Like Harry Hutton, I am obsessed with Christopher Hitchens. We just approach him from different sides, as it were - I love the Hitch with an uncritical adoration which borders on the teenage crush. Oh dear. What a shameful thing to do to one of our top public intellectuals, turn him into some kind of adolescent fantasy object. Still, better than fancying Peter Hitchens, I suppose.

Anyway, I fulfilled one of my few remaining ambitions (not that I have fulfilled lots of my ambitions; I just have very few) on Saturday by talking to the Hitch. OK, so there were hundreds of other people there, but still, he was looking at me with those piercing blue eyes, saying things like 'a priori' and quoting Homer. Hot. Oh, and he's shaved off that horrible Trevor Eve beard and was looking, er, sleeker than he has recently.

It was the Intelligence Squared London Paris Festival, and he was there to talk about Thomas Paine (totally coincidentally, he has a book out on Thomas Paine), and his contribution to the American and French revolutions. Dammit, I thought, I must ask a question. Even if it's lame. Question. Question!

Eventually I came up with some fluff about why was Paine underappreciated in Britain, and raised my arm. But some American got about and started yakking about the Norman Yoke. Eventually, the Hitch discarded the yoke. This was it! My moment!

No! Some other American started asking a question. "If you don't mind," cut in the Hitch, "I think we should hear from a female questioner next." The Hitch had noticed I was female! Joy!

Later, I saw him smoking outside the refreshments tent. Boyfriend suggested I picked up his discarded cigarette butt and put it on eBay. I laughed, but also genuinely considered keeping it for myself.


From the recent New Yorker profile of the Hitch:

"Hitchens claims to be unperturbed by his critics... 'People say, "What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.'"

"Hitchens told me, 'When I was younger— this will surprise you, seeing now the bloated carcass of the Hitch— I used to get quite a bit of attention from men. And, um. It was sometimes quite difficult, especially when you hadn't seen it coming. I was considered reasonably pretty, I suppose, between seventeen and twenty-five. I remember noticing when it stopped, and thinking, Oh dear. What? None of these guys want to sleep with me anymore?'"

"Hitchens has the life that a spirited thirteen-year-old boy might hope adulthood to be: he wakes up when he likes, works from home, is married to someone who wears leopard-skin high heels, and conducts heady, serious discussions late into the night."