“I see there was a short piece in the Guardian Review yesterday about authors making appearances in their own work, how it is usually done out of vanity but can, as in the cases of John Fowles or Martin Amis or Paul Auster or, recently, Michel Houllebecq, be a vehicle for self-criticism or bleak self-awareness, though the general view is that it is almost always a terrible idea,” said Frank Key, a vision of magnificence with his tremendous bouffant and glorious cravat, his noble pulsating brain throbbing with fantastic vibrations.

“For god’s sake stop wittering and put a sock in it,” said Pansy Cradledew.

It was a summer’s day in the twenty-first century, on another planet.