Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.

Lawrence.

You know, you mentioned that Hitchens was a kind of middlingly successful political writer until he became, you know, the...

So he became Christopher Hitch.

He was...

Hitch Wacker.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Until he became Bill Mar.

The hitch slap.

Yeah.

But what's still great about reading those kind of earlier articles is even though he was

only middlingly well known, he seemed to be everywhere still.

So you'll be reading any article and he'll be like,

Yes, I had a dreary encounter with Her Royal Highness while at some book launch or other. There I was

three gin and tonics in when Princess Margaret came in and proceeded to embark on a distasteful

diatribe about China.

Whether it was the forbidden kingdom or the porcelain, I couldn't determine.

He'll be writing that in like 1987 or something, you know, long before, I don't know,

he just was an expert at being in the right place at the right time.

There's that whole thing in his memoir about like where Margaret Thatcher allegedly spanked him on

his backside with the parliamentary order paper and said, naughty boy.

That's great.

...