Tellin' stories

Sometimes you have to wonder why we bother with books, when fiction is ubiquitous.

Walk into any pub and the chances of being accosted by a bar-room bard are extremely good. Once the cogs of conversation have been oiled by an exchange of mundane pleasantries and a few sips of lager, storytime begins.

Last night's bard began by striking up a rapport over our shared North-East roots and our mutual geographical displacement, and before I knew what was happening I was privileged to personal and intimate revelations, and regaled with the sort of tales that Guy Ritchie might go down to his local boozer to overhear - pub brawls, cocaine dealers, armed robbery, arson, shooting up houses.

To be sure, tall stories for the most part, but the boundaries between fact and fiction are never quite clear, and the scarred cheek and the lengthy disappearance to the toilet and subsequent sniffing fits hint at someone who straddles both worlds, but who cloaks himself in fiction as a way of dealing with life and projecting an ideal self-image.

These pub proponents of the storytelling art are of the highest order, living and breathing fiction as much as a Rushdie or an Amis - indeed more so in that they make no division between work and life, and they go unpaid. Instead, they are rewarded by gaining the ear of a listener. The act of telling is an end in itself.

Listen up, and you can hear stories being told all around you.