It's another Oscar contender...


I particularly like the way she can't wait to get out of there. She's got America's foremost memoirist, Augusten Burroughs, trying to strike up a conversation, and she's already got her hand out ready to grab the book and leg it. He'd barely finished a sentence and she was halfway out the door.

I also have to apologise for the terrible faux pas from the wardrobe department, which resulted in Lisa wearing the same top she had on the last time she appeared on this blog. But don't worry - the way that baby's growing, it won't fit her much longer.

Anyhoo, Augusten Burroughs' appearance at the Brighton Festival turned out to be very good. What we saw of it anyway. It being a sunny Sunday afternoon, I decided to walk to the Pavilion Theatre. Lisa, on the other hand, caught the bus. So whilst I was on time, she was so late that they wouldn't let us occupy the seats we'd purchased near the front, and instead had to sneak us up the fire escape, through the back door, and into some chairs in the back row.

I must admit, my initial impressions of Augusten weren't good. In fact I took an instant dislike to him. He's one of those Americans who is so confident, so comfortable in front of an audience, and so full of himself that you can't help but hate him. As time went on though, he completely won me over. He may have insisted on reading an excerpt from his own book like it was some great work of Shakespeare, but the tales he told and the things he said were actually very interesting and highly amusing. I ended up genuinely liking the man. In fact, having listened to him say that a dull life should be no bar to writing a memoir, I wish I'd given him the address of this blog.