It’s not that I have anything against dull, derivative, cynically topical as well as emotively-set works of fiction per se: I just don’t like it when these books are confused by people who should know better with the good stuff. The flock of sheep that passes for this country’s literary establishment is deciding whether or not to be concerned that a novella should have been shortlisted for the Booker this year. What it should be concerned about is that the novella in question is written, yet again, by the sensationally middle-of-the road and now unimaginative Ian McEwan – the Teflon Tony of books.

Even if we temporarily ignore the fact that the plot of Enduring Love is about 90 per cent less good and believable than the supposedly pappy equivalent, Stephen King’s Misery; that the Booker-winning Amsterdam was a trawl through what was in the papers the year in which he wrote it; that, if it weren’t for the lure of his admittedly brilliantly rendered sex scenes in most of his work, many of us wouldn’t have got past page four of some of the books he’s written recently – there remains the problem that, although he has powerful friends to defend him in times of strife, the man no longer seems to have an original idea in his head.

Martin Amis dismissed it as a “non-story” but I’m afraid McEwan’s heavy leaning on Lucilla Andrews’s memoir, No Time For Romance, in his 2002 novel, Atonement, hammered the final nail into the coffin for me. We don’t have space here to reproduce both versions, but, just to refresh your memories, you might like to spend five seconds playing Spot The Difference between this line from Andrews’s 1977 original: “Our ‘nursing’ seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violent on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains,” and the sentence that McEwan seems to have conjured up from thin air for Atonement: “In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut and painted lead lotion on a bruise.”

True, McEwan acknowledged Andrews’s influence in the credits; true, he has spoken openly about his debt to her on assorted radio programmes and literary talks.

But remember that McEwan never thought to acknowledge personally and satisfactorily his heavy debt to her: Andrews only found out about the link on her deathbed when a PhD student remarked on it. A few days before she died, Andrews told her agent that she intended to “bury the hatchet – and mark the spot” but, of course, she never got round to it.

One meticulous bookworm has worked out that 335 words of Andrews’s original text wound up in Atonement in almost the same order – which would force even the most ardent supporters of the right of an author to draw inspiration from others to think hard about what constitutes “inspiration”. McEwan’s woolly defence – which you’ll find on the internet – admits that he “drew on the scenes she described”.

Call it “borrowing” or “being in two places at once”, as lesser novelists are wont to do, but here we’ll call it by its true name – which is Being All Out Of Ideas.

At the time of the non-scandal, an incensed coterie of high-profile novelists jumped to McEwan’s defence – Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Zadie Smith and Martin Amis among them. Yes, Atonement’s plotline was McEwan’s own but I suspect they were doing their friend a favour. Had he been less of a friend, or less established, or published by somebody else (McEwan, Amis and Pynchon are all Jonathan Cape authors) their defence of him might not have been so swift and vigorous.

In an unrelated literary talk, Amis once said that the mark of a good novelist is the number of younger novelists who come a cropper in their attempts at imitation. Lots of young writers have tried and failed to copy Amis or Rushdie or, before them, Joyce. (Amis has now resorted, some say, to laboriously trying to rip off the prose style that once flowed so effortlessly from his pen when he was younger.) But McEwan? In a blind test would anyone even recognise his writing? If McEwan does win the Booker with On Chesil Beach, does that mean that this perfectly pleasant but inconsequential pamphlet about nothing is the best we have to offer?

I dearly hope not. It’s been ages since I came across a book by a British writer that contained even one tenth of the vigour and vim that defined McEwan’s early work – although this weekend will be devoted to optimistically ploughing through the rest of this year’s Booker, unusually varied, long-list.

There is no doubt that, in his prime, McEwan’s writing was exciting and transgressive. But where are these exciting and transgressive voices now? Where are the books that actually matter? Meanwhile our literary rivals across the globe are churning out some fantastic stuff: I look forward to Nathan Englander’s first novel; Michael Ondaatje’s forthcoming novel, Divisadero, is supposed to be absolutely terrific – and takes place far away from the parochial landscapes that many of our home-grown authors inhabit.

I loved McEwan’s First Love, Last Rights. His novella, The Cement Garden, was thrilling enough that perhaps we can turn a blind eye to the similarities between it and Julian Gloag’s Our Mother’s House (both are about children whose mothers die of wasting diseases and dispose of the bodies and continue living as a family). But in an era of rampant banality in both the media and the West End, isn’t it about time for someone to stick up for original ideas?

Somebody give McEwan a lifetime achievement award so that we can delve further into the slush pile and grab hold of something that really means something.

An ungentlemanly, tacky thing to do?

Ingrid Tarrant, wife of the DJ and television personality, Chris, has finally dished the dirt on her marriage to her love rat of 16 years. In an interview headlined “Tarrant was a clumsy lover who couldn’t get it up and reeked of fish”, she gets her own back on the man who may or may not have said that he had an affair behind his wife’s back because she had imposed a seven-year sex ban.

Ingrid says that she had no choice but to dredge up every last detail about her husband’s filth-encrusted hands and faulty penis because implying obliquely that his wife may not have been up for sex was “a tacky, ungentlemanly thing to do”. I’m not sure it’s ever justified to tell the whole world about your partner’s copulatory style or reminisce sourly about their repulsive fingernails, but it’s what some women tend to do. Men, to their credit, tend not to. But let’s imagine for one moment they did. How would that equivalent tabloid headline read? “I Left My Wife Because She Was As Springy And Well-Lubricated As An Old Sock”. Or, “I Went Off Her Because After She Went Through The Menopause She Started Smelling of My Grandmother”. Or, “Once She Hit Fifty Her Facial Hair Became Out Of Control”. This, after all, is as much of a reality of ageing for some women as erectile dysfunction is for men – except that women are still protected from the truth by an instinctive male chivalry.

If you’re going to be a bird, don’t be chicken

In yet another snapshot of our complicated relationship with food, battery-reared chickens go on sale in Asda at £2 each. Meanwhile, 18 fireman, three fire engines and a dinghy squad race to save a duck stuck between sluices near Earlswood in the West Midlands. Later that day, three fire crews abseil down a roof shaft to save a trapped seagull in Gloucester city centre.

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