Writers' Rooms: Eric Blair

My routine is pretty unchanging from day to day. I get up late, and only get to work at about 11 a.m. But the advantage of being a writer and an elephant is that you don't have to account for yourself to other people all the time.

There's not much space in my study, really, but I don't complain. The other elephants who I share the enclosure with are always doing boring repetitive rocking motions and wandering about like lost fools. I just get down to work. The place where I go to the toilet is just out of the picture. It's great to have everything I need close by. I have a photo of my mother on the rocks in the centre.

I often have people visit me. Bernard Crick, George Orwell's biographer, said Orwell hadn't actually shot an elephant in Burma as he claimed in the essay "Shooting an Elephant". I wrote to him to confirm that Orwell had just imprisoned me and used me to write critical essays and novels. He visited me, an exciting event, but I trampled him accidentally to death.

And when I was part of the London Literary World I used to visit other peoples' studies. T. S. Eliot was an unfailing gentleman, as everybody else reports. Best drink and nosh. I'm afraid I rather made a mess of the place. I had suggested we stay outdoors. But he contrived not to notice! He even offered to recite some of the Four Quartets to me. Under the circumstances I could hardly say no. I once tried to trample Clive James on TV, but the interview was cancelled at the last minute. I simply wanted him to appear on Japanese TV.

Now people have begun to recognise me in my own right, which is welcome after a long life. People often ask me: how were you able to launch such penetrating critiques of totalitarian societies? They obviously don't know the saying, "an elephant never forgets". Children also seem to get a great kick out of me. Maybe they've read Animal Farm, which any child could read.

To be honest, I was having a laugh in that book. How could anyone believe that animals could take over a farm and attempt to distribute wealth on an equal basis? You try living on a zoo and still believe that. Animals are disgusting animals, no doubt about it.

But I haven't become conservative in my old age. I'm backing Obama for the US presidential elections. I believe he’s a really good person. He’s smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change. I think we need new voices, new blood. We need to get a whole group out, get a new group in. McCain represents yesterday.

I took the name Eric Blair in Burma because it sounds like elephant. Then Orwell stole my identity and claimed to have shot me dead. He actually had me in his London flat. If that isn't colonialist expropriation, I don't know what is. He was very discriminatory towards elephants. He said I was going through musht when he tried to shoot me. That was a fabrication. That was him. He used to try kneading the breasts of a woman in the bazaar every day, and she was having none of it, as you can imagine.

The other day I took part in an artificial insemination programme. You try to do your bit for the environment. Orwell never had 8 or 9 attractive women all arousing him with their hands at the same time. He would have resented me that. He turned against the empire when he couldn't shoot me. We all like to break the game when we aren't winning.

And his writing! All he could write were third-rate Ezra Pound imagist imitations. He would ask me for suggestions for improvement. I gave him six simple rules and he really resented them. As if I was patronising him. I didn't understand him! I couldn't understand what he was trying to do! He was an artist! He only became successful when he robbed my plain English essays and novels. He tried to change them to vent his hatreds. "The Decline of the Elephant Murder." "Big Elephant is watching you." Luckily for him the editors insisted on changing them back.

Looking back on my life as an elephant, I consider myself fortunate. Nothing to complain about, compared to other people. I will always remember conditions inside the slum housing of Paris and London. They were very cramped and uncomfortable and I don't know how the workers I was with put up with it.

I got the opportunity to move into assisted care here 2 years ago and jumped at it. I'll continue to write here till my dying day.