The Australian magazine asked me, as part of my contributor bio, to name someone – living or dead – whom I would like to go on holiday with. I immediately came up with a long list of famously beautiful women, from Cleopatra to Dita Von Teese. But I decided that that would be too blatantly male fantasyish. I then considered my favorite writers. But they could be haughty; what I find appealing in Evelyn Waugh’s novels would probably be less so in the man. And I’d be lost in the shadow of a literary great like Vladimir Nabokov – to such an extent, possibly, that even he wouldn’t notice me. Then I remembered a long-time hero of mine, a man who was charming, cheerful, curious, funny, intelligent, goodhearted and up for anything, i.e., the ideal person to travel with: Steve Allen.
