Waters is the man of the hour (well, two)

THE first move of a totalitarian regime is to lock up the writers and intellectuals. They came for John Waters in the dead of night. Well, they didn’t, but they might as well have.

It was noon, high noon, when he surrendered to the police, after months on the run. A warrant had been issued for his detention, earlier in the year, but, in the grand tradition of a police state, it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Waters’ writer’s eye had spotted that the warrant was out of date and defective. Clinging to this legal nicety, as the jackboot drew back for another kick, he went on the run.