Some people feel sorry for ghostwriters, believing we are actually frustrated novelists or biographers forced to suppress our own egos beneath those of our allegedly illiterate clients.
"Don't you wish you could write something of your own some day?" they enquire solicitously.
Others see us as ambulance-chasing hacks or literary lapdogs to the undeservingly famous and celebrated, a bit like poor old William Holden, face down in the swimming pool in Sunset Boulevard, or maybe Nick Carraway living across the lawn from Gatsby's mansion, watching and typing as other people lived their dramas out around him.
Part of the problem is that we have never really been well represented in the movies. Whereas even the seediest of private detectives can imagine themselves to be Humphrey Bogart, and the dullest of archaeologists can picture themselves as Harrison Ford, we have had no one to pin our self-delusions onto – until now. At last we are about to receive the official stamp of Hollywood glamour.
If media reports are to be believed, the admirable, likeable and glamorous Ewan McGregor is going to be playing the ghostwriter protagonist in the forthcoming Roman Polanski movie of Robert Harris's novel The Ghost.
A ghostwriter is an ideal pivot for any dramatic plot. Like doctors, detectives, reporters and lawyers we enter other people's lives for short, dramatic periods, before returning to our own personal dramas and plotlines. Our lives are episodic and our work tends to be revelatory about the secrets of others – all perfect ingredients for drama as long as you edit out the endless hours spent tapping away at a keyboard, (most of the daily workload that lands on doctors, lawyers, news reporters and policemen is equally tedious of course, and never makes it into any script).
By writing The Ghost, Robert Harris has changed all that. Not only is his nameless ghost depicted as hanging out with ex-world leaders and earning glamorous sums of money, he also becomes an integral part of the plot as it unravels through the writing of his subject's memoirs. It is a brutally accurate portrait of what life is like hacking at this particular section of the publishing coalface.
For centuries the existence of ghostwriters was kept secret by the publishing world as they strived to convince the book buying public that footballers and film stars actually sat down at the end of the day at their escritoires and penned their own prose. With the invention of behind-the-scenes reality television and the increase in celebrity revelation the public has become too smart to be fooled any more. Thanks to the frankness of folk like Katie Price the public knows exactly who is writing these books and has demonstrated that they don't care by buying the resulting products in stupendous quantities. Some ghosted books actually end up winning writing prizes. We no longer have to hide at the back of the room during launch parties. We can hold our heads high.
I am just starting work on a biography of an enigmatic multi-millionaire and futurologist who lives on his own private island off Bermuda and has recently become the largest single donor to Oxford University ever. As I pack my bag in preparation for the interviews I shall now be able to imagine myself as Ewan McGregor setting out into the plot of a new Robert Harris thriller. I will be able to enjoy a whole new level of self-delusion thanks to the age-old wonders of the Hollywood dream machine.
