Where Are The Bafta Babes?

Watched the whole of the Baftas last night. I find awards ceremonies more mesmerising than I should. I love playing Fug or Fab with the dresses, being surprised by which of the award presenters were terrified (Matthew McFadyen) and unsurprised by which were drunk / stoned / insane (Sharon Stone), I love guessing who will win (it was obvious Slumdog Millionaire would go home with everything) and getting irate when the deserving are robbed (Kristin Scott Thomas! Kristin Scott Thomas!) and there is always an excellent speech or two (Mickey Rourke). This year's bonus ball was a sprightly Mick Jagger presenting best film and making a very witty speech beforehand too.

Here's my gripe though (there had to be one): where were the women? I mean, it was a slightly less all-white affair this year, thanks to the Indian crew of Slumdog Millionaire, plus Noel Clarke and Steve McQueen picking up gongs, but aside from the actress categories, the only female winners were Jean Black and Colleen Callaghan for make-up and hair on Benjamin Button, plus one female producer (Esther May Campbell) on the two-person team who won the award for best short film. This means they were almost outnumbered by the two studios who won an award. Surely inanimate objects should not be competing for prize numbers with female humans? And checking the list of nominees there were very few women there either.

Now I know it's boring to be feminist feminist bang on drum, and we supposedly live in a post-feminist era where all opportunities are equal etc etc, but don't tell me that this is because women are not interested in film-making. (I'm assuming nobody here will go down the women are not good enough route.) I will accept a tiny nod towards film-making involving anti-social hours that are hard if you have young kids. Though they seem to get actresses enough. Not to mention hair and make-up. (Maybe that's the real question here: why don't more men go into hair and make-up? Oh, my mistake, almost all the other nominees for that category were men as well.) It's incredibly depressing that almost ten years into the 21st century film is still a man's game, and largely a white man's game at that.

I may mention all this a few years hence when I'm picking up my Best Screenplay Bafta for mumble mumble haven't started it yet. Watch out male-dominated film world! Here I come! Also, I am shit at hair and make-up.

Revolutionary Road

Fans of excellent gushy awards acceptance speeches - which I am, in a kind of I hate it I love it I can't watch yes I can oh god please stop, PLEASE STOP, please don't stop sort of way - can't do much better than watching this sterling effort from Kate Winslet last night:



(Did anybody see her when she got the Supporting Actress gong? More contained?)

Fans of excellent books - which I certainly am, in every way - can't do much better than reading Revolutionary Road. I'm on a bit of a mission about this because I'm in a sudden panic that not enough people will have read Revolutionary Road before they see the movie. If you have sat next to me at dinner or indeed anywhere this week, this is what I have been talking about. Advance apologies to future dinner neighbours.

The film, as you'll know if you watch that speech, reunites Ms Winslet and Leo DiCaprio from Titanic and then throws in her husband too for the ultimate in love-ins. Actually I'm sure the film will be good if a tad smug, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. But it will not be, can not be, as good as Revolutionary Road, the novel.

Revolutionary Road, the novel is SO GOOD. I can't do the dispassionate reviewer thing here because I am too anxious that you might not read it. It has to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, or indeed of any time. The book is about a married couple in 1950s suburban America who live on a knife edge between happiness and unhappiness. The smallest shifts in their lives and relationships keep tipping them from one side to the other. Or perhaps it is about a married couple in 1950s suburban America who are hanging over an abyss of unhappiness and all they have to cling onto is that knife edge, only it's cutting more and more deeply into their hands. Yes: I think that might be it.

They key thing is, vis a vis book v movie, is that the magic of the novel isn't so much in what happens, but in the exquisite, wise, meticulous observation of the shifts in the characters' internal lives, and how that shapes and is shaped by the decisions that they make. I'm certain that Leo and Kate will act it beautifully, but there really is no substitute from the level of detail that you can have in a novel - in this novel. So if you see the film you will enjoy it and you will think you have understood the characters, but it will be nothing in comparison to the depth of understanding you can get from the book.

Please read it before you see the film. Please, please. Run, don't walk, to your nearest independent bookshop. Or order it right now. Look, you can get it from play.com and help balance out Amazon's market share of online retailing, ensuring a more competitive marketplace. Whatever. Just get it and read it before you see the film. You will not regret it.

