Financial Times - June 6, 2003
The Preacher: Christopher Hitchens By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Christopher Hitchens arrives on stage at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales, wearing dark glasses and clutching a glass of wine, cigarettes and an ashtray. It's Late Night Hitch, an event billed as "Lenny Bruce meets P.G. Wodehouse", and a near-packed house is in to catch the combative political journalist in a startling new guise: that of stand-up comedian.
"So, it's a long day at the shrink," he begins. "This guy comes in, hasn't made an appointment, just stands there, panting. The shrink says, 'Can I help you?' More panting. Finally the guy says, 'I'm just a dog.' And the shrink says, 'Well, do you want to get on the couch?' And the guy says: [Pause] 'I'm not allowed on the fucking couch!'"
It's a terrible joke, but the audience laughs like a drain. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming to my cabaret venue," he says. It's been a busy day for Hitchens. Earlier, he had chaired discussions with the historians Linda Colley and Eric Hobsbawm and taken part in a debate about American power. The next day he is due to join a panel on Evelyn Waugh.
Clever and unpredictable, he's the intellectual equivalent of the lone gunslinger. Thanks to him, Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger have something in common: all have been mauled in print by Hitch.
He's usually described as a leftwinger, but is currently at war with liberal opinion because of his support for US foreign policy since September 11. The roar of battle seems to have hyped him up somewhat. At the debate a few hours earlier, he lost his temper when someone asked about country band the Dixie Chicks and the flak they copped for criticising George W. Bush's Iraq policy.
"Each day they dig up dead bodies in personal death camps run by a Caligula dictator," Hitchens shouted, "and I'm being asked to worry about these fucking fat slags - do me a favour!" The debate broke up soon after.
At Late Night Hitch, an altogether more convivial mood reigns.
"What I really live for is stand-up and karaoke," he reveals to laughter. He once sang Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" in North Korea. "It was to a stone-faced, Aztec-faced audience of members of the Korean Workers party. You can't bomb like you can bomb in Pyongyang," he says.
His voice is deep and faintly patrician. He lives and works in the US, traces of which you can hear in his speech as well.
He wears a suit and an unbuttoned shirt. His hair is tousled and, as the evening progresses, a dislodged curl swings down over his forehead. He's attractive in a fleshy, rakish sort of way and each puff of smoke and glug of wine seems to shout "danger".
There's the sound of singing. "When I fell into the gutter, thinking thoughts I dare not utter," croons Hitchens in an Irish accent. He has a famous thirst, and his day's labours clearly haven't prevented the odd visit to the hospitality tent.
But he reels off a series of lewd jokes faultlessly and to much mirth. Once he was a finalist in a celebrity comedy competition in Washington, DC, which he lost to Senator Joe Lieberman.
The comedy of cruelty is his favoured form. "A joke isn't a joke unless it's piercingly at someone's expense," he says. "Taste is not a factor." A variety of force-10 limericks follows. Amid the torrent of verses about young ladies of Kew and vicars who withdrew, he pauses to praise the modern geniuses of the limerick genre: Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and Robert Conquest.
His stand-up act abruptly ends as he invites questions from the audience. "Ask me anything you like, I promise the answer will be true," he says, expansively. A woman who was at the US power debate asks why he's now playing the clown.
"The reason I like P.G. Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde is that they teach you to take frivolous things seriously and serious things frivolously," Hitchens replies. "It's all a complete farce, you understand, we're born into a losing struggle. In the meantime, I think, I must show some contempt and defiance and the best means of doing that that I know are irony and obscenity."
Laughter, applause. "Which is why it was a mistake for that man to ask me about those slut Dixie Chicks," he adds.
We head towards midnight with Hitchens discoursing in the same steady tone even as his eyelids droop southwards. There's Hitch on his friendship with Martin Amis: "The only blonde I have ever loved." On how to offend black Americans: "Tell them they're articulate." On whether he would vote for Bush or the democrat John Kerry: "Bush" (he doesn't like the way Kerry exploits his Vietnam war record). On his biggest fear: "Boredom." On why the fairer sex don't make for best friends: "Men will never let you down."
I am reminded of something Amis wrote in his memoir Experience, about how for his father Kingsley, Hitchens is his ideal reader. The younger Amis finds this curious. But based on this bibulous, witty, opinionated, and sometimes boorish performance, I'd say Hitchens and Kingsley make a perfect match.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney writes on popular culture for the FT