A very important role actually, I was just acting, you know, getting into the role," I mumbled."Doing a remake of Taxi Driver are we? What are you playing, the under-age hooker?" She was laughing again."How do you know about films and stuff?" I asked despite myself."The farmer on Poacher's Hill has his telly by the window so we always pop along on Fridays and watch a film through his window. We saw Pretty Woman last night, that Richard Gere, I'd give him one." The cow's eyes widened into big dreamy saucers."I've got to go now," I said."Off to the pub are we?" said the cow."No, I've just got... When I first moved here there was a big herd that hung out in the field on the other side of my old garden wall. I remember not being that surprised when one of them started chatting one afternoon. I think that, at the time, I was finding the whole moving to the country thing so weird that this was just one more interesting local quirk Not that they talk to just anyone, mind. I would rather eat my own intestines than see that pile of dead herrings' heads on the long list." Paraffin through the door, that's what. Do Booker judges block each other's favoured novels? Yes, it's the nature of the beast.

At least two of my fellow judges will blame me for not seeing an impassioned choice higher up the pecking order. But everyone has equal hold over each other; if one judge breaks ranks, they run the risk of another telling the world, "He said that Martin Amis smells and A S Byatt's a sad loser."John Sutherland should be praised, however, for raising one book prize shibboleth that deserves more public debate. How much of a novel do you need to read before using its pages as cat litter? My Booker task was not helped by my husband idly reading the first page of a novel and saying, "This one's obviously crap - it starts with a hanging clause."Despite this, I did turn every page of every book lest a scary lesbian discovered that I hadn't read the moving bit where Cynthia kisses Beryl And I think that's the right approach. Only this week I learnt that another judge on another prestigious book prize panel, according to a friend of a friend of my nan, so it must be true, hadn't finished The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, the novel that won this year's Booker Prize.

This book's accumulative power resides in the final pages and the most beautifully judged ending of any novel for many a long year.In my view, if you can't finish a book that's seriously in contention, you don't deserve the judge's fee. So, my advice to putative judges of scandal-ridden literary prizes is: do read the books Particularly if they're by crazy stone-throwing lesbians.. The cows have started talking to me again This isn't a good sign. It's bad enough that all the bastarding bastards outside the Booker panel take a pop without your fellow judges kneecapping you. At least Tonkin and his colleagues can take solace from the fact that apparently their comments were reported inaccurately.I live in dread that my own adjudicating thoughts will be reported word for word. Screw the friends' books you liked - what about mates' novels you detested? What if an acquaintance finds out that you said, "I don't care if she's a lesbian.