Murderous Pint

1. The Chepstow Festival is like the Hay Festival of literature only we get airport novelists, Mills and Boon writers and the occasional C-List celebrity (last year we had Charlie from Bergerac). This year we were thrilled to be blessed with a literary celeb and a proper c-lister. What happened next was fairly predictable.

2. I met James Patterson in the bar of the Beaufort Hotel. I recognized him depsite the fact he was missing the hundreds of tiny pinholes in his face. I bounced up to him like Tigger on ether. "One hunnnnndredddd and eeeeeyyyyytttttyy." I bawled in his ear. You're James Patterson aren't you?
"Yes. Why did you just shout that in my ear?"
"You are the 180th celebrity I've ever met. Congratulations."
"Thank you, but why did you shout?"
"I was happy and you need a lesson in darts my friend."

3. Patterson is American and looks like Edward Woodward without the mystery attached. Just as JP was launching into his second pint of wifebeater, in walked the c-lister. Some might not regard Eamon Holmes as a c-lister but he himself does. He likes to see himself as the man on the sofa looking at the celebs rather than rubbing shoulders with them. Privately he'll admit that he'd only go around pinching their arses anyway. I introduced JP to Eamon. JP turned to me, "Why didn't you shout a number in his ear?"
"What the hell are you talking about, you're not writing fiction now?" I said.

4. The first time I met Eamon he was flicking towels at some screaming chalet girls in Val D'Isere. Shortly afterwards he was melting the snow outside. "I have phenomenal body heat" He used to brag. Now I was arranging a celebrity darts match between the big Irishman and the New Yorker. In two hours Eamon was due to be lighting the first firework to start the son et lumiere show at the castle. JP was giving a book reading and doing a signing just down from the hotel. It was my round, I ordered more strong European lager with chasers from the bar despite Eamon's protests.

5. JP was getting well into his arrows. He has a mind like a diamond tipped woodpecker when it comes to maths. Even Treble 19's, nothing was getting past this nuclear calculator except possibly how much he'd had to drink. Eamon was doing considerably better, more accustomed to the quality and quantity of strong European lager provided. JP threw his arm around me and told me how he'd learnt that bringing the wife on such occassions was ultimately disasterous, no fun, no fun. JP was seriously fucked up by the Cointreau challenge.

6. I have only ever known one person become violent on Cointreau and he's not here anymore to tell the tale and nor are the 2 Russian merchant seamen who took him so they could sell his warm liver. Eamon was as placid as bhuddist under hypnosis one minute and as angry as a man who's wife has had an affair with his son the next. Someone in the Beaufort has asked him for an autograph presuming him to be Terry Wogan. "Does this look like a feckin wig?" He shouted gripping his crown making him look crazier than Wile E Coyote on PCP. Eamon pushed the offender back causing him to knock into the blissfully unaware Patterson who was primed on the oche with a dart and ready to fly. Patterson was himself knocked to the side where he plunged the dart into the jugular of a hapless pensioner out with his wife for the evening.

7. Who'd have thought the old fella would have had so much blood? My grandfather is 94 and they top him up every two weeks with haemo-unleaded. Eamon was out of there like a shot, whilst the shock of all the blood sobered JP up instantly and he was busy stemming the pissing crimson.

8. The ambulance arrived too late. JP's wayward arrow had sucked all the juice out of the old boy.

9. Eamon was arrested live on local radio for an affray. I guess it's down to the CPS to decide if he gets done for manslaughter. James Patterson meanwhile attended his book reading and signing soaked in the blood of a dead pensioner. Some thought it was just a crazy attempt at American irony (he does write crime fiction afterall), others who had been in the bar just thought it was sick.

10. Afterwards JP came over and croaked in my ear. "This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't shouted in my ear."
"This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't written such bloody awful books." I replied.