The picture of Pebblehead’s typewriter posted yesterday prompted a bulging postbag, with numerous readers clamouring for further particulars of the bestselling paperbackist’s working practices. Among the commoner questions were: How does Pebblehead manage to bash out so many potboilers? How many typewriters does he get through in an average week? Is he capable of writing a word without having that pipe, crammed with acrid Serbian tobacco, clamped between his teeth? Does he employ a team of monkey typists?

I was about to write, “Alas, we may never know…”, when all of a sudden, a moment ago, Alan the postal crow flew in through the crow-vent with a press release clutched in his beak. I gave him some millet, and he relinquished the paper, upon which the following was printed, by the looks of it on a wonky Gestetner machine:

Raymond Roussel told us How I Wrote Certain Of My Books in 1932. Now, Pebblehead promises to tell us How I Wrote Certain Of My Potboilers. This will undoubtedly be the publishing sensation of 2013, or 2014, or whenever Pebblehead manages to deliver the manuscript, in between bashing out hundreds more potboilers and destroying quite a few typewriters in the process, while monkeys cavort around him in his chalet o’ prose.

Sucking on his pipe, its bowl stuffed with acrid Serbian tobacco, the bestselling paperbackist said: “Begone, Krishnan Guru-Murthy! I have no idea what you and your camera crew from Channel 4 News think you’re doing, camped out in front of my chalet o’ prose. You are interrupting the creative process of the most tireless potboilerist in the world, and if you do not leave immediately I shall have you set upon by Alpine zombies in tattered Nazi uniforms brandishing ray guns from outer space!”

If and when How I Wrote Certain Of My Potboilers is ever actually published, review copies will be sent out via Alan the postal crow. Make sure your crow-vent is clear and free from sordid and unseemly detritus, bones of voles, etcetera.