I also do Wallace Arnold in the Independent on Sunday. He's the opposite of Bel Littlejohn, very smug and worldly - a kind of Garrick Club figure. In Private Eye I do the diary of a different person each week. I've just done Paul Theroux. Then I do a column as me in the Daily Telegraph, although that often ends up as a parody of myself.
All columnists are parodies of themselves in the end, especially the serious ones.
That happens to anyone who's been pretending to have serious opinions three times a week for thirty years. No truly serious person has more than about four definite opinions in their life. The easiest ones are Bel Littlejohn and Wallace Arnold, because I've got the voice and all I have to do is apply it. The most difficult is the Private Eye diary because I'm doing a different person every time. If I'm doing Paul Theroux it has to sound as if it might really be him.