Bad Sex: We Have A Winner!

Finally! The Guardian has published extracts from all this year's shortlisted contenders for the Literary Review Bad Sex Award. Always my favourite award of the year, the chance to revel in some prose that's purple in every respect, often from some of the world's greatest writers (John Updike won a lifetime achievement award this year) which makes us hacks feel so much better. I have to say, though, that the quality over the last few years has been going up, which is to say down, which is to say that the bad sex really does not hit the embarrassment G spot in the way it used to. In fact some of this year's extracts (notably Simon Sebag Montefiore's) barely qualify as "unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant" in the words of the prize's founder, Auberon Waugh. Could it be that the Bad Sex Award has actually worked and made people write sex that is actually good? I do sincerely hope not.

Having said that, Rachel Johnson is arguably a worthy winner for sentences such as Almost screaming after five agonizingly pleasurable minutes, I make a grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside, but he holds both by arms down, and puts his tongue to my core, like a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop. Ugh. Do people really think of cats when having sex? But I do think that Ann Allestree has the right to feel robbed when she made such a sterling effort with 'Open your thighs,' he urged as he parted the folds of her vulva. 'You are so moist down there.' He stroked and probed her with two fingers as she felt her blood waken. He raised himself to his knees and bent to roll his tongue around her weeping orifice. Male readers: do not be fooled into thinking that words such as vulva, moist or (dear god no) "weeping orifice" are going to get many women's blood to waken. And Kathy Lette deserves a shout for He broke free with muscular ease, unhooked my bra with composed expertise, found my nipple and flicked his tongue back and forth until it went hard. His towel fell away. Sebastian's erect member was so big I mistook it for some sort of monument in the centre of a town. I almost started directing traffic around it. He rolled me sideways on to my back and, in one flowing motion, my tracksuit and panties were down, lassoing one ankle. His fingers edged up my thigh and then plunged inside me. All sounds a bit painful to me.

Congratulations to all involved, anyhow. I am weirdly jealous, there is some pretty grim sex in Gods Behaving Badly after all. As it happens, I met the Bed Sex Award organisers at a party a couple of years ago and begged to be on the jury one year, and they said they would consider it, as they backed, white-faced, from the room. Perhaps I will jog their memories. Or flick my tongue back and forth across their memories like a hungry cat...

Quit While You're Ahead?

Alastair Campbell has been nominated for this year's Bax Sex in Fiction award.

Do you think he might resign because there is a serious possibility he could win it?

Author In Rainy City Shock: Pictures

The competition to set the competition appears to be judging itself, but in any case I will give you until Monday to enter, and then I will run the competition itself through next week.

Meanwhile, I have had new author photos taken, by the lovely Alexandra Scannell whose website you can find over here.

Here is a cheerful black and white pose:



And here is me in sultry mode, in full colour:



If you look closely you can just about see evidence of Washington DC's wettest May in 55 years running down the background of the B&W one...

Hope you like them. If, for whatever reason, you want to reuse them (odd thought, but have to remember am proper author now) please credit Alexandra Scannell.

My paperbacks have arrived at last!

They look triffic. So much so that I'd like to give a couple away. I should really run a competition, but I can't think of a good one. So what I'd thought I'd do is run a competition to come up with a good idea for a competition, and then run the competition. The person who comes up with the best competition idea, and person who wins said competition, each get a signed copy with inscription of your choice, or if you'd rather I'll just go freestyle.

All with me? I am a bit confused myself, I said "competition" once too often.

Anyway, off you go then, ideas ahoy!

A Lousy Day

I didn't make the shortlist of the Desmond Elliot Prize, but all congratulations to those who did.

I think I'd be feeling a bit more equable about this if I hadn't locked myself out without money or phone collecting the parking ticket off my car at lunchtime today, and had the spend the whole of the rest of the afternoon sorting it out. Not the best frame of mind for receiving bad news.

Not to mention that the ants have moved in behind the light switch, so only a matter of time before a freak electrical surge turns them into giant evil mega-ants with superpowers (e.g. ability to open the fridge.)

