Books & Poetry

Evangeline Lilly or Famke Janssen?

This is the dilemma that worries me most of all, because despite thinking about it a lot, I still can’t decide. If I’m ever at a party and they’re both there and they both ask me for a drink but I go to the punch bowl and there’s only enough punch left to fill one glass, I honestly don’t know whom I’d give it to. The trouble is, they both have their good points. Famke is lovely and freakishly tall, good for seeing over crowds or high walls. Evangeline is also lovely and would be able to give me spoilers for ‘Lost’. Some people try to tell me that the situation isn’t likely to come up and I should stop going on about it, but I think it’s best to be prepared. Feature continues

Pirates or cowboys?
The trouble is that when I wrote my first pirate book it was back in the day before pirates were all that popular. Obviously nowadays, thanks to Johnny Depp and that, pirates are plastered over everything, the current worst offender being M&S, who have started doing ‘pirate treasure’ chocolate rolls, which seem to be just their regular chocolate rolls with bits of honeycomb stuck on them. Because – I don’t know – pirates are famously into bees, or something? It’s very half-arsed. So if I was starting again, and to avoid looking like I was jumping on the pirate bandwagon, I might do ‘The Cowboys! In An Adventure With Scientists’ instead. If you prefer cowboys to pirates it’s a very simple job to change the books into cowboy adventures.

Richard Dawkins or the Baby Jesus?

Difficult. The Baby Jesus can probably fly and shoot lasers from his face because he’s magic, which would be useful in a scrape. But Richard Dawkins is married to a former ‘Doctor Who’ assistant, which is also pretty good. I can see why people get into such a lather over this one.

Getting on with some actual work or playing a bit more ‘Animal Crossing’?

I’m very jealous of those writers who bang on about how they’re driven to write from the moment they wake up or otherwise they’d DIE, except for the fact that they’re obviously liars who are just trying to make writing sound a bit mystical. Doing some work has good parts, like letting you afford shoddily pirate-themed chocolate rolls, but it’s no substitute for ‘Animal Crossing’, where you can spend all day catching butterflies and smacking creatures with a spade.

Deal or No Deal?

When I’m not wasting my time playing ‘Animal Crossing’ I’m probably wasting it watching ‘Deal or No Deal’. My favourite bit is when someone who has just spent ten minutes going on about their ability to pick up psychic vibrations promptly eliminates the £250,000 on their first go. Though Noel’s recent attempts to jazz up the second series with the introduction of a ‘magic hat’ suggests it might be past its best.

Having major emergency belly surgery or dropping dead?

This was the question I was asked by a doctor about two months ago. Frankly it’s one of the most rubbish either/or questions that you can be faced with, certainly nowhere near as good as the Evangeline Lilly/Famke Janssen conundrum. I went for the exciting ‘major emergency belly surgery’ option. The upside is that at the moment I can gross people out with the fact that a bit of my intestine is sticking out of a hole in my belly. And the simple addition of some googly eyes makes it look a bit like a sassy worm. (Sorry if that’s put you off your tea.)

Gideon Defoe’s ‘The Pirates! In An Adventure With Communists’ is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at £7.99.