Naipaul to Hay:
you’re all ugly

Some say the Hay Literary Festival is not what it was and is becoming too populist: this year's star turns included Cherie Blair, Jeremy Clarkson and the Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins. Now the prickly Nobel laureate VS Naipaul (pictured) has spoken out, claiming that it is time the annual jamboree was killed off.

"These things are unimportant and meaningless," says Sir Vidia of the festival, which comes to a close this weekend. "Publishing has gone down in quality so much in recent years. The problem is that there is no literary life any more because there are quite simply no more great writers."

Sir Vidia, 75, who won the Nobel in 2001, added that the 100,000-plus people who attend Hay were all "incredibly ugly". His curmudgeonly comments, made on Wednesday evening at a party to launch the new political magazine Standpoint, did not go down well with his wife, Nadira. On hearing them, she said: "Oh, Vidia, please shut up. Your big mouth has already got us into enough trouble."