You could damn well nearly hear it, since nothing has changed since the 1880s. Via e-mail Ralph sent me a digital photo of the “Oscar” shaft named in Wilde’s honour, which was captioned: “We stayed at the Delaware Hotel, where the silver auctions were held, whores whored, carpet-baggers bagged and patent medicine men dispensed immediate cures for everything. Anyway, the old bugger is holding up and completing a piece for Rolling Stone called VOTE NAKED OR DIE Still impossible as human beings go. See you soon, Ralph.” In my view Ralph’s PC of Roaring Fork River depicts any or all of the following: Him and Oscar, him and me, him and Hunter Thompson, or two wholly unrelated phantasms.The Steadmans went on from Hunter’s place to Leadville itself. That means that the Government can take part in negotiations but is not bound to implement the policies agreed.That arrangement, described by Tony Blair as “the best of both worlds”, is controversial in other EU countries, and yesterday Jan Peter Balkenende, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, which holds the EU presidency, called on Britain not to undermine agreed policies.The Dutch premier said there had to be “one reality” in Europe on asylum and immigration policy, adding: “We are stressing the importance of following the same line.

That is the message to the UK.” British officials stressed that the UK has so far opted into all EU asylum and immigration decisions, and that Ireland and Denmark have similar arrangements.Yesterday’s agreement on a five-year work programme marks a significant acceleration of efforts to co-ordinate justice and home affairs policy at a pan-European level. “I was reproved by my hearers for not having brought him with me. This was ten years ago, and the film Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead was on at every multiplex I passed, the poster looking like a minatory warning.I drove up to Boulder where I bought some fake-pigskin walking shoes, then I drove on to the Mount Estes National Park and hit the trail which wound up through resinous spruce stands and upland meadows. Contemplating the towering white phantasms of the Rockies, I reflected on the gross disparity between my attempts to aestheticise the West and those of Dear Old Oscar, who’d blown into Colorado in 1882 and been met with a rapturous reception. Visiting the silver mining town of Leadville, Wilde felt a tad faint after the 10,000-ft climb, but his ailment was diagnosed as merely “light air”.

He was then let down the shaft at the Matchless Mine in a bucket, and read the miners passages from Benvenuto Cellini on the grounds that he was a silversmith. The larger and more assertive of the two said crisply: “Actually, we’re identical twins.” It fair creeped me out, as I looked from one unleavened countenance to the next and had to acknowledge that yes, they were indeed idents, but one of them had so got the psychic upper hand that he was almost twice as big as his clone.
That evening the Bartoli Brothers invited me to their tract house in the ‘burbs where they proceeded to demonstrate their great rapport with each other by playing faultless four-handed Bach Back East they had been professional concert pianists I was moved, impressed and still creeped out. That was bad enough, but after the Bartoli Brothers incident it was clear that I had to quit town. In the morning I had to drive her clear across the city so she could jack her Rottweiler up with Vitamin C. The house had a close, cloacal feel to it, as if some unsavoury acts of incest had been committed there.

There’s was that and the brothers also span a nice line in misogynism. I made my excuses and left.The night before I’d dragged a drunk bookseller back to my hotel room, and when she vomited over the side of the bed a revolver fell out her handbag and lay on the carpet like a death metal turd. In Denver, Colorado I was interviewed by two literary-journalistic brothers called Bartoli who toiled for some Rocky Mountain review of disembodied poetics. “You must have a rapport,” I said, feeding them dry martinis from a hotel pitcher, “being brothers and all that.” They looked at me quizzically, they both had collar-length, grey-brown hair and doughy faces. The middle-aged weasel has cashed in on his appearance in the jungle by signing up to the Discovery channel to present a programme called Megabugs.

Charles Clarke feels that abuse of the rule occurs when rich families move into a catchment area, get one child into the school, then move out safe in the knowledge that all their other children will get in too. How many parents actually do this? If the goal is fairness, wouldn’t it be more sensible simply to concentrate on lowering class sizes – the single thing that makes state teaching such a Herculean task – so that all state schools become “good”?*All those who were not quite convinced that John Lydon’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity … But we all know now that the television appearance was a profile-raising job application for him, just as it was for all the other attention crazy, cash crazy narcissists on the show
More from Deborah Orr. No doubt the former Sex Pistol will explain to anyone interested that he simply wants to educate people about the fascinating creatures that he loves.