In times past, writers were shabbily dressed, shadowy types surrounded by dirty coffee cups and highballs with sticky residues of evaporated whisky. It was taken as a given that they were probably homely and shy. They didn't do photo-shoots.

But writers these days are expected to fashion themselves into yet another product for consumption. Women should be fetching; men should either cut a dashing figure or sport a craggy, harrowing visage. Most of all, both sexes are obliged to be, in and of themselves, interesting.

I think the book has to be interesting. Which should free the author to be a big bore. And you know what? I am very, very boring. Take a step back, and virtually nothing about my life merits a second glance. My family is middle-class. I grew up in the American South, but moved to New York and never looked back — dead standard. Then I moved to the UK. So have lots of people. I write novels, but that's my job, and plenty of other folks work hard and well at their jobs without giving interviews about it.

Since I apparently have no right to be dull, my most trifling eccentricities have been trotted out to justify the profiling of this secretly dull person. What is embarrassing is not the details themselves; I'm not ashamed of rarely turning on the central heating, since the future in this country belongs to those who padlock the thermostat set to 5 degrees C. What's embarrassing is any implication that I think these details are interesting.

I cheerfully concede that much of the rubbish about Shriver strewn about the web is all my fault. I'm naturally forthcoming (read: an idiot), and continually forget when sitting down with a pleasant, personable journalist that potentially millions of people are eavesdropping on our conversation. Early in my current book release, I imagined that my having written a novel about weight and food issues meant that I necessarily owed journalists the lowdown on my private diet and exercise habits. Wrong. By the same logic, my previous novel about the perils of American healthcare would have required me to turn over my medical records to the Daily Mail.