Well, sort of. It's actually an integral part of the book, the last chapter it should have had,
that got tragically left out because I didn't finish it in time.
I was on a tight deadline and I couldn't get this final chapter to work as I wanted it, so I sent in the stopgap version that's printed in the book, which is short and perfunctory, basically just the top and the tail of the original longer, wilder version. I intended to insert the proper one later, but months went by and I still couldn't get the bleeding thing right. I finally finished it, as it turned out, two days after the book had gone to press - I'd understood I still had another set of proofs to check and would possibly be able to insert stuff if I annoyed a lot of people, but this wasn't the case.
So I'm putting the authentic extended Chapter 24 here. I don't want anyone who hasn't read the book to read it as it won't make any sense, so I'm hiding it behind a cunning code, as follows:
The URL is the sixth word of the last chapter as published, not including the chapter title. Chapter 24, that is, the final real chapter, I don't mean the appendix stuff that follows. So if the sixth word is 'sausage', replace 'whatever.htm' in the location bar above with 'sausage.htm' and press enter.
p30/31 - Solomon's speech should be WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS. But some
humourless interfering philistine cretin at Pan Macmillan 'fixed' it at the last minute without
consulting me, after I'd patiently kept it in through three sets of proofs and editorial notes.
The whole joke is ruined now, in fact the whole book is ruined. Please, when you have a minute,
take a pen and change everything Solomon says into CAPITAL LETTERS. Seriously, it will look much
better, and lessen my murderous rage.
p241 - the joke at the bottom after 'I didn't come here to be ambushed' - thanks to a chance re-reading of Brian Aldiss's brilliant 'The Eighty-minute Hour', I've belatedly realised this gag is very similar to one in that, the 'nyphomania' portion of it anyway. If I'd known I would have cut this, sobbing. You can still laugh at it, but if you think it's so funny you want to have sex with me because of it, have sex with Aldiss instead. Or, split the difference, just frot the pair of us. Simultaneously. That would be one for my memoirs.
p258 - I intended to put a note in an afterword or on the verso or something pointing out that the lines between 'No, not average' and 'impossible odds' are a paraphrase of a passage in George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf, partly for acknowledgement and partly so people don't look at me strangely.
Oh and there's some sort of annoying printing error duplicating a paragraph in the next chapter,
but you will have spotted that for yourself because it sticks out like a festering pustule of
satanic incompetence hideously disfiguring my beautiful book so there's no point in even
mentioning it.
Edit:
Jesus. 269, 'Yes, that appears to be almost mandatory' should be a new para as it's a different
person replying, something else that was bizarrely 'fixed' against my will and specific
instructions. I think I'll just get the proofreaders to write the bloody book next time.
Not that there'll be a next time if I keep carrying on like this.