Am hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Elfin Agent of Genius

Looky look! I have been longlisted for the Desmond Elliot prize! Very exciting, it is my first one. I am not at all sure how I ended up on a list with books like The Outcast and Random Acts of Heroic Love, it is making me feel a bit vertiginous. According to the site -

Reflecting the overall high quality of writing on the list, Nikita Lalwani’s novel, Gifted, has already been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Glen Dimplex Fiction Award 2007; The Outcast by Sadie Jones has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction; Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann has been selected for the Richard & Judy 2008 Book Club; and Adam Foulds, author of The Truth About These Strange Times has recently won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2008.

Put it this way: only three books get on the shortlist and I am not picking out my dress for the ceremony just yet. But never mind! If I was going to get nominated for any prize, I'm glad that it was this one. The award is named after the Desmond Elliot who is described on the website as the "elfin agent of genius". From the site biog:

Desmond Elliott was ageless and, when he died, in August 2003, it seemed impossible that he could be 73. “A dapper little elf”, he was five-foot-nothing, always stylishly dressed in Brooks Brothers’ boyswear and with a mischievous twinkle in his faded denim-blue eyes. Waspish, witty, an uncanny mimic and a sometimes outrageous raconteur, he told endless stories against himself but wasn’t above bitching about some of his peers. And he always enjoyed a good feud: “I believe it is really important to have one or two really influential enemies. They tend to talk about one to all the right people.” [...]

As his authors grew rich, so, too, did Desmond, who quickly learned to enjoy his success. He drank only champagne and bought his groceries at Fortnum & Mason, “the local corner shop”, where he had a charge account and treated its St James’s Restaurant like the office canteen. [...] The Connaught and the Ritz were also favoured venues, but “travelling west of Marble Arch gives me a nose bleed”. When he flew to New York, it was always on Concorde and, once there, he exchanged his Mayfair bachelor pad (complete with kitchen trapeze) for a Park Avenue apartment."

It is a point of great pride to be associated with someone who owned a bachelor pad with a kitchen trapeze. I don't care that a kitchen trapeze is probably some kind of sling for hanging your saucepans off, I am imagining a team of performance dwarves doing acrobatics above my head as I burn the toast.

The only disappointment is that as a nominee I don't get to meet the marvelous-sounding but sadly deceased Desmond Elliot - the man who discovered Jilly Cooper, no less - but I am honoured to be listed for his prize. I will of course keep you posted on the shortlist and the eventual winner.

Bananas

I have travelled quite extensively in the USA and one thing I have noticed is that whenever I go to someone's home it always has a very distinctive smell. Sometimes it's not in their apartment, sometimes it's just in the staircase, but I smell it everywhere I go. It's strong and sweet and has a tinge of rot but it's not exactly unpleasant. I have never figured out what caused it - a particular type of cleaning product was my best guess. I just think of it as American House Smell and until yesterday I had never smelt it anywhere else.

Last night I came home from a weekend away and my house smelt of American House Smell. It was very disorienting as my house was just where I had left it ie not in the USA. Eventually I tracked down the source of the smell to the fruitbowl, which contained three very overripe bananas. I can therefore announce that the whole of the United States of America smells of overripe bananas.

I wish I could segue from that into talking about how the Oscar decisions were bananas, but actually they were pretty much exactly the same as the Baftas except for a choice of Best Film, No Country For Old Men, which (a) was much better than Atonement and (b) poo-pooed my theory that NCFOM and There Will Be Blood would split the Important Movie vote. There's no point me repeating the comments I made then. Never mind. I'm off to surf the net for pictures of Diablo Cody's million dollar diamond shoes.

Juno

If you've got a bit of spare cash and you're of the gambling persuasion - which I am not, I hate gambling, it makes me feel stupid - you could do worse than putting a few quid on Juno to win Best Picture at the Oscars. I don't actually think it is the best picture, but There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men are such similar films that they will split the Important Violent Symbolic American Movie vote, and surely Michael Clayton doesn't stand a chance, so the only real opposition to Juno is Atonement. And Juno has the advantage of being gentle and sweet and charming, [and American, of course.] - [Canadian, apparently. Oops. But we know I heart Canada.] - According to my correspondent, American / Canadian / Hungarian. I am exhausted.

