Omnivore Pin-up: Nirpal, 38, London
Saucy devil Nirpal, 38 from London, is a journalist by trade and lothario by nature. He worships Edward St Aubyn and seduces with Angela Carter. Ask Nirpal to be your special friend via love@theomnivore.com quoting Box 2207.
What are you reading at the moment?
John Heilpern’s A Patriot For Us. It’s the biography of John Osborne, who fascinates me, not least because he acted the arses off everyone else in his 5-minute cameo in Get Carter and could have easily been a film icon to surpass his contemporaries, yet he chose to be a writer. Also he’s one of an increasingly rare breed: a working-class boy who makes his way through real culture, rather than the tripe that pop-culture consists of now.
What have you just finished reading?
William Styron’s Darkness Visible. It’s a memoir of his depression. Sad stuff. Evasive by our standards of discussing mental illness today, but ground-breaking for the time.
What will you read next?
Millennium People by J. G. Ballard. One of the sexiest writers ever. The cold, precise lines of his prose and his scientific style of writing are as beautiful and erotic as the curves of a Porsche.
Which author do you have a crush on?
Edward St Aubyn. His talent is mesmerising. Controlled, acute, transcendent, and yet immersive, poignant and reflective. A genius.
What’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever read?
I read The Betsy by Harold Robbins when I was about eleven-years-old. I think it was the first sex I’d ever read. Pithy, bushy and downright dirty. Real seventies stuff that left me aching to grow up and get on with it. I pity the kids these days with their internet.
Which book would you give someone you’re trying to impress?
I gave my girlfriend Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales – a collection of tales about witches, maids, enchantresses and all sorts of magical females from around the world. It seemed to work: that’s her in the picture, having charmed me into her lair.
Amendment: Nirpal has since broken up with the lady in question. He is now footloose and fancy-free.
