4. Define vampire. Are they real? Do you know any? What do you think about people drinking each other's blood?

Defining a Vampire is like trying to hook frogspawn out of a muddy pond with a liquorice stick wearing oversize wellies. Everybody has their own ideas. I even had someone write to me after the Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers came out to tell me that he had evidence that there was a Vampire living in his block of flats. The evidence turned out to be that the bloke worked nights and suffered from halitosis. Then there's Vlad
Licina of the Dark Theatre. In a book I read recently it was claimed that Vlad drank human blood on a regular basis. Last year Vlad was in London and we did the tourist bit together - Tower of London, Hampton Court etc, and if he's a Vampire then I'm all for them. I recently had a conversation with my doctor on the subject of human blood drinking - as you do - and his response was to lend me a book on Vampirism as seen through the Hippocratic Oath. It didn't mention Bela Lugosi once and it discounted any idea that there were people driven to drink blood as a way of life. And this in spite of the well established case of the Austrian equivalent of Royal Court of
Surgeons attesting to having been present when a Vampire was disinterred. Of course it was a few years ago. 1375 if my memory serves me correct. But what's a few years between colleagues?