"I work like the caricature of an American in that I’m never not working. It’s very embarrassing actually,” he says. When he wrote his PhD, he spent weeks on end at a desk equipped with a bag of potatoes and a microwave. When he felt hungry, he would pop a spud on for a few minutes, and scoff it without leaving his typewriter. “I’m not a foodie. As a result I have all this extra time. My friends who are foodies lose a lot of time in the kitchen."