The reason for the delay? M Jacques Chirac was inside having a private view The publisher cooled his

The reason for the delay? M Jacques Chirac was inside, having a private view The publisher cooled his heels impatiently for half an hour. Then a smug-looking Chirac came out and his patience snapped. "Alors," he shouted at the Premier, "Vous n'aimez pas notre boeuf, mais vous aimez bien notre Bacon." And you know what? It got into Le Monde There's gloire for you.. If character comedy is the new vogue in stand-up, then its eager exponents should take a night off from their Edinburgh rehearsals, whip out an exercise book and get down to Whitehall for a Barry Humphries masterclass. There they will find Humphries holding court with his lesser-known but equally sublime creation, Dr Sir Lesley Colin Patterson, Australia's Cultural Attache to the Court of St James and mutant scatological half-brother of Dame Edna Everage. Patterson's appearance and mannerisms, never mind the material, show the attention to detail of near-perfect characterisation. The tan and cream lace-up four-inch platforms, the electric pink socks, the Oxfam- reject sky-blue Terylene flares, complete with strategic Camembert stains, flapping heroically at his ankles, the orange, brown and yellow diagonal- striped kipper tie resting proudly on his straining gut; and then, the crowning glory, that monstrous face, its sweat-dripping dewlap and rouge- smeared cheeks framing a set of gnashers alarming enough to make Janet Street-Porter a cover girl for Dentist Monthly.

Slopping Chardonnay on to his platforms, he hitches up a leg in an exaggerated rearrangement of his tackle before indulging in a long, hard anal scratch, eyes upturned in ecstasy, a loop of drool suspended from his chin. If Spitting Image attempted to caricature him, there'd be no room for manoeuvre. The principal worry beforehand was that Sir Les, hitherto a 20-minute warm-up act for Dame Edna, might peak prematurely and fail to stay the full 90 minutes. But some song and prancing with his research assistants, the Lesettes ("a smorgasbord of hornbags and ceiling inspectors"), a string of bewitching anecdotes, and a high intensity of gag-fire banished any fears, underlining the gulf between an old pro like Humphries and the class of '96. (Perhaps the only current creations fit to lick the stains off Patterson's suit trousers are Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge and Paul Calf, both monsters themselves.)Saliva showers apart, the front row got off lightly. Sir Les is a far more demanding character to perform than Dame Edna, which is perhaps why he opted for less audience interaction than the housewife superstar But with a script this good, it didn't matter.

Most of all, Amis was annoyed by Waugh's characters' indolence. "None of the family has enough, indeed anything to do," the pen notes, and: "At least Rex does something for a living." His verdict: "Twee Rich Upper Class Novelittish Queer."Other writers come off badly too. "Balls", Amis wrote on the section of the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry devoted to Derek Mahon. "Piss off," he wrote beside a description of the refined Lady Marchmain."Well, what?" his ballpoint demands after Charles announces he knew what had drawn Sebastian to Morocco. Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is a good example from a man notorious for his right-wing views and misogyny. The author of Lucky Jim and The Old Devils died aged 73 last October - triggering a war between his biographer, Eric Jacobs, and his equally famous son Martin over whether the diaries of his last months should be published - and leafing through the volumes is a ghostly task. Much of his life seems to hang between their pages, either because the books are his own work, about his work, or contain his handwritten comments on the contents or forgotten letters from friends.Pluck a volume out and his scrawled comments leap from the margin. Never mind that any explanation involving a circus is worse than no explanation at all.

The film stands or falls by the resonance of its images, not by the repeated profundities of the dialogue - lines like, "I thought you could only walk halfway into the forest, then you started walking out." Why even try to explain? We wouldn't think so much of Bunuel if he had added a scene to Un Chien Andalou explaining that the gent with the razor cutting the lady's eye was an ophthalmic surgeon doing an emergency operation.n On general release from tomorrow. It must be the literary sale of the year. Sir Kingsley Amis's library - more than 1,600 books, many covered with scribbles of criticism or praise - comes up for auction next month, together with his Tippex- stained typewriter, his leather desk and his battered red armchair. The big shoe burns and burns on the calm water, a strangely soothing surrealist image - surrealism without the surrealists' urge to upset.But then it turns out, in the film's final scene, that the shoe was a prop belonging to a circus, lost when a boat sank upstream. Darkly watches spellbound as a giant silver shoe floats downstream. Later, Roxy uses it as a sort of improvised longboat for the Viking funeral of a beloved pet.