Yesterday’s link to the Hay festival Q&As reminded me of this incredible exchange between novelist and journalist Will Self and the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn on Radio 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell show.

The starting point of the conversation is where both men are given the opportunity to critique the other’s recently published novel, Self’s ‘How the Dead Live’ and Littlejohn’s ‘To Hell in a Handcart’.

I was going to give a general overview of the participants’ political outlooks for readers unfamiliar with either man but, actually, I think it’s more fun if you go into the piece not knowing.

Needless to say it’s one of the great exchanges in recent live broadcasting.

A favourite extract:

LITTLEJOHN: But you haven’t read the book in its totality and you have to read the book in its totality.

SELF: Why?

LITTLEJOHN: In order to understand it.

SELF: Does it turn into Tolstoy at page 205?

LITTLEJOHN: No it doesn’t turn into Tolstoy. I don’t set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that.

SELF:Than Tolstoy?

Read the full transcript of the conversation here.