Juno is a truly lovely film, the kind of film you come out of with your heart a few degrees warmer. Of course, they had cooled my heart by a few degrees before the movie by showing, first of all, a series of adverts about how to avoid venereal disease (movie about teen pregnancy + 4pm screening = Government health warning opportunity) and then some of the worst trailers I have ever seen in my life. The absolute rock bottom of these was the ad for 27 Dresses which falls into my least favourite "Romantic" "Comedy" (quotation marks for both words as they both fall into question) sub-genre: problematic woman must be cured by a man before she achieves social acceptance in the symbolic form of love. You can spot these films a mile off because they all start with the same premise: Girl is good at X but bad at love. Invariably, it's being too focused on X that is the problem. Bad woman, bad. Focus on Man instead. Much better.

Which is what made Juno so refreshing. Juno, the character, did not need to be cured. She did not need to be saved. She did need to open her eyes a bit and realise that Michael Cera was the perfect boy for her (of which more later), but she did not need to be brought down to do so. Also, she did not have to experience pregnancy as a transformative experience that turned her into a better person. She was a pretty good person to begin with. She was a great person to spend the movie with, and if the film was one of these indie comedies that is mostly about relationships (romantic / friend / family) and not much else, at least it was about the right length and about the right tone and really quite a beautiful way to spend a couple of hours.

And of course it had Michael Cera in it. My love for Michael Cera is pre-documented, and he did nothing to diminish himself in my eyes here at all. Mainly because he was playing exactly the same character in this movie as in Superbad, with added orange tictacs, and therefore my love affair with him (where were the adorable boys like you when I was sixteen?) can continue unblemished. Having said that, seeing as he plays the exact same character in Arrested Development as well, I think it is probably about time Michael Sera broke the mould. Next Michael Sera role to be creepy teenage serial killer please. He would be very good.

Finally, a word about abortion. There is a tedious habit for every film in which an unexpected pregnancy does not lead immediately to an abortion to be labelled reactionary, anti-abortion, and pro-life. I have read such a thing about Juno. No. No, no, no. First of all, the idea that you can't make a film about unwanted pregnancies because all fictional unwanted pregnancies should end in abortion and if they don't that is an evil STATEMENT is moronic. It's fiction. You should be able to explore all options in fiction. Secondly, there is a difference between being pro-choice and being pro-abortion. Pro-choice means that the option of abortion should be available, not that all women should take it. Ergo, being pro-choice means being pro whatever choice the woman makes, or the man and woman make, which includes not having an abortion. Are we clear? So I will not tolerate any Juno-is-anti-abortion guff, not on this blog. Aaaaaaaaall righty?

I'm all wound up now. Quick, must look at a picture of Michael Cera.

I am soothed.

He's only ten years too young for me. Men do it all the time, right? Right?

Baftas 2008

I watched the Baftas last night - not sure why; I always do seem to end up tuning into awards ceremonies, even though they are ridiculously long and empirically uninteresting, especially when they are not the Oscars and so you don't get all the fun of each Best Movie nominee being represented through the medium of dance. I suppose that the combination of very beautiful and famous stars plus several minor moments of suspense is just enough to pull you through it, and I confess to an amount of rubbernecking, as Jonathan Ross died so spectacularly on stage last year I couldn't help but wonder if this year would be a repeat performance; but no, he actually did pretty well - and looked amazingly confident, all things considered; I suppose he is being paid enough to die a hundred times over, and therefore doesn't really care. Or maybe he just knew that his jokes were better this time around.

Anyway here are my thoughts on the winners and losers...

Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton (Cate Blanchett, Kelly Macdonald, Samantha Morton, Saoirse Ronan). This was one of the best ones as if you listed the actresses in order of likelihood to win, Tilda would probably have come bottom. She looked completely flabbergasted, as did the person presenting the award, and as she pointed out, if she'd thought she was going to win, she'd have worn a skirt which would have allowed her to get up the stairs to the stage.

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (Paul Dano, Tommy Lee Jones, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Wilkinson). Probably one of the most closely-fought categories, and of them would have been a worthy winner. But I'm glad it was Javier Bardem, as when he is not sporting *that* haircut, he is painfully sexy, as well as charismatic, cutely-accented, witty, modest, charming etc. Yes: I have a new crush.

