We have just survived Bafta and Oscar season. This is a period of the year where I grip the remote of the telly with fevered intensity in case any footage of simpering, whimpering film people suddenly appears on the screen. I turn my head away from the culture sections of newspapers as though fleeing the Gorgon. There are Brit representatives, tasked with enacting all the standard cliches, to be versions of the stiff upper lip, the ineffectual fool, the mannered fop or the rampant jingoist. It could be a modern version of The School for Scandal. All we need are fake beauty spots, mice making their nests in hair-do’s and Keira Knightly arrving as a shepherdess accompanied by a retinue of goats. There are the weepers from I don’t know which Circle of Hell. The dreadful litanies of praise and remerciments. The selfie-itis. The fawning interviewers, dripping with the unctuous, viscid pus of self-abasement. I would find a particularly select zone of the inferno for these characters. The most vibrant fantasy that remains to me is that one day, for whatever far-away reason imaginable, I am interviewed at such an event, in the full glare of the flash bulbs, cushioned by the plush of the red carpet. How I would enjoy exhibiting my  monumantal disinterest, my monumental detachment. I truly believe there would be a market for such a reaction. Please, you neutral and unexcitable hoardes, let me be your champion.

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