10
" These people, I’m afraid, include those who suffer from ‘wheat intolerance’. I know there is such a thing, which can afflict even the sturdiest, most no-nonsense of souls and causes the consumption of foods containing wheat to bring on unpleasant symptoms that, while not at the same level as an allergic reaction, the sufferer would still want to do something about, such as stopping eating wheat, and that wouldn’t necessarily make them a tedious, attention-seeking wuss.
However, I think the vast majority of people who cite the condition are tedious, attention-seeking wusses who mistake the normal symptoms of daily life – feeling sluggish after meals, tired in the morning, hungry before breakfast and generally not as though they want to leap around like someone in an advert – for there being something wrong with them. It’s not just wheat they’re intolerant of, it’s everything. They’re so dissatisfied with the sensation of being human, with the world’s constant assaults on the temples that are their bodies, that they’re now unwilling even to coexist with a grain. "
― , Back Story
11
" Another example of their hatefulness while my dander’s up: in order to get themselves off the hook of sometimes liking uncool things, they refer to them as ‘guilty pleasures’, which is a ridiculous expression. What? So you like Abba, or Roger Moore as James Bond, but have been led to believe that this taste is somehow infra dig, so you style it a ‘guilty pleasure’, thus demonstrating you’re sufficiently relaxed and self-deprecating to own up to it – when in fact the way you have chosen to express it lays bare your bland and inane obsession with the worthless trappings of the zeitgeist.
‘Guilty pleasures’? It’s prudish and judgemental and yet it’s referring to harmless things people do in their spare time. I mean, I’ve watched and enjoyed The X Factor and I know that it’s not exactly the Proms or The Wire or whatever worthy thing I’m supposed to be watching, but why should I feel the least bit guilty about having taken pleasure from it? Or, for that matter, from eating a Findus crispy pancake, watching a Brittas Empire DVD or reading Country Life in the bath? "
― , Back Story
14
" One of the reasons I’d been attracted to showbusiness in the first place was that I thought, most of my experience so far having been of the theatre, that it was a profession that ring-fenced the lie-in. I didn’t mind the idea of working in the evenings, maybe of rehearsing in the afternoons, but mornings, I felt, should be the preserve of sleep, tea and paracetamol. So the realisation that television, the medium I most wanted to work in, required such punishing early starts was a bitter blow. "
― , Back Story