Some critical plaudits that my latest book has not yet received, along the lines of Groucho:

“This book does for Daoism”—Nelson Mandela

“The best Christmas gift since Dame Kiri Sings the Sex Pistols’ Greatest Hits by Candlelight” *—Noam Chomsky

“Of all the books about Daoism I have ever read, this is one of them”—the Dalai Lama

“Beneath this book’s jocular surface there lies an even more superficial message”—Paris Hilton

“A rip-roaring bawdy swaggering outrageous romp, cutting a picaresque swathe through… Oh just buy it OK?”—Brian Sewell
[can we get “smorgasbord” in there somewhere?—Ed.]

“A potent, nay heady, brew of the arcane and the inane”—David Blunkett

“A glowing paean to the indomitability of the terylene trouser”—George W. Bush

“If you only read one book about Daoism, then you must have a life”—Peter Stringfellow

“Right up there with G. Jarring’s classic Matters of ethnological interest in Swedish missionary reports from Southern Sinkiang, published in Lund by the no less wacky Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet, Scripta Minora, Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Ludensis, 1979–80: IV”—Andy Kershaw

For more clichés of blurb-writing, see here. At a tangent, I’m also fond of this real comment:

Excuse me, but we are very lucky that your violin was broken

—a statement with which many of my orchestral colleagues would concur.

* Here I’ve embellished an old Private eye headline: