EU ministers assemble in Holland this weekend for probably yet another round of inconclusive talks to tease out agreement on the exact timetable and terms for determining which countries will participate in the "first wave".

Not helping the mood of general ill temper which has been building up a head of steam over the euro was comments from best-selling author and Euro-sceptic Frederick Forsyth.

In an open letter to Chancellor Kohl, the thriller writer infuriated the German government by compared Kohl's obsession with the single currency to the "road to madness that led to the Holocaust", an insensitive use of the term, albeit in an economic context.

Forsyth, like his fictional jackal, was without mercy in savaging monetary union, "a hasty, premature and - if it fails, which it will - disastrous union producing inflation, soaring unemployment and a series of catastrophic devaluations". The genesis of yet another thriller, perhaps?