Frankly, this recent profile of Canongate Publisher Jamie Byng strikes me as ranking pretty high on the absurdity scale. It could be how Joel Rickett wrote it up -- what else to make of gems like these?

A few years ago, Byng might have celebrated with a vodka or a swift line of cocaine. Now he brews up a pot of fresh mint tea. His second wife, American literary agent Elizabeth Sheinkman, comes down from her roof-terrace office on the way to yoga class; the newly-married pair spent Christmas 2004 on retreat in India.

"I am mellowing out," he admits. "I'm a little older [36] and a little wiser." The infamous all-night sessions are fewer and further between: "Part of the trouble was that I had huge levels of endurance, so I could burn the candle at both ends and blowtorch it in the middle. I realised that it was doing damage to me and I'd be better to slow it down."

Or this:

He's vexed over how to nurture new literary talent in a risk-averse climate. "From September onwards you're fucked if you're publishing an unknown writer--you're not going to get any retail support."

But he remains relentlessly upbeat. "I still have the same feeling I had in 1994, which is that if I mess this up I'll have squandered the best opportunity of my life. I feel more excited and energised by the business than ever before. A lot of the right ingredients are there--I just hope we continue to get some luck, because we fucking need it."

And, despite a calmer lifestyle, he vows to continue to use his personal notoriety to Canongate's benefit: "It's weird being so synonymous with a business. But the media like to focus on one person, so it is something we can use to our advantage--it has helped Canongate get a greater profile than it maybe deserves on size."

Granted, I guess Byng's faux-nobility and Morgan Entrenkin poster-boy status makes him an easy target, but one has to wonder if that mint tea he's drinking isn't spiked with something...