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Interview [published March 1997]
P.J. O’Rourke: Sex, Drugs, O’Rourke And Roll
Chris Mitchell encounters the age and guile of political satirist P.J. O’Rourke
The American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke recently
published Age And Guile, which gathers together
previously uncollected material spanning his 25 years
of journalism. P.J. has built his merciless literary
reputation on three things: irritating American liberals,
abusing chemicals and visiting every warzone in the
world. Usually all at the same time. As he puts it, “I
deal with curses of Western society of the past 200
years starting with the French Revolution. I don’t start
with the American Revolution for the simple reason it
wasn’t a revolution. It was some form of parliamentary
disagreement, who’s in charge here, sort of thing.”
Meeting P.J. O’Rourke in real life, however, is somewhat
different. Impeccably courteous and good humoured,
the only vice he displayed in my presence was
smoking an enormous Havana cigar. I asked him what
he thought of this difference between the public and the
private P.J. “I’m 48 years old. I even had a middle-aged
dream last night. I dreamt I had a 15-year-old mistress.
No sex, not even touching. She was just my mistress.
And I knew I was middle aged because when I woke
up, I was almost glad it was just a dream … I’ve always
BUY P.J. O’Rourke books online from and
exaggerated that boyo stuff a little bit, just because it’s
fun. I’ve always thought it very important to have a
fool in your writing, and here’s one that’s always handy
and never sues. I once lived harder than I do now. I
was blessed with a self-limiting body. Drink too much,
stay up too late, take too many drugs, scramble after
too many 16-year-old girls – I get ill. And the people
who didn’t get ill – are dead…”
So you’ve never tried to keep pace pharmaceutically
with Hunter S. Thompson, your long-time friend and
political sparring partner? Medical textbooks are being
written about that man’s constitution… “Hunter’s very
shy. People don’t really understand that. He has to get
loaded to deal with strangers, he can’t do it otherwise.
He takes on that gonzoid persona as a kind of armour
against the world. I watch other people gonzoing
around, I don’t so much do it myself. Hunter’s very
funny if you know him, because after he’s done all
those appalling things, wrecking all the furniture and
scaring everyone out of the room and terrorising the
place, he turns round and says, ‘Do you think they were
upset? Did I embarrass anyone?’ ‘No, you just set fire
389
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