Age: 40
Job description: Misunderstood genius; greatest living author in the English language, etc, etc.
Says who? Erm, Jeanette Winterson. A typical self-analysis from the author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: "No one working in the English language now comes close to my exuberance, my passion, my fidelity to words."
Another piercingly objective insight, please: "I am the only true heir to Virginia Woolf," says Jeanette, who once provided sexual services to married Kensington ladies in return for pieces of crockery.
Sorry I asked. As are the many critics who've felt the blistering heat of Winterson's rage for daring to point out that Oranges has been followed by a fair few lemons.
A sensitive soul, is she? When journalist Nicci Gerrard penned a less than adulatory profile in 1994, Winterson and partner Peggy Reynolds stormed to her home while she was hosting a dinner party and vented their spleens.
And who's offended her now? The true heir of Virginia Woolf has launched a legal action against Mark Hogarth, a Cambridge don who has bought the internet address
www.jeanettewinterson.com.
Because he wanted to preserve her towering literary reputation online? "To make money, basically," Hogarth reportedly told her. He's bought more than 130 others - including ianmcewan.com, iainbanks.com, and joannatrollope.com - and plans to release some of them in return for 3% of gross book earnings.
Has she doorstepped him yet? Not quite. "I can't wait for the polite round of exchanges to harden. I just want to chase him around the common," she says. For the time being she's filed a complaint with Icann, which regulates net names.
Not to be confused with: Nicholas Winterton; God; Virginia Woolf (of whom, as I may have mentioned, she is the only true heir).
Don't say: "Ah, Jeanette. You must be calling about Pass Notes. Why don't you come in and have a cup of tea?"
