Campness and cruelty

David Sedaris, satirist and ‘pocket gay’, talks to about litter mania, the perils of PC, and making Diana jokes.

‘Ihave found a pile of spanking magazines, and a wax dildo with the tip bitten off – you could see the teeth marks. I find an amazing amount of sex trash,’’ says David Sedaris, proudly recounting the discarded treasures he has come across in the bushes and verges of West Sussex.

His boyish enthusiasm – ‘‘I’m out there all the time; my goal is to find a body’’ – kind of answered the question I’ve always had about him: is David Sedaris really a bit nutty or is it just writerly exaggeration for comic effect? If you have read Sedaris’s humorous essays or heard his readings on BBC’s Radio 4 (think Alan Bennett’s naughtier American nephew), you’ll know he’s a funny one, in both senses of the word. Calypso, his superb new collection of autobiographical tales, reinforces that. Particularly the title essay about his desire to feed his lipoma – a harmless fatty tumour – to a snapping turtle of his acquaintance who lives in a pond. It has a big tumour on its head, hence his fondness for this particular reptile.

So are his obsessions (his Fitbit walking mania, his litter-picking frenzies) or his unusual flights of fancy just comedic overdosing? Well, I’m happy to report after meeting the 61-year-author at his home – a lovely, large 18th-century cottage, near Pulborough, 50 miles southwest of London in deepest, comfiest West Sussex – that he is indeed a bona fide eccentric. His sitting room has a fine example of kitsch Victoriana taxidermy, a Walter Potter diorama of two squirrels duelling. It’s that kind of place. Take the litter-picking. Horsham district council named a rubbish truck in his honour (beat that, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro). Indeed, when I met him he was just back for three days from a US book tour (40 cities in 42 days) and was about to jet off again. Still, he squeezed in a nocturnal rubbish-picking session; his boyfriend of 25 years, Hugh