Ummmm...

...we will need to be finding someone new to rip off now. For St Hunter is dead, and has single-handedly overloaded the servers of the Aspen Times. Probably his least significant legacy, but a key one, given how much wailing and gnashing his passing has inspired at the blogs. Funny, abusive and righteous are hard acts to combine, and to entertain while cobbling your notes together is what every journalist dream of.

But we need to make a few corrections. Read the Hells Angels book today, and you'll be struck by how straight it's written, at least to start with. The screaming, careering mess of Fear And Loathing... came later. And he was rather fond of recycling stories, especially the Nixon ones. And he was a mess. And he wasn't very nice to women.

And, and, and...he was flipping angry at right-winng nutjobs, could not be destroyed by pharmaceutical means, and was our companion while the lovely happy sixties, all turned to sh*t. But he decided that a bullet in the brain was better than a couple of decades of eating avocadoes. What use is a flair for documenting the Inner Pimp, in politics or in sports, when all of the pimps' wares are fully on display?