The Lord and the giggling schoolgirls

I never thought I would ever witness a scene where a 60+ gentleman reduced whole gaggles of schoolgirls into giggling wrecks. But Lord Archer managed this somewhat questionable feat. But I'm getting ahead of my story (probably because as the man himself would say I've not been blessed with god-given storytelling talent. I can play the violin though.)
Last saturday evening found me at the Nungambakkam branch of Landmark (incidentally my favourite branch; my 'local' in fact) for the Jeffrey Archer signing session. Otherwise titled 'How I Made Millions Writing Mostly Pot-boiler Paperbacks and Hope to Make Some More in New Emerging Markets Like India'. But I shouldnt be mean. Lord Archer was punctual, witty, entertaining and more than a little smug. There must have been about 150 people all told at Landmark that day and from the minute he entered, he has us eating out of the palm of his hand. He spoke about why he took up writing (financial difficulties), how he slowly learned about the way publishing works (his latest book went through 17 drafts), the trouble he had promoting his book in America, how he writes (his day seems to be a time-and-motion study, alternating between two hours of work and two hours of play), his fabulous homes in Cambridgeshire. London and Majorca and his latest discovery - RK Narayan. Now to those schoolgirls. The audience strangely enough seemed to be composed almost entirely of school/college students and older (60+) people. Hardly anyone my age. And for some reason these schoolgirls seemed to find him adorable. He would hardly finish a sentence before a chorus of 'so cute!' assailed my ears. Maybe this is their compensation for lack of rock concerts and other such entertainments in Madras. Anyway, after the talk there was a Q&A session, which produced astonishing gems like 'Your characters are so well drawn. Where do you get the inspiration for them?' and 'Have you ever based any of your characters on Indian politicians?'. There's no accounting for people's though processes.
After this, Lord Archer asked us to form an orderly 'sensible' queue and approach him with the title page of the book open (so as to save him time). I didnt feel up to braving the schoolgirls, so I quietly slipped away to find a cool corner (the airconditioning in Landmark being unable to deal with the adulatory throng).
My sister says 'Prisoner of Birth' is quite good. So maybe those 17 drafts and 1000 hours did pay off for Jeffrey Archer after all.