A Diamond among journalists

Can I claim to be an entirely objective critic of John Diamond's writing? He was a family friend; I also (with Robert Katz) adapted some of his journalism for a stage play which has just been turned into a BBC film.

So when I tell you that Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations (a collection of Diamond's best published writing, alongside a chunk of the book he was working on when he died) contains some of the finest journalism of our generation, you may worry that this is motivated mainly by friendship.

But let me assure you that I am not a martyr. I wouldn't have spent the best part of a year hawking a fringe play round the country, hand-glueing cardboard books into portable IKEA bookcases, if I hadn't stood back from friendship and seen brilliant writing. There are certain things one will do just to please a mate, but playing the Edinburgh Festival for a month isn't one of them.

Besides, what does it mean to be "entirely objective"? Nigella Lawson, Diamond's wife, has said in interview that John was not always the perennially insouciant fellow he appeared to be in his columns; a point gently elaborated by John's brother-in-law and occasional editor, Dominic Lawson, in the book's well-judged, insightful and affectionate introduction. (And admitted by Diamond himself, in a 1997 column, about "the parallel me, picking and choosing the details which best make the point", which I was delighted to see included here.) John was a true-born features journalist; he knew the job of the "I" word. Look around at the many first-person columns in national newspapers: the bad ones (and there are plenty) are those where the only motivation is confessional.

John Diamond understood when to exercise poetic licence: either when there is a greater truth than which trousers he was actually wearing or what the hotelier really said; or, dammit, when you're out to entertain. In this book, we see John polemical (in his unfinished attack on alternative med- icine, shining with clever analysis and the courage of his convictions); whimsical (in his very funny reworking of The Night Before Christmas for the Jewish Chronicle); Zeitgeisty (as he becomes the first TV critic to spot Ali G); angry, frightened and even ungracious in some of the later cancer columns. But we never see him forget to entertain.

Dominic Lawson first became a fan, enough of a fan to recommend this quirky fellow to his sister Nigella, when Diamond wrote a hilarious travel piece (included here) about Geneva, the world's dullest city.

This was the joy of having John in the world: he could create jokes where previously there was only Geneva. He confounded Dominic Lawson with this trick in 1989; and confounded us all when he managed to pull it off with his own terminal cancer 10 years later.

The stunning originality of that cancer writing is clearly represented here, but thoughtfully placed among a joyous array of his many other preoccupations. The book is as tasty as a box of chocolates: I miss John Diamond like hell, and might have cried over this compendium if it hadn't been so damnably diverting.

An article for The Observer, published three months before John's death, ends: "You aren't happy? Yes you are: this, here, now, is what happiness is. Enjoy it." Posthumously, these words take on a new ring of authority: one feels obliged to obey them.

But it is only those few lines, in 300 pages, which feel different now. It is a tribute to the fierce talent of Diamond, and the skilful compiling of Dominic Lawson, that in every other syllable of this book the man feels most incredibly alive.

A Lump In My Throat, a film of John Diamond's writing adapted by Victoria Coren, will be broadcast on 15 July on BBC2.