Philip Hensher talks to Nione Meakin about his admiration for Charles Dickens, playing Saint-Saëns at his wedding and why he can’t help but love American teen comedies. Philip Hensher is a writer whose latest novel, King Of The Badgers, was published last month. He is also a columnist and critic for newspapers including The Guardian and The Independent and teaches creative writing at the University of Exeter. In 2006, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential LGBT people in Britain.

How would you describe King Of The Badgers?

It’s a modern-day Cranford about the tensions and excitements that erupt in a small town after a traumatic crime. It’s a big, crowded, saucy novel about the way we live now.

You’re appearing at this year’s Brighton Festival. Do you have any links or associations with the city?

Oh my days, yes. But apart from the sunny bank holidays and the dirty weekends, there was a fantastic afternoon with my friend Lynne Truss on the pier.

A palmreader told my fortune with unnerving accuracy and I utterly thrashed Lynne at the Donkey Derby.

Which writer do you most admire? And why...

Charles Dickens. Because he’s full of beans and he never stops making you laugh. I reckon, in his life’s work, he created enough characters to populate a middle-sized English town – I often like to think of that town, with Madame Defarge playing the piano at Prince Turveydrop’s dance school.

Which TV programme could you not live without and why?

It’s got to be Come Dine With Me – the most English television programme ever.

Do you remember the first record you bought – what was it, and where did you buy it?

A 45 of A Windmill In Old Amsterdam in 1969 from the Woolworths in New Malden high street.

I can sing it in made-up Dutch nowadays – “Da woor een mus...”

Tell us about any guilty pleasures lurking in your CD or film collections – something you know is a bit naff but you can’t help yourself.

Lots of American teen comedies. In my view, Mean Girls is a flawless masterpiece and Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion is ideal comfort-viewing.

Favourite film... and why?

Visconti’s The Leopard for Claudia Cardinale alone. That grand melancholy splendour is just irresistible. It has the knack of making you think, while it’s going on, that all films ought to contain an hour-long segment at a ball in a golden baroque palace.

Favourite book...

and why?

Impossible question for a novelist.

Perhaps this morning, Vanity Fair – I love a truly cynical, wide-ranging, funny novel about society and Thackeray always makes me laugh. But tomorrow it might be Proust, or Henry Green. It would be a dull reader that didn’t shift his preferences wilfully and for no very good reason.

Is there a song or individual piece of music you always come back to?

Saint-Saëns Mon Coeur S’Ouvre A Ta Voix from Samson And Delilah. We had it at our wedding and it just reminds me of a very happy day (and 40 gays in tears, too).

What are you reading at the moment?

Alan Hollinghurst’s wonderful new novel, The Stranger’s Child. He’s my pal but I do think it’s completely sublime.

Tell me about a theatre experience that sticks in your memory...

An unforgettable King Lear at Stratford in 1982 with Michael Gambon and Antony Sher as the fool. It was so good that I’ve actually never seen the play since.

Is there a book that made you want to become an author?

I guess there were two, each with a voice you could listen to forever. One was Nancy Mitford’s Love In A Cold Climate and the other was Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Sayings.

When a book grabs you in the music of its first couple of sentences, you can’t help wondering how it’s done.

If you get a spare 30 minutes, how are you most likely to spend it?

With my nose in a book. Even now, my mother is apt to say, “If you’re not doing anything...” if she finds me like that, as she has been doing for the past 40 years. So I grab every opportunity for a cheeky chapter.