Lyttelton writer Joe Bennett was in a curmudgeonly frame of mind at Wanaka's Festival of Colour yesterday, and joyously, proudly so, as he extolled the virtues of everything politically incorrect, including drinking and smoking.
After his packed-out talk about his quest to discover the birthplace of his underpants in China, little old ladies came up to tell him they loved him.
"You're mad, but very sweet,'' he said to them all.
Mr Bennett, a columnist for the Otago Daily Times and former English teacher, was an affable interview subject with no interest in talking about writing.
Honest to God, I only asked him if he met any writers, read books or had gone to any shows in China. (He didn't.)
"I can't stand writers. I avoid them like the plague. But musicians can be quite fun,'' he said, as he sucked on his pre-lunch beer and cigarettes.
"Writing is not a shared profession. It is an entirely solitary business. People talk so much about wanting to be a writer. People who want to talk about writing, by and large, can't do it very well.''
Mr Bennett considers writing to be a trade, like plumbing; or a craft, like carpentry.
One works at it on their own and does not automatically qualify as a tradesman because they've done two years of study, he said.
"Do plumbers talk about plumbing at the weekends? Do plumbers get plumbing block?'' he ranted.
A self-described "entirely selfish'' person, Mr Bennett loves people. He just hates "wankers'' who think writing is some mystical process whereby books appear without hard work.
When he visited China on his underpants quest in 2007, he had never been there before and hadn't particularly wanted to go there before.
He loved it, and the people, but is a bit sick of talking about it all the time now.
He didn't get followed by Chinese Government officials.
And he had fewer problems - well, he had none - at immigration, unlike the time he visited Los Angeles. (He hates Americans and when he toured the US he discovered to his horror he liked the people, although he was determined not to.)
"I am horrible and curmudgeonly,'' he said agreeably (like he was reading my mind).
Mr Bennett's next book will be about Dubai, a country he didn't particularly want to go to but his publisher thought it might be a good idea because not many books have been written on Dubai recently.
He visited Dubai for six weeks at the beginning of this year and found it "fascinating. I didn't particularly like it but it was bloody fascinating''.
He does not want to give away the plot to his book on Dubai and thinks it might be his last travel book.
Nearing the end of our chat, we talk about the newspaper industry.
Mr Bennett doesn't like sourcing his news from the internet. People have been saying newspaper won't last since television was invented but he doesn't believe it, he says.
He loves his newspaper. He likes that it is "completely valueless'', that he can use it to wrap things in, take to the toilet, or lose.
"It's a little present for me, every morning,'' he said.
He notes the photograph the Otago Daily Times uses of him makes him look "curmudgeonly and toothless'' and asks me to do something about it (see above).
Then he's off, to Mt Aspiring College, to talk to an economics class of all things.
He's terrified, he says. He has no idea what to talk about.
