www.nickgriffiths.co.uk

What was your favourite childhood book?
Adrift in the Stratosphere, by Professor AM Low. A space adventure for the child born in the mid-Sixties, who dreamed of being an astronaut. Though I wrote to NASA, offering my services, they fobbed me off with some moon pics.

Which book has made you laugh?
Plenty, thankfully. Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb, Christopher Nye's Maximum Diner, Al Murray's The Pub Landlord's British Book of Common Sense, George Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, David Blunkett's The Blunkett Tapes...

Which book has made you cry?
As a child I read a book called Mattie, by GD Griffiths - no relation, I assure you - about a family of hedgehogs. Barely into the book, a bloke takes a spade and chops one our spikey heroes in half. I wept for Britain and was unable to read any further. And I have never forgotten.

Which book would you never have on your bookshelf?
Anything by a politician. Or indeed John Prescott.

Which book are you reading at the moment?
Carl Hiaasen's Nature Girl, which I enjoyed hugely for the first two-thirds, though now I wish it would end. And Hammer of the Gods, the Led Zeppelin biog, several years too late.

Which book would you give as a present to a friend?
I wouldn't. Tangerine and a gift-wrapped brick.
"Oooh, it feels heavy. What is it?!"
"Just eat your tangerine."

Which other writers do you admire?
Bruce Robinson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Tove Jansson.

Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to it?
Crime and Punishment. A friend recommended it so vociferously that I bought a copy. It's currently glaring at me from the bookshelf, arms folded, tapping a foot.

What are your top five books of all time, in order or otherwise?
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
All Played Out by Pete Davies
Withnail and I by Bruce Robinson
Comet In Moominland by Tove Jansson

What is the worst book you have ever read?
I once picked up The Da Vinci Code in a bookshop and skimmed through a few pages. Is Dan Brown 12 years old?

Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?
Everything I read as a child: William, Jennings, Willard Price, Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, Flashman, Sven Hassel. Non-authors: Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) and, of course, Doctor Who. Such imagination.

What is your favourite time of day to write?
After midnight is great, when surrealism builds a small campfire in the tiring mind.

And favourite place?
My office. We've just moved so familiarity is yet to set in. But it will.

Longhand or word processor?
I've used a Mac for so long that the last time I gave someone a handwritten note, they mistook it for the panicked squiggles of a dying man.

Which fictional character would you most like to have met?
Withnail. I doubt I would actually like the conniving coward, but since I'd mainly be gibbering platitudes around his feet that wouldn't really matter.

Who, in your opinion, is the greatest writer of all time?
Bruce Robinson, for his Withnail and I screenplay. I could hear those lines a thousand times and never tire of them.

Which book have you found yourself unable to finish reading?
Actually, I'm quite tempted to give up on Nature Girl.

What is your favourite word?
I'm afraid to say that it's "fuck". That glorious swearword is the potato of the English language: it can be used in so many different and inventive ways (which I won't go into here, don't worry).

Other than writing, what other jobs or professions have you undertaken or considered?
Astronaut. (More considered than undertaken. NASA will rue the day.)

What was the first piece you ever had in print?
A review of The Shamen, in Sounds, 1989.

What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently wracked by indecision, though veering towards the follow-up to In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose. That series was always planned as a trilogy and I already have a title for book two - Looking for Mrs Dextrose - and several plot ideas, I just haven't started it yet. I also like the idea of doing something new and darkly comedic, beginning with the sentence, "We are all going to die." (It will get cheerier.)
* Note: In the end I wrote Who Goes There. Indecisive, moi?

I penned this Q&A for the Waterstone's site some months back and thought I'd bung it here, since not everyone visits said small corner of cyberspace . . .