Oh, Stop Showing Off

Farrukh Dhondy begins a recent column with the sentence: "I visit VS Naipaul in his cottage in Wiltshire now and then." The rest of the column is about UK examination results and admission policies, and the one other reference to Sir Vidia is: "The liberal stance, which seeks to offend none, is to pump money and resources into the secondary education of the working classes and make them as competitive as the ‘haves’. VS, ever the elitist, will have none of it. Standards have become so debased he says, that if this government wants everyone to have University degrees they should simply sell them at the Post Office. I get the drift of his argument and it stops me telling him that my son Danyal, in his second year at Cambridge, has just phoned to say he got a First and is going out to have a drink or two with friends."

Ooh, one is so impressed.