‘I stand here on legs of fire.’

It was after eleven on the morning after the Oscars, and the police had left Bruce alone for almost two hours. They had given him some breakfast, which he had surprised himself by eating, and since then he had been sitting drinking cold coffee (institutional blend) and watching himself on the various morning news shows. He did not watch Coffee Time: that would have been too much to bear. He could just imagine how happy Oliver and Dale would be to see him brought so low after the mugging he had given them the day before. What crocodile tears they would shed over his bloodied remains. No, that he could not watch, although he found no better comfort on any of the numerous other channels that were covering his story.

Over and over again he accepted his Oscar. On ABC and CBS and NBC. On Fox and CNN and about a million other cable channels, there he was, grinning like the idiot he had proved himself to be.

‘I stand here on legs of fire.’

Legs of fire? Horrible. Ugly, mawkish, inept, meaningless.

They loved it.

‘I want to thank you.’ Of course he did. ‘Each and every person in this room. Each and every person in this industry. You nourished me and helped me to touch the stars. Helped me be better than I had any right to be. Better than the best – which is what you all are. What can I say?’

Here Bruce’s voice began to crack slightly, and over a billion people had wondered whether he was going to cry. He didn’t. Even though he had turned into the creature of the mob, he was not so far possessed by them as actually to blub on cue.

‘I am humble,’ he lied, ‘humble and small… but also proud and big, big in heart, big in love, big in head’ (for one eerie moment it had seemed as if an unheardof moment of veracity was about to intrude on the proceedings.