A Long and Messy Business. Rowley Leigh

      Introduction

      I have been doing this sort of thing for quite a

      while now. When I first started, I tried too hard.

      I wanted to show off and I wanted to be

      authoritative. If I was writing about Jerusalem

      artichokes I would explain that Jerusalem was

      a corruption of girasole, a sunflower, that the

      French hated them because they had to eat them

      instead of potatoes during the war, that they are

      a rhizome and not a tuber, then make discreet

      reference to farting issues and, finally, I would

      give a few recipes. I would have run out of space

      in no time.

      My first editor, Matthew Fort, whom may God

      preserve, gave me a piece of advice from his

      days in advertising: ‘tell ’em what you are going

      to say, say it, and then tell them what you just

      said.’ That sort of helped but it was just a Mad

      Men way of describing a school essay or

      the form of the classical sonata – exposition,

      development, recapitulation. I actually had more

      help from Lord Sugar. In those early days I

      bashed out my copy – one-finger typing, which

      I have not improved upon – on an Amstrad,

      a primitive early computer manufactured by

      Sugar and in very common use at the time.

      Once I discovered the copy and paste buttons,

      I was liberated. I realised that I didn’t necessarily

      need to decide what I was going to say. I could

      just start writing and then move it around later.

      That breakthrough led, when I was on form, to

      a