Martin Amis invisible in Manchester

Martin Amis, the bestselling author of Money and London Fields, may still be one the biggest beasts in British fiction, but he does not appear to have made much of an impression at Manchester University, where he is paid £3,000 an hour to be the Professor of Creative Writing.

A survey carried out by Student Direct, the company that offers undergraduate loans and banking services, asked students to put names to the faces of a line-up of the university's prominent figures. Amis, 59, did not fare well: only 12 per cent had a clue who he was.

His apparent invisibility is likely to serve as more grist to the mill to his critics on the campus, who are said to be less than pleased that he is paid £80,000 per year for only 28 hours work. It doesn't help either that under the terms of his contract he doesn't have to mark papers on the post-graduate course and, unlike the other academics, his performance is not subject to assessment.
 
As for the poll, particularly galling will be the fact that the comic writer Ben Elton, hardly a literary heavyweight, beat him roundly, scoring 18 per cent. On the other hand, Elton is an alumnus of the university and, anyway, of the 200 students polled, 116 did not recognise any of the faces put before them. ·