I don't think about it like that. I just write the story. I usually don't know if it's going to seem to be funny. The truth about life,' he goes on, 'is that people often don't behave with dignity. They do get confused.
Events turn out to be confusing.
People don't always behave with the gravitas one might like them to behave with. It's rather a relief that people aren't efficient machines. At the centre of Headlong is an art historian trying to come to terms with the moral dilemmas posed by the authentification of a lost masterpiece, possibly a Bruegel. I suggest that Martin Clay, who has not been universally applauded in the literary press, is a bit of a cold fish and that while Frayn's work as a whole is superlative in its effortless mastery of ideas, for instance his brilliant play Copenhagen, the messier parts of life, like emotions, are not treated with the same aplomb. My suggestion about the awkwardness of the emotions in Frayn's work seems to have touched a nerve.