Slave I

The Dr and I went to see Amazing Grace last night, the biopic of William Wilberforce. The performances are excellent, there are some good gags, and it looks sumptuous and real. I was especially impressed with shots of a Thames clogged with 18th century shipping.

It is, though, a bit chocolate-boxy, with the very perfect Wilber not merely giving his all for the slaves, but also inventing the GCSE, women’s suffrage and modern geology. He talks at one point of the healing waters from a spring having “waited for a million years”. Er, surely his own religious convictions would have stopped him from so brilliantly pre-empting Lyell (who was only born the same year as the film opens on).

The film packs in the historical figures who knew and influenced Wilbur: John Newton, Pitt the Younger, Thomas Clarkson, Lords Grenville and Fox and (the only black speaking part in the film) Olaudah Equiano. The script also works hard to explain the context: that many working class people lived brutal and impoverished lives; that there was no money for war veterans or other social causes; that whole cities had been built on slavery; that with America and France in revolution, a “popular” movement could be seen as seditious.

Much of this is described rather than seen, so apart from a few city street scenes the film always looks immaculate and tidy. Evidence of the horrors of slavery is also kept to descriptions of witnesses, rather than being enacted on screen. Wilberforce sees a few opiate visions, but mostly it’s what people say.

This is, of course, as was with the case the abolitionists made to Parliament. Yet I felt the film was somehow pulling its punches. The Roots TV series, which we’ve also been watching, is much more explicitly graphic, and I think more effective.

Yet it’s not as if there are loads of films made on the subject, and it’s not a bad film by any means. Though it certainly doesn’t suggest it was easy for Wilberforce to get the slave trade abolished in the British Empire (on 25 March 1807), it does rather simplify the story.

Slavery itself was not banned in the Empire until 1834 (after Wilberforce was dead). In the independent United States it continued until after their vicious civil war. No mention is made of that – indeed, the US is spoken of only with whispered excitement as a contagious hotbed of freedom and liberty.

The banning of the trade did eventually lead to the banning of slavery itself, and because existing slaves could not be replaced it can be argued that they were better treated in the intervening period. Yet indenture remained as slavery in all but name well into the twentieth century, and slavery continued in many countries until the end of the nineteenth. Slavery in various forms still exists today.

There’s a whole heap of events and stuff commemorating abolition this year, and I’ve had fun going through all the links there to glean yet more top facts:

“The surgeon on HMS Sybille , Robert McKinnal, took drastic action when a seaman went down with yellow fever, to convince his fellows that it was not contagious. One of the symptoms of yellow fever is black vomit, and McKinnal, on deck and in sight of the crew, drank off a glassful.”

Royal Navy, “Boredom, boat service and the black vomit”.

ETA: No sooner have I posted than I notice this feature on the emphasis of the commemoration on the BBC news site. Ng. Always behind the tide, me. Get there eventually.

The tyrants of style

“berks and wankers
Kingsley Amis identified two principal groups in the debate over use of language: ‘Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of what anybody would agree is a lower social class than one's own; wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one's own.’”

David Marsh (ed.), Guardian styleguide – B

Not for the first time I am writing a style guide.

Usually, my work involves adhering to other people’s prejudices, so it’s fun to dictate my own terms. Client X will, for example, henceforth write “focused” with one S and TARDIS in caps (as an acronym).

There’s no general consensus on style. Really. While correct spelling has been more or less agreed for hundreds of years, punctuation and phrasing is still largely a matter of taste. For every style guru who’ll insist on one rule, there’s another expert who’ll vehemently disagree.

Which can be a bit bothersome when you work for lots of people, all with their own ways of doing things. At least the style guides I’ve written so far have tended to start with a warning:

“What follows are not definite rules for written English everywhere. They’re just how we do things here...”

Should it matter? Well, people do notice inconsistent and incorrect usage – and not just the finger-wagging wankers with their copies of one set of rules. If nothing else, inconsistency is distracting. People should be taking note of what you’re saying, not where you’ve used capital letters to say it.

When style does become an issue, it helps if the style guide can explain the reasoning. I like to think that my own bigotry-of-style at least stems from some rational first principles.

For example, I recently had to justify why we used double (“) quotation marks rather than single (‘) ones on a website I do stuff for.

“Double quotes are easier to read on a screen,”

I said, which follows from our principle aim:

“Our copy is easy to read, accessible, consistent and does not distract the reader.”

But there’s still fierce debate about the serial comma, which I think a fussy affectation. One colleague however protested,

“Readers need telling when to breathe!”

There’s usually some kind of style council to arbitrate when copy-writers get into such an argument. As a result, style guides are often packed full of Top Facts, and give an insight into how reportage gets criticised and – sometimes –sued:

Alibis are not excuses

“If Bill Sykes has an alibi it means he did not commit the crime because he can prove he was somewhere else at the time. It is not a false explanation or an excuse.”

BBC News Styleguide (PDF 276kb), p. 78.

Talks with Iranians

“The language spoken in Iran (and Tajikistan) is Persian, not Farsi. Flemings speak Dutch.”

