There was, of course, always talk that elements of Dead Babies were more than slightly autobiographical. And the provisional name of the forthcoming movie - The Martin Amis Project - suggests such talk was not so wide of the mark.
Which is why it seemed so significant when Amis himself finally made it onto the set.
"We all went for a curry," says Charlie Condou, who plays Giles Coldstream - Amis's central character and primary alter ego - in the movie. "Everyone wanted to grill him about their characters. I just wanted to know about his teeth."
Giles Coldstream is an upper-class Brit who's obsessed by his molars (his creator famously spent $20,000 on his teeth) and is the hardest drinker among the group of friends who rendezvous for a bacchic weekend at Appleseed Rectory. Blitzed on uppers, downers, blue movies and bellinis, they hardly notice the random acts of violence being perpetrated by a millennial movement across the world, even when the violence seems to be centring in on their own party.
Produced by Richard Holmes and Neil Peplow, responsible for Waking Ned and Shooting Fish, the film did not find its finances easily. Three years ago, the movie was to star Jude Law, Sadie Frost and Emily Lloyd. Then the sums changed and so did the cast. In came Olivia Williams, of The Sixth Sense, and Paul Bettany. But whatever the casting changes, the producers insisted Charlie Condou should keep the role of Giles.
When I meet Condou, I pause for the time it takes to order a Bloody Mary, before I ask the obvious question - how did they film all the sex and violence? Condou is unfazed. "A lot of it is talked about," he says. "My character doesn't even take his jacket off."
He goes on: "Amis based Giles and the dwarf Keith on himself - it makes you wonder about the guy's self-image. We went to a restaurant on the Commercial Road and we all wanted to know about our characters, because he based a lot of them on people he knew - like his brother, who might be Quentin." Quentin, of course, is the book's silver-tongued homicidal maniac.
The heroine, Olivia Williams, has been the object of a lot of interest. "Everyone thinks she must be this Hollywood star, but she's very quiet, very English," says Condou. "We do Bikram yoga together. I used to do it at Olivia's house - she'd get the teacher over before we went off to the set. We'd come out of her house really hot and sweaty, and the driver got increasingly suspicious."
Condou's method-acting attempts to get into Amis's lead character were restricted to drunken binges. "Giles is tragically comic - he's so British and upper class, and desperately tries to keep up that front, but he falls apart constantly and just cries. You spend most of the time when you're acting trying to work well with other people and be good for them. And the great thing about Giles is that he ignores everybody else, so I could be really selfish and just act by myself. He's not very good being himself. And strangely I did start dreaming about my teeth. Freud said it was something to do with sex - hating your mother - and insecurity. I didn't dream about my teeth falling out but I did dream about flossing a lot."
Condou grew up in Soho - his parents own L'Odeon restaurant and bar on Regent Street and are about to open a members bar called Century. His first job was cleaning up a porn cinema which has now been reincarnated as the lap-dancing club The Astral ("we had industrial rubber gloves - it was the worst job ever"). Then he used to man the phone lines for his friend who ran an escort agency. After getting his first part when he was 18, he gave up the idea of going to university, and soon won a stage role in Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and F***ing.
At Condou's 27th birthday party recently at The Groucho, Steve Coogan and Tim Roth gatecrashed, and followed the party to Soho House. Condou's old flatmate and best friend, Robbie Williams, arrived with a beautifully wrapped present.
"A year before, he gave me this cross," says the actor, pointing at the pendant around his neck, "he has one exactly the same. He said: 'This is your angel.' This time I unwrapped the gift and he looked mortified. He had bought me the most expensive box of make-up ever. He'd picked up the wrong box."
