I think it was a general protest directed against our nagging bourgeois sensibilities. He was going though his anarchist period – he dressed, North London-style, in a donkey jacket with a woollen skull-cap. We were all doing PPE and studying philosophy, and everything was always dressed up with pretentious bollocks.But he didn’t perform well He was holed up with Kant and a syringe. During the final exams, he turned up progressively later and later for each paper.

For the philosophy paper, he walked in half an hour late, very ostentatiously wearing dark glasses, and legend has it that, instead of answering the question on behaviourism, Will drew a cartoon featuring two bald-headed philosophers with beards, one standing behind the other one with a long stick with a carrot on the end The caption read: `Behaviourists feverishly debate’. He got a Third!”Toby Young, ex-editor Modern Review”He’s the Norman Mailer of literary London. Very aggressive – particularly when he’s under the influence.We were having a heated discussion in Green Street about whether or not it was foolish of Martin Amis to spend pounds 20,000 having his teeth done. I was arguing that it was an act of vanity which didn’t fit very well with Amis’s generally sardonic persona. Self became very agitated and said I had no idea what it was like for people born before systematic fluoridisation, then attempted to remove my own teeth with his fists.First time I met him, I thought he’d invented his name to sound like an Amis character. He came to see me, pre-novels, and said he was writing advertising copy or working for the electricity board or something – some very tedious job He struck me that he’d swallowed a dictionary.

I thought `If I had an hour to spare, I might try and work out what he’s just said’.He surrounds himself with sycophants who share his high opinion of himself Most of his close friends have their tongues up his arse. You’ll sit there and someone will describe him as the most important writer of the late 20th century, and Self laps it up.I remember once witnessing Self accusing [literary journalist] Tom Shone, who’d slept with two girls after Will had slept with them because Shone had an obsession with him. He felt Tom couldn’t have any other motivation to sleep with these very attractive girls other than to sexually undermine him. The man’s astonishly egocentric.”Matthew Freud, publicist”We first met in puberty when we were 12 or 13 and spent holidays in Suffolk.