It's a tense time for the contestants in GQ's Men of the Year awards, and for some of them the pressure is starting to show

Fourth Estate authors, you have your orders. Victoria Barnsley this week hailed Quentin Tarantino's newly acquired Kill Bill as "exactly the kind of edgy, exciting publishing I want to do more of. It's taking the company in the right direction".

The Loafer always looks forward to the Encore prize, which congratulates those who haven't made a complete hash of their second novel

· Exuberance is one thing, but you can take it too far. In the love-in between Tony Parsons and HarperCollins, with whom he has just signed a new contract for two books and a "seven-figure" advance, there was some ripe old language being used. If HC are pleased with the deal, then TP is ecstatic: they are the "kind of publisher that every writer dreams of", who made "MY books OUR books. They have believed in me from day one and I believe in them." Not only that, but "the bestseller lists of the future are waiting for HarperCollins and Tony Parsons". You know what they say about people who refer to themselves in the third person (diarists excepted).

The party to celebrate Mo Mowlam's new book, Momentum, has run into problems of an unexpectedly political nature

Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway make guest appearances in the fictional memoirs of writer Logan Mountstuart, but the Loafer can't help feeling that William Boyd has managed a couple of more contemporary digs.

US publishers anxious about who will plug their products now Oprah has pulled her on-air book club have received a modicum of reassurance

With much mutual distaste, man of letters Gore Vidal and man about town Dominick Dunne have clashed on the pages of Vanity Fair

And another happy ending, this time for the Poetry Society, who last week found themselves unexpectedly booted out of their own website.

The Poetry Society website has disappeared, it emerged on Thursday. Where before there were pages of useful information about contemporary poetry, now there's online gambling, products for poor skin and impotence, "amazing financial services" and corporate gifts.

At last, the arcane workings of the Impac Award, this year brought to us in euros - 100,000 of them - finally become clear

When Gyles Brandreth took the stage to present the first of 20 gongs at the British Book Awards, or "Nibbies", the Loafer settled in behind a large glass of wine and thought longingly of cocoa and slippers

She screeched to a halt just as two football-goers stepped blithely on to a zebra crossing. The pedestrians lucky to escape with their lives? Melvyn Bragg and Howard Jacobson

The greatest advert for a cup of tea and an early night since George Best, professional addict and enfant terrible Elizabeth Wurtzel has been at it again

A good time was had by all at the launch party for The Dedalus Book of Absinthe by Phil Baker - not least because the author arrived with a Gladstone bag in which clinked a dozen bottles of the stuff

"There's women and there's female liberationists. It's like the difference between black jazz and the Mau Mau," riffed the grizzled contrarian...

Reports that Stephen King, the Sultan of Shock, is hanging up his pen, may come as a surprise...

Craig Raine interviewed Ian McEwan and received this unusual observation: "Falling in love whilst you are making love must be the ultimate human experience. It's better than skiing. Craig skis eight times a year."

It's not every week that the Loafer's social calendar includes dinner with a prime minister...

The flood of soon-to- be-redundant players from Coronation Street hoping that there is life after soap opera will no doubt be cheered by news that one of their number is to tell all in a new memoir