Actress: Marion Cotillard (Julie Christie, Keira Knightley, Cate Blanchett, Ellen Page): I haven't actually seen La Vie en Rose, but Marion Cotillard's acceptance speech was so charmingly over-the-top and properly, non-faked emotional that I couldn't have wanted anybody else to take it. And my god, isn't she young? They did a great make-up job on her, from what I saw of the la Vie En Rose trailers. At least it wasn't "best wearing of a slinky dress" Knightley or "best performance in a truly execrable movie (Elizabeth: Back in the Saddle)" Blanchett.

Actor: Daniel Day Lewis (George Clooney, James MacAvoy, Viggo Mortenson, Ulrich Muhe). Pretty well-deserved; I saw There Will Be Blood in Toronto and I think it is largely overrated, as a very well-made but self-consciously Important film, with a completely incoherent central character who is only made even halfway convincing through the great skills of Daniel Day Lewis. Basically, I think his performance in this was a con, but a brilliant one, and so worth recognising for that. Personally I'd have liked to have seen Ulrich Muhe win, but I suppose they thought there was little point giving the gong to a dead guy. Though his speech would have been shorter than DDL's.

Animated Film: Ratatouille (Simpsons Movie, Shrek 3). Yawn. Was there really nothing a little more interesting in the cartoon world this year than a pale sequel and a TV remake? No wonder Ratatouille won.

Foreign Language Film: The Lives of Others (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, La Vie en Rose, The Kite Runner, Lust Caution.) Notable for being a better group of films than the Best Film nominees, which does make you wonder why it needs a separate category at all. But the best film definitely won.

Adapted Screenplay: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Atonement, The Kite Runner, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood). I've not seen this film, so hard to say much except that having read the (magnificent) memoir, it is hard to see how anyone manage to adapt it for the screen, as is the internal thoughts of someone suffering from total paralysis, so I imagine this is another well-chosen winner.

Original Screenplay: Juno (American Gangster, The Lives of Others, Michael Clayton, This Is England.) Again, I've not yet seen Juno, but how cool was it to see such a young woman (Diablo Cody) getting up to take the prize? I mean, I know it shouldn't matter, but in such a male-dominated industry I got a thrill from it.

Director: Coen Brothers / No Country For Old Men (Joe Wright / Atonement, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck / Lives of Others, Paul Greengrass / Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Thomas Anderson / There Will Be Blood.) An inspired choice - the movie is so close to the original material, and the Coen Brothers truly squashed down all their trademark tics to make it so - I thought it was a spectacular and supremely modest piece of filmmaking, and I applaud them. (And they're my favourite directors anyway.)

Film: Atonement (American Gangster, The Lives of Others, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood.) Atonement!? Atonement??? What were they thinking? The only thing I can possibly imagine is that every single person with a Bafta vote has either worked with someone who worked on Atonement or hopes to do so in future. Also, it's the only British film on the list, so I suppose that they felt obliged. But of all of them, aside from American Gangster which I haven't seen, it is easily the worst film, which I think is demonstrated by the fact that it lost every other category it was nominated for (aside for one of the technical ones, I forget which.) The Lives of Others got the Foreign Language consolation gong so I suppose that's why it didn't win, though it outshines the rest of them by a mile. Otherwise I would have given it to No Country For Old Men. Such a predictable and disappointing choice, and Joe Wright? You cannot begin an acceptance speech with the words "Last time I was accepting an award on this stage" without looking like a self-important arrogant turnip.

Bad Sex In Fiction Awards 2007

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, yes!" she cried, as she fell to her knees, overwhelmed with the desperate pleasure of the 2007 Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.

Here, in fact.

Norman Mailer won it, which as well as being fitting testament to his efforts here - the line "Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement" was always going to take some beating, not to mention all the references to The Hound - is also something of a lifetime achievement award, because if there was ever a man who knew how to write crassly about women and sex, it was Norm.

