Ian Parker's profile of progressive apostate Christopher Hitchens in this week's New Yorker (which, sadly, is not online) may be the funniest thing to run in the magazine since Adam Gopnik compared the smell of Ground Zero to smoked mozzarella.

Selected highlights:

• "Hitchens wore a pale jacket and a shirt unbuttoned far enough to hint at what one ex-girlfriend has called 'the pelt of the Hitch.'"

• "During the ride, he had discussed with the Pakistani-born taxi-driver the virtues and vices of Benazir Bhutto, while surreptitiously using a bottle of Evian to put out a small but smoky fire he had set in the ashtray."

• "Alexander Cockburn told me, 'Between the two of them, my sympathies were with Mother Teresa. If you were sitting in rags in a gutter in Calcutta, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup?'"

• "Hitchens claims to be unperturbed by his critics... 'People say, "What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.'"

• "Hitchens told me, 'When I was younger—this will surprise you, seeing now the bloated carcass of the Hitch—I used to get quite a bit of attention from men. And, um. It was sometimes quite difficult, especially when you hadn't seen it coming. I was considered reasonably pretty, I suppose, between seventeen and twenty-five. I remember noticing when it stopped, and thinking, Oh dear. What? None of these guys want to sleep with me anymore?'"

• "In 1999, Alexander Cockburn wrote, 'Many's the time male friends had to push Hitchens's mouth, fragrant with martinis, away' during hellos and goodbyes; Hitchens said that he had no memory of 'making a bid for the clean-limbed and cupid-lipped Alexander Cockburn.'"

• "Hitchens went into the house and put on Bob Dylan's 'Tryin' to Get to Heaven'; he stood in the doorway and sung quietly along. He quoted Philip Larkin on Dylan: a 'cawing, derisive voice.' He repeated Larkin's words a few times, approvingly. His daughter got out of the pool, and said, pleasantly, 'Can we close this door, so nobody else has to hear this?'... She went back to her friends. 'Look,' Hitchens said happily. 'They're waiting for us to die.'"