Column by David in The Times.

I haven’t read any of Doris Lessing’s books but I will now. Not because she has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but because of how she received the news. I don’t know how many of you saw the moment she was told — by Sky News. Surely, you would have thought, an organisation that has given prizes to the finest scientific minds that the human race has produced might have been able to find a means of communicating the fact of winning to the winner — telephone? telegram? carrier pigeon? — but here, for those of you who didn’t, is the basic dialogue that ensued.

Man with mike: Ms Lessing? Ms Lessing? You’ve won the Nobel prize!

Doris: (Getting out of cab with shopping) What?

Man with mike: The Nobel Prize for Literature.

Doris: (Deep sigh, looks at pavement) Oh Christ…

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Column by David in The Times.

OUR TOPIC FOR THIS WEEK: in what sense is Facebook a book? The obvious answer might seem to be: in no sense. It’s just the stupid name for what is essentially a glorified e-mailing system with the not especially healthy add-on of allowing people to compete about how many friends they have. But let me just run a small anecdote past you. I – like most of the adult population – am on Facebook. There are other well-known users on Facebook, and one of them messaged me the other day: David Beckham.

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