It was the Newsnight debate which, according to actor Matthew Perry, almost descended into a bar-room brawl. In an interview this weekend, the Friends star and post-addiction poster boy revealed that when confronted last year by columnist Peter Hitchens’s claim that all addiction is a “fantasy”, he was so incensed that “I almost got up and hit him on national television. He happens to be one of the few people I could beat up.”
Never one to duck out of a (non-physical) confrontation, Hitchens has taken to his blog to punch right back. “I am not sure what he seeks to prove by revealing this desire,” writes a bemused Hitch, “or by saying that I am one of the few people he could beat up. I am not especially distressed to admit that he may well be right. I am 62 and he is 44, which, alas, inevitably weighs against me. But I suppose it just illustrates that the self-righteous liberal’s reaction to any kind of contrary opinion is instinctively totalitarian.”
