WILL Self did nothing to improve his popularity when he appeared at the Everyman Theatre on Tuesday.

The one-time drug addict turned journalist seemed determined to remain unconnected with his audience, reading non-stop from his new book for an hour before walking off stage again. He impressed only the most obsequious and desperate of literary lovers.

His book, Dorian, is a repugnant and dirty rewriting of Oscar Wilde's classic Picture of Dorian Gray. It goes to the extremes of hedonism, laziness, drug-fuelled gay orgies and AIDS, as if in some competitive macho desire to find the deepest and darkest corners. It is certainly not recommended for the faint hearted.

I have no doubt that Self will find a readership, his twisted determination to find the bottom of the bucket is one shared by countless others in our depressingly unsettled times. His aim seems to be to disturb us further by showing us just how repulsive people can be - as if that made good reading.

But this is a man whose newspaper features are intelligent and thought provoking and who has appeared jovially on countless TV programmes. His failure to say hello or look at the audience could have been due to stage fright, but frankly came across as rudeness.

Ally Hardy