At last we ghostwriters are to receive the official stamp of glamour that we have always deserved; the media is reporting that Ewan McGregor is going to be playing the ghostwriter protagonist in the forthcoming Roman Polanski movie of Robert Harris's novel "The Ghost".
With any luck McGregor will do for the image of ghosting what Bogart did for private detectives, Alan Alda for army doctors, Harrison Ford for archaeologists and Gregory Peck for lawyers.
Robert Harris very generously quoted my Ghostwriting handbook at the start of every chapter of the book and went on to paint a brutally accurate portrait of what life is like hacking away at this particular section of the publishing coalface.
As 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, I shall now be able to imagine myself as Ewan 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.
