I'm sadly leaving Hay now, but for those who are arriving to enjoy the rest of the week, a few simple customs you might like to observe.
Speakers and interviewers: Don't fail to go on stage without a debonair cream jacket, a la Snow, Hitchens, John Wilson, etc, etc.
Media figures: Do modestly own up to having benefited from outrageous nepotism early in your career. Best mea culpas so far: Jon Snow ("my cousin [Peter] was good so they thought I would be too") and Bill Deedes (first job in return for a place on his uncle's shoot, "patronage… just short of corruption").
Audiences: When raising your hand to ask a question, should the chair point to you saying the person there at the back, sorry, is it a gentleman or a lady, do respond without fail: "Well, last time I looked…"
And finally, an apology to Today's Jim Naughtie, who, encountered outside a party tent in a dark field late yesterday, insists that far from not enjoying Rory Bremner's jokes, he merely "didn't want to be rolling around like a schoolkid". Was he worried about his gravitas? "Gravitas my arse!" he bellows, and is off into the night.