But spare a thought for the runners up, in particular poor Christopher Rush. Being nominated for a Bad Sex Award in a year where Norman Mailer and Jeanette Winterson have both been recognised is like waking up to find yourself on the Booker shortlist with Ian McEwan and Peter Carey. You must be pleased with your achievement but you don't start placing any bets. Rush's entry, so to speak, is supposedly a first person account of Shakespeare nailing Anne Hathaway. It sort of reads like if you made a papier mache codpiece out of all of Shakespeare's plays ripped up and mixed with that stuff a snail leaves behind. Consider:

"I searched wildly with the fingers of my left hand, groping blind as Cyclops, found the pulpy furred wetness, parted the old lips of time and slipped my middle finger into the sancta sanctorum. It welcomed me with soft sucking sounds, syllables older than language, solace lovelier than words."

The old lips of time? Now I feel like I've got Methuselah between my legs. And just before bed as well. Thanks a lot.

Gary Shteyngart also got my attention for his extract from Absurdistan but it is very hard to comment on it out of context as it seems to be meant to be funny. Though even in that case the need for the following is debatable:

"Her vagina was all that, as they say in the urban media - a powerful ethnic muscle scented by bitter melon, the breezes of the local sea, and the sweaty needs of a tiny nation trying to breed itself into a future. Was it especially hairy? Good Lord, yes it was."

Can these male writers please leave my genitals alone? First old father time and now melons and seaside resorts. There's precious little penis on offer in any of the selected passages, just what we get from Mailer in fact. Winterson and Ali Smith are both writing about lesbian sex and Clare Clark is getting off on a hand. Wither the poorly-rendered objectification of the male form?

It was a powerful ethnic palm tree swinging its bitter coconuts of pleasure, the waft of the local cheese factory, and the sweaty needs of millions of tiny civil servants bureaucratising in its two rounded barracks...

The only truly undeserved inclusion is Richard Milward for Apples, which is a fantastic passage - if still vaginally obsessed ("her fanny looked like a tropical fish or a bit of old carpet... [and] smelt a bit like an armpit") - which is genuinely about bad sex, rather than about sex and written badly.

That caveat aside, congratulations to Mailer, commiserations to the losers, and here's to plenty more terrible sex in 2008.

The Booker Prize

I sort of feel like, as a "cultural" blogger and an author-type person, I should voice an opinion about the winner of this year's Booker Prize. But I can't, because I haven't read a single book on the shortlist. I've had a look around the internet and discovered that this hasn't stopped any number of other people voicing their equally uninformed opinions on the subject, but I have decided to take the moral high ground with this one, and my, the view is fine from here.

However, I can say that I have finally caught up with reading the 1996 shortlist. They should have given it to Rohinton Mistry.

More Doris Lessing

I think that this has to be the best response I've ever seen to winning a prize. She's just *thrilled*, isn't she? Ahem... Now I love her all the more.

(Incidentally, I was out at dinner last night and I told someone there my suggestion that Doris Lessing, at 87, should spend all hre prize money on drugs. She retorted that taking drugs is very bad, a health risk and not even all that enjoyable, and that the correct response to winning £763000 at the age of 87 is so set up a charitable foundation. So, that told me. Now that you've seen the video of Doris, though, whose advice do you think she's most likely to take?)

Doris Lessing and the Nobel Prize

Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize for literature. Good on her and good on them. Not only is she a fantastic novelist but she's a lovely woman; she came to give a talk to my bookgroup a few years ago and we were all in awe. I must admit that I've only read one of her books, 'The Golden Notebook', which was striking and memorable if occasionally baffling, and without doubt an incredibly important work for and about female writers - I'd say seminal, but that is entirely the wrong word. Ovarian? And now, as the BBC website says in its po-faced way, "She can... expect a rise in sales", including, probably, to me.

The Nobel prize money is £763000. Doris Lessing is 87 years old. What would you do with £763000 if you were 87? I think I would develop a massive drug habit. It's clearly idiotic to become a crack and heroin addict at 31 where you're in serious danger of losing your health, your family, your friends, your career, and eventually all of your money, leaving you in a life of degradation and crime. At 87, though, and with a spare £763000 in your pocket, it seems like a pretty good option. You'd be hard pushed to spend all of that on even the best drugs, your health is shot anyway, most of your family and friends are probably dead, and it's certainly not too young to retire. I am fully planning to spend the kids' inheritance on drugs, which my grandchildren can score for me and bring over to the nursing home. What else are you going to do with your twilight years? Watch 'This Morning'? Knit?