Who I'd Like To Meet

In cap-doffing to M over at Are Word Enough, and cos there's nowt happening, here's a list of the people, dead or alive, what I would want to invite in for a sit down meal, and not be looking at my watch within an hour, wondering about a souffle.

John Kennedy Toole: The literary Nick Drake. Unpublished in his lifetime, then mum pushed for the release of A Confederacy Of Dunces after his death. Its a grotesque fantastique, laced with New Orleans hipster cool. I wonder what else he could have achieved.

Woody Allen/Harrelson/Guthrie: My favourite Woody's, although I might have to hide the guitars, grass and those awful four-for-one dips where at least two of them stay the same.

John Cooper Clarke: Would he fit through the door. He could do with a decent meal, and the company would certainly be acerbic.

Bill Hicks: Is giving the below guest a lift. We miss ya, Bill.

Hunter S Thompson: He'd probably be hard work to be honest, but my god, every meal deserves some out and out lunacy between savoury truffles and the devoiring of the drugs cabinet.

Karen Dalton: My new favourite blues singer who lost her teeth to heroin, died on the streets, was friends with Dylan and had a voice that masked her demons in honey.

Robert Wyatt: Admittedly, I have met him wheeling through Louth, but we're still in the nodding stage. Superb inspiration for regarding his fall from a fifth-floor-window as the start of his life, rather than the end of it.

Judy Garland: Great entertainment in the early hours, I reckon. May have to kick her out round six.