N.V. Rampant

N.V. Rampant is hoping for a staff position on Harpers and Queen. He is currently choosing between publishers for his new book The Naff Ranger’s Guide to Heroic Loos. He is a friend of Clive James.

N.V. Rampant meets Martin Amis

N.V. Rampant, 18 October 1984

‘This is the big one,’ I told myself nervously. ‘The Martin Amis interview. This is the one that could make you or break you.’ As I neared his front door my heart was in my mouth.

No doubt he would have said it more cleverly. He would have said his heart was palpitating with trepidation like a poodle in heat in a monastery of mastiffs. Oh yes, he had the long words,...

Poem: ‘Symptoms of Self-Regard’

N.V. Rampant, 5 December 1985

As she lies there naked on the only hot Day in a ruined August reading Hugo Williams, She looks up at the window-cleaner Who has hesitantly appeared.

Wishing that he were Hugo Williams She luxuriates provocatively, Her fantasy protected by the glass Or so she thinks.

Would that this abrasive oaf Were Hugo Williams, she muses – Imagining the poet in a black Armani Bomber jacket from

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