and there it was: "Bittersweet memories".

Weird. I couldn't remember writing that.

I studied the text more carefully - and there it was again. And again. Bitter-sweet love. Bitter-sweet relationship.

It gradually dawned on my that somebody had been monkeying with the final draft.

I could feel my gorge beginning to rise.

Finally, finally, I got to the end of the book - and breathed a sigh of relief that at least Tom the publisher had had the decency not to tinker with the last page.

And then I turned the book over and read the back-page blurb.

Its final paragraph?

"Twenty-five years on, Kim recalls that heady summer and how their fledgling relationship was so brutally snuffed out - finished off by his enemies, by the constraints of Eton, and by his own withering jealousy. The Well-Tempered Clavier is the bittersweet story of a life-changing love."

GAAAAAAAAH!

Havering on

I am positively incapable of doing anything until the very last minute.

And so it is that although I have had more than a month to prepare for my first book talk at Havering, I have done precisely nothing about it.

So, with just the correct degree of buttock-clenching tension, I set to work this afternoon. Drafted out a few notes. Decided on the bits of the book that do justice to the true beauty of The Well-Tempered Clavier.

And then Maguire calls.

"What are you doing?" he asks. "Where the hell are you anyway?"

"I'm in a pub," I said. "I'm giving a talk in Havering library tomorrow."

"Havering?" he says. "HAVERING? You're giving your first book talk in Havering? How very appropriate!"

"Why the hell's it appropriate to be talking in Havering? Where is Havering anyway?"

"Well, Mr Coles," he said. "Havering, as any true Scot could tell you, means to blather on witlessly and endlessly and to no purpose."

"Really?"

"Yes! To haver - to just keep blethering on about absolute crap."

"Wow!" I said. "That IS appropriate!"

Almond-skinned beauties

A number of have friends have inquired why I chose to illustrate my last posting about Maguire with a picture of a rather wizened grey monkey.

I can assure you, however, that it was NOT a monkey. This is genuinely what Maguire looks like.

But a very understandable mistake to make, nonetheless. No apology required.

This picture though is of a much more handsome chap altogether - Jamie, from Terinea, who is doing up my website. He is the techno-guy.

Doing a great job of it. You'll just love the new-look blog, I know you will. And he's even dug up a number of tasty pictures to daub around the periphery of the blog. You know the sort of thing - stuff that might be pertinent to The Well-Tempered Clavier book like pictures of Bach, sheet-music, et cetera ...

"And I've got a picture of a really gorgeous Asian girl!" trilled Jamie. "Lovely almond-skin. Just gorgeous. She'll be perfect!"

"Ahh," I said, temporizing a little. "Interesting. Tell me, Jamie, why do we want a picture of a gorgeous Asian girl on this web site?"

"Well I thought this guy, the hero of the book, was having a fling with an Indian bird ..."

"What?" I said. "What! Have you gone totally insane? She is not some Indian bird, no! Her name happens to be INDIA."

He was like a dog with a bone on this one. "So she doesn't have almond-skin?"

"No, No, and for the last time NO!" I said. "Her name is India, but she is totally caucasian. Do you think that everyone called Paris wears a beret and onions round their neck?"

Well, honestly ...

The half-wit ...

You know how in your life, you're sometimes lucky enough to meet one of the good guys; one of the troupers - one of the guys, who, when the going gets tough, you just really know that they're going to be hanging in there for you.

Well I guess I might have a few mates like that.

Maguire though ...

Maguire is of a different category order altogether.

Maguire is 52, bald and ageless, and in 30 years time will look just exactly as he looks now - especially if he's dead.

Maguire has been an outstanding cheer-leader in The Well-Tempered Clavier project. Came up with the stunt for the video; ordered me to delete this initial blog in its entirety because it was "a complete and utter pile of shit"; and is also my chief running-mate.

So, as you may be able to understand, with a pal like that, I was pretty keen to give him one of the first copies of the book - which I did this morning. Wrote him a nice little note too.

He took it. And then what he did next was so touching, so poignant, that I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Because, more than anything, it showed just how much Maguire had got into the very spirit of the book ...

"Thanks very much, Bill," he said, riffling through the pages.

A minute later, he read me out loud the whole of the very last sentence of the book.

WHAT AN EFFING HALF-WIT!

Such are the friends that I am blessed to have.

Gutted in the extreme

Bizarre news from one of my deranged relatives.

He took great delight in telling me all about it too ...

Amongst many other things, I've been endeavouring to turn The Well-Tempered Clavier into a bestseller before it's even hit the book-shelves.

Now wouldn't that be tasty? Already move onto the second print run before the book's come out.

So naturally, along with sending out the Clavier promo video to my mates, I've been sending out the Amazon link, just so you can get your order in nice and early.

However ...

When you click onto the Amazon page, you see that down the bottom there is a little posting saying, "Other books looked at ..." These books, presumably, might be a little similar to my own.

Well ... the weird thing is that the book that everyone is taking a peek at after mine is by my ex-wife Anna Pasternak ...

I'm sure she would be gutted in the extreme to learn that the Clavier book is currently being bracketed in the same class as Daisy Dooley Does Divorce ...

You are invited!

Now it may just be down to this wretched on-off postal strike.

But I think that, much more likely, it's actually down on to my own natural indolence.

I have a slight problem, you see, with the invites for the Clavier launch.

Which is two weeks away.

And I still haven't got round to posting the invites. Haven't even got hold of the hard copies yet! EEEEEEKKKK!

So, just in case you might be interested in drinking cheap wine and buying a copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier, here are the details.

We've got an Edinburgh launch at Valvona and Crolla on Elm Row on Friday October 26, 6.30pm ...

And for those of you in Scotland who just can't get enough of all this headache-inducing alcohol, there will also be a launch at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, Tuesday October 30, 6.30pm. Consider yourself invited!