The Psychological Diary 2005

Rating:
Summary: The Emperor is naked!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I seem to have been vaguely aware of the Will Self Concept for what feels like years and years. Together with his growing literary success, Mr Self has created a product-character that's managed to inveigle itself into popular exposition by the use of invitations on TV programmes that require 'celebrity' status such as `Question Time' and `Have I Got News For You" and the insignificant rest.

Over the same period he's managed to do a skillful combination of the `Tracy Elman' on the intellectually pretentious level and the Tara Palmer-Tomkinson on the `where the hell did SHE come from' level; albeit on the storefront of Waterstones and the Review sections of the Sunday press. Unquestioned intellectual adulation follows in his wake and his Imperial dress doesn't let him down.....very often. Perhaps that's his sartorial secret.

Tonight the Will Self Concept got the better of me. I've just finished watching `Have I Got News For You' with Neil Kinnock in the chair and the Will Self Concept preening itself on its opportunistic perch. There was the usual, cynical, unintelligible sneer; the contorted lip spouting polysyllabic, pretentious anachronisms; the obscure literary reference and the pseudo-Left innuendo that rattled a tetch too noisily when directed at the last genuinely socialist leader of a British political party.

And yet the charlatan lives?

Has any honest man ever managed to journey beyond the first chapter of any of Mr. Self's literary creations without needing to come up for some real air? How many have been attracted into the Self parlour on the promise of cynical revelation or insight; without realising their folly before the deal is done, their cash deposited and their bookshelf sullied with yet another quarter-thumbed paperback?

I think we should be told.