Assenting with a smile

Martin Amis. When that boy gets it right, he really nails it.

In The Information he describes a plane flight undergone by a failed novelist and his hated successful pal.

Unsuccessful scribbler in Economy: "His seat was non-aisle, non-window and above all non-smoking. It was also non-wide and non-comfortable."

(Amis smokes for England)

The best-seller in First Class, " ... practically horizontal on his crimson barge, shod in prestige stockings and celebrity slippers, assenting with a smile to the coaxing refills of Alpine creekwater and sanguinary burgundy with which his various young hostesses strove to enhance his caviar tartlet, his smoked-salmon pinwheel and asparagus barquette, his prime fillet tournedos served on a timbale of tomato and a tapenade of Castilian olives."

The killer word? "Barge". Perfect.