The Edinburg Festival. VIP: Iain (M.) Banks

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Edinburgh. Met Iain M. Banks as planned, handed him over a copy of the Headspace movie and told him to stay in touch, which was a lot better than the day before when we got thrown out of the book festival because we honed in on Stephanie Turner, the so-called 'Press Officer' who was mostly out to lunch, even when doing her job,
(stephanie@edbookfest.co.uk), and lets not forget about the pasty looking youth serving books who told me to 'hang on just a second'
before calling security because I'd pointed my cam at him. Muttering something about; "invading my privacy", he comes back with a security guy who has more than a passing resemblance to 'Jaws' from the James Bond movies. Jaws, not so politely, asks me to switch my cam off, which I'd already done like five minutes before, then follows us around like a dog at the book festival in
case I switch it on again.

Being an accredited journalist and film maker, this irritated me enough to launch a full broadside which resulted in telephone calls to South Africa, faxes and emails to Edinburgh, none of which were returned by Steph, who has an irritating habit of talking to you like you're in kindergarten, your mother dressed you funny and is now two hours late picking you up. As Judge Jury and executioner I'd recommend keeping her out of the system for long enough to let the middle list proper again, but, i digress....

Two days later we arrived at the Banks reading and handed over tickets which were only valid for Edinburgh Castle due to some mixup in my pocket, but this was settled by me begging a new set of tickets from the booking office, which was much better staffed than the press office.

The hall was packed....maybe 500 people...
Banksie talks well, and, happily for me, seems to prefer his sci-fi incarnation, even though the heavyweight presenter from the BBC was clearly not up to gabbing much about 'the Culture', and preferred to associate him with 'kicking the caPitalists'..what a joke..in any event, Banksie read from his latest book, to be launched in October/November;

Let me quote a line;

"This construct does not contain the information you require"

Afterwards, I stood in a queue and when my
turn came for him to autograph the copy of 'Consider Phlebas' I'd bought, I barely had time to hand over the DVD and tell him who I was, plus tell him I liked his idea of being an incredibly well armed hippy x'd with Hunter S. Thomson. He promised to view the DVD, and if you're reading this Banksie, did you enjoy it? :) I've even got a picture of this which I'll post at sometime when I get back to the studio, in the not too distant future..

Afterwards we sampled drams of various malt whiskeys, then a bloody mary, which knocked me sideways for a few hours, during which I stumbled up and down Edinburgh's crowded streets...

schwann

23rd August 2004

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