DBC Pierre: He’s debt free!

So remember back when Peter Finlay (aka Mr Pierre) won the Booker Prize last year for VERNON GOD LITTLE? Yes it seems like a million years ago to you as well, but anyway, it turned out he had a rather sordid past and had stolen scads of money from his landlord to buy drugs and stuff. The good news is that 8 months on, he’s paid the whole thing off:

The writer, 43, says that, most importantly, Robert Lenton, the American artist whose Spanish home Pierre sold, has been fully reimbursed and their friendship restored.

“Bobby [Lenton] got the Booker cheque straight away and now we’re in touch and we still chat,” he said.

“Publishing doesn’t really pay you a monthly wage, but all the important [debts] are done. This should be my last month in the red, at least in terms of my past.

“Then I can look at regular stuff like getting a mortgage. At the moment, I’ve got an abandoned house that still doesn’t have a front door.”

Hmm. In the meantime, he writes:

A second novel, The Miller’s Broken English, is being completed and he is already overflowing with ideas for his third, which he intends to be a story of decadence. “I’ve found a way to write a bannable book but not have it banned. It’s been a while since anyone did a good decadent novel. It would be about the most extraordinary wealthy and useless child ever raised and his insatiable desires.”

Oh, goody. I can hardly wait.