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Independent, The (London), Sep 18, 2003 by Katy Guest
Jacobson set to thrash Amis - at ping-pong
A ping-pong craze is hitting literary London thanks to Nigella Lawson, who has just bought a table and has been signing up potential talent at parties. Martin Amis has already agreed to join, and my colleague Howard Jacobson, the author of the ping-pong-heavy The Mighty Walzer, is naturally on board. "I am a table tennis fanatic," he tells me. "I was very good and I need to show people that I am very good. Maybe they bought the table as an excuse to get me over to their house." Jacobson is itching to get his hands back on a bat. "I think I can beat any writer," he says. "I challenged Steven Berkoff to a match because of something he wrote about me in The Independent. He was gracious, but you wouldn't have wanted to see the game."
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