The temperature soared above 40 degrees on Thursday, and at some points I felt like I was being fried alive. Still, it was an opportunity to top up the tan. Or rather get one at all.

I had finished reading my latest book, and so I went into Vegas in search of a shop to buy another. It wasn't until I had been walking for over an hour and had visited three shopping malls that I found somewhere which actually sold bloody books. Given that this all took place in probably the hottest temperatures I had ever experienced, I wasn't best pleased. I must have passed hundreds and hundreds of shops, but there were no book stores. If I wanted a handbag or a new pair of shoes, I would have been laughing. At one point I thought I was going to pass out from heat stroke, and so I went into a hotel to ask someone where the nearest book shop was. By the look on the face of the woman I spoke to you would have thought I'd asked if I could have a feel of her tits. Evidently the visitors to Las Vegas are too busy gratifying every possible desire to do something conventional like read. Eventually I found a small shop, bought one of Al Gore's books and returned to the pool side of my hotel.

It was ironic that, while I was here, the British government announced it was going to review plans to create Vegas style 'super casinos' back home. The principal argument in favour of these venues has been that hell holes deemed beyond redemption would be regenerated so long as enough slot machines were installed. If you look at Vegas, it is undeniably a city booming at an incredible rate. More super resorts are springing up, more and more visitors keep coming and its population has doubled every decade since the 1940s. To attribute all of that to casinos, and to think this could somehow be replicated in places like Margate, misses the point entirely. Gambling is what started the Vegas phenomenon when it was little more than a tiny town in the middle of the Nevada desert. It remains what it is infamous for, but it is not what makes it so popular. Couples don't come here on honeymoon to spend all day playing poker. People flock to this place because it has thousands of decent bars and restaurants, you can shop in endless malls and pick up designer gear for a fraction of the price elsewhere and if that all gets a bit tiring you can relax in perfect sunshine by the pool. You wouldn't be able to do any of that in fucking Blackpool or wherever else after you've finished playing the pokie machines, so enough of all this bollocks about casinos regenerating dumps. All a casino in these places would do is provide a few more jobs paying the minimum wage, suck a whole section of the local population into gambling and attract endless amounts of wankers on stag weekends.