P.J. O'Rourke

Born in Toledo, Ohio, and educated at Miami University in Oxford[?], Ohio and at Johns Hopkins University, O'Rourke wrote for several publications before joining National Lampoon in 1973. A self-confessed hippie during his student days, he underwent a damascene conversion during the 1970s, emerging as a political observer and humorist with a distinct conservative (and anti-liberal) viewpoint.

He went freelance in 1981, producing work for magazines including Playboy, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. He is a proponent of gonzo journalism, his master-work in this genre being 1987's "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink". In 1987 his second book Republican Party Reptile (1986) became a bestseller, and he has since written nine more books (to CEO of the Sofa (2001). As the title Republican Party Reptile implies, his economic and geopolitical views are notably right-wing (which, for some reason, is rare amongst both writers and comedians), but his liberal views on sex and drugs would fit uncomfortably with many of his economic fellow-travellers. O'Rourke has, in fact, sarcastically proposed two other American political parties: one to cater those with his peculiar mixture of views, and another for those who hold the opposite mixture.

His other books are The Bachelor Home Companion (1987), Holidays in Hell (1988), Parliament of Whores (1991), Give War a Chance (1992), All the Trouble in the World (1994), Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1995), The American Spectator's Enemies List (1996), and Eat the Rich (1999).

He is currently the foreign-affairs desk chief for Rolling Stone magazine.