Nasties help topple evil

As I watch the shuddering images on my computer of the Baghdad regime crumbling, the Stop the War posters remain in place outside my window. On the Portobello Road, there is even a new, pathetic inscription on a hairdresser's window, "Make Love Not War".

What do these statements really mean? Do protesters want hostilities to cease, now that they have more or less reached their conclusion? Would they really be delighted if, after all the death and suffering, Bush and Blair suddenly made a volte face, told their troops to put down their guns and walked out, leaving Saddam to reoccupy Baghdad?

I think they are now lying to themselves. To stop the war as it is about to finish would be obviously absurd and tragic. What "Stop the War" really means now is, I am a Nice Person Who Opposes Nastiness. The death, the carnage - it has nothing to do with me because I am Nice. Naturally, Nice People do not have to face the fact that niceness might have led to decades of continued Nastiness on the part of Saddam and his henchmen, because we would never have seen television pictures of the torture chambers, the summary executions and daily terror.

Nice People have always worried me, although I like them on the whole. It worries me that their world view does not really understand true nastiness or have any idea how to deal with it. They think nasty people, like Saddam, are really, at heart, nice people who are misunderstood. That if they could just be sat down and showered with enough niceness, they would discover their inner teddy, and come round to a nice way of thinking.

They don't understand that Nasty People consider niceness weak and exploitable. They don't understand that Nasty People like being nasty. Evil is a taste that can be acquired and enjoyed.

Nice-ies think capitalists and soldiers and governments are simply not nice enough, and if people like them could just take control, the world would soon be a paradise. Nice-ies include children, mothers, students, actors and celebrities. And hairdressers. They are good people who want a nice world, and if only the Nasties would listen to them, they would see that we could all live in peace and harmony.

But the reality of the world is that evil never dies. The only way to deal with evil is with constant displays of a preparedness to be just as nasty in return. This is how we dealt with Hitler, Milosevic, with the Taliban, and it is how we are dealing with Saddam.

I supported this war. It is in my name. A picture of a limbless child strikes me to the heart, and I cannot say I am Nice and thus distance myself. I am a Nasty. I believe that in the world from time to time death and destruction is the only way to protect our values from a greater evil.

In the May Day demonstrations, a lot of Nice People will probably smash things up to prove how nice they are. They will go home with a warm feeling of righteousness and moral rectitude. The Nasties, as always, will pick up the pieces and do the dirty work of facing the world like it is.

I wish I could be nicer, but I can't. The blinkers just chafe too much. So I'll go on looking at the terrible images on my TV, and I'll take my share of responsibility, and I'll accept that in the eyes of the Nice-ies, I'm beyond redemption.

But as the regime in Baghdad finally collapses, and ordinary Iraqis cheer the Allies, I feel more certain than ever that the suffering was worth it, as the Nasties said it would be. I feel more sure that this war is going to pay off. So let's take down the banners and face reality - you can only face down evil with strength, not good intentions, slogans and moral exhibitionism.

Jerry's just pretending

I have just discovered that, according to BBC's The Big Read, Jerry Hall's greatest-ever book is Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. Oh yes, and Michael Portillo's is Emma. Emma!

What next? The revelation that Jade Goody likes to curl up with a well-thumbed copy of Gravity's Rainbow? And that Norman Tebbit's Big Read is Jeannette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry?

There is always a huge gulf between what people say they think their favourite book is and what it really is. I think the book I've enjoyed more than any other in my life is Lord of the Rings, although it's got about as much literary cachet as an Andy McNab novel (which is probably what Portillo would really be reading) or a Jackie Collins bonkbuster (which would probably be more to Jerry's taste).

But officially, my very favourite book of all time is actually Historia Destructionis Troiae by Guido delle Collone, the 13th century Sicilian writer. Why? Because it's old, it's foreign and it's entirely unknown. One of these days I might even get round to reading it.

My next novel is a real snore

Coco the parrot has been evicted from the bedroom of Terry Marriott and his girlfriend Yvonne because of Coco's irritating habit of imitating his owner's ear-splitting snoring.

I support the eviction. I was always in denial about my snoring, laughing in the face of complaints by partners. Then one day I had the notion, since I was always waking up in the middle of the night with great ideas for stories and articles, to sleep with a voice-activated tape recorder next to my bed so that I could capture them without fumbling for pen and paper.

The next morning I woke up to hear not a string of brilliant high concepts, but 90 minutes of fullthroated snores, rumbles, gasps and wheezes. Since then I have happily provided earplugs for all cohabitees.

I had that author in the back of my car

I was well chuffed last week to be recognised by a cabbie who saw me on Newsnight Review. I wrote that he burst my balloon by quizzing me not about my brilliant critical insights but where I got my shirt.

At least it allowed me to hold on to my stereotype of cabbies as lovable Philistines. But yesterday I got a parcel from the very same cabbie who had sought out my shirt.

It was his novel. And not a misspelt travelogue about the travails of a taxi driver, but a highly literate one exploring

major historical themes. It was represented by one of the most prestigious literary agents in London.

Before you know it they will be singing opera on the football terraces at Loftus Road.

I'm all for a classless society. But to deprive a columnist of his prejudices is like robbing a barber of his scissors.

So next time I'm in a cab, please give us a yell about the bleeding Arabs, the effing parking wardens and Bloody Ken Bloody Livingstone. It will make the journey noisier - but so much more comforting.

Chancellor Brown announced in the Budget that the Government was on track to meet the goal of a 25 per cent cut in child poverty. I think he missed a trick in his speech for achieving that goal much faster. How about a tax on child wealth? I constantly read in the glossy supplements about children's designer T-shirts costing £100, or little kids who get £10-a-week pocket money.

We need a Department of Children's Income Tax that will claw some of the money back from these spoiled brats and put it in the hands of kids who really need it.