John Grimond, Economist Style Guide – miscellaneous spelling

Asylum seeker

“(No hyphen)
Someone seeking refugee status or humanitarian protection; there is no such thing as a "bogus" or "illegal" asylum seeker. Refugees are people who have fled their home countries in fear for their lives, and may have been granted asylum under the 1951 refugee convention or qualify for humanitarian protection or discretionary leave, or have been granted exceptional leave to remain in Britain. An asylum seeker can only become an illegal immigrant if he or she remains in Britain after having failed to respond to a removal notice.”

David Marsh (ed.), Guardian styleguide - A

(It’s reading this kind of thing more than my upbringing that got me 10/10 in Channel 4 News’s Easter quiz.)

Music to wash hands by

Nimbos, the Dr and I went to Westminster Abbey last night. Sat on uncomfortable chairs in front of a memorial to MARTHA to hear St John’s Passion sung, along with several hundred other people.

The singing was good and the acoustics authentic, though I thought it lacked the polish of some other versions I’ve been to. Think I prefer the Matthew one anyway, which is more widescreen and special effects. The John one seems less epic, and more matter of fact about (SPOILER!) the death of God.

But fun, and good for people watching. There was a lot of milling about immediately before, and also during the interval-that-wasn’t. Nimbos felt it might help to shout “Runaround!” – a reference the Dr didn’t get.

One gaggle of ladies felt they had paltry seats so decided to move them. They then did their best to ignore the badged gentleman explaining they’d blocked up a fire exit.

Afterwards the Doctor led us down a gale-force Whitehall to a new good pub discovery. But it had stopped serving food an hour previously, so we schlepped into the place next door and ate gratefully their microwaved fodder.

Point of view

O. writes from the Continent:

“Do you know I always read your blog... and get quite annoyed when there isn't an update for a few days.”

Which inspired me to spend lunch wandering round Manet to Picasso, which is free and until 23 May. I’ve gone on about what follows before (sorry), but it does have the distinction of being almost not-at-all Droo.

I got to know O. when we were doing A levels together, and especially due to one summer’s homework. We had to go to famous galleries dotted all over London, sketch a set list of Worthy Old Paintings and forego all our pocket money for postcards. O. was a good companion for that sort of thing because he has quite different ideas about pictures. We spent many afternoons idling in pubs shouting, “No, you big fool!” back and forth.

The impressionists were my pin-ups. No, I don’t mean J. Culshaw and company – which included D. Tennant on Friday and writing my two of my Droo chums. Heck, wasn’t going to do that…

The late 1800s were rather exciting artistically, with all sorts of clever ideas. These included lightbulbs and photographs and refined chemical processing. And these things had an affect on the hapless, cravat-wearing creatives who flounced around drawing from nature.

Until these inventions came along and spoiled things, an artist’s talent was easy to quantify. The trick was to make what you had drawn look like the thing you were drawing. Even now, there are learned scraps over painted portraiture hinging not on who is the sitter but whether it’s at all a good likeness.

But photography came along and with a point and click reality was caught in an instant (well, it took a bit of time when they first got invented, but not anything like as long as a painting).

Photos also showed up the falseness of the way paintings presented their subjects. Paintings composed the elements of the picture, framing them the most pleasing way. A photo captured the raw immediacy – blurs, blinks and ignoble posture. It could brutally crop parts of the scene, creating a new and dramatic, if troubling, composition. And once snapped, there was little way to correct it. At least canvas could be painted over.

Photos were still in black-and-white, so these painters tended to glory in colour. The brilliant sky-blues and vivid pinks were another technical innovation – colour that’s still stunning a century later. The artists experimented with “complimentary colours”; clashes of blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow, that made their work more vibrant.

At the same time, electric light transformed painting. It wasn’t just that they could work later in the day, and on less bright and airy subjects. The lightbulb made evident many of Newton’s observations about the spectrum, and without needing to shove sticks in your eye sockets. It made the artists see reality in ways they’d never seen before.

While the impressionists were daring to show optical mixing and coloured shadows, and Seurat contrived scenes out of blobs of coloured light, the hapless, much-moustached physicists just over the border were thinking maybe light travelled in blobs.

Impressionism was then excitingly brash and modern, on the nose of the latest developments. And its proponents got into trouble with the establishment – who still wanted pictures that looked just like the subject.

Scruffy old Claude Monet, who is a bit cool, dared to suggest that my throwing some paint around a canvas at slapdash speed you could still create the feeling of the subject. Not like a photograph in all its detail, perhaps, but something with more of an emotional flavour.

So even before you get to all the politics that the paintings might also reflect, there’s something a bit brilliant to see in all those pictures of the same haystack or cathedral. By painting the same subject over and over, Claude was breaking all sorts of rules, the old punk.

It was on one of these daytrips with O. that I discovered a real dazzler of a painting:


Again, Claude painted lots of huge water lilies – the canvases almost as big as his tiny Japanese garden in a fashionable Parisian suburb. But this one is my favourite, being more yellow than green-purple and with more of the canvas left bare.

It's big: 2 metres tall but 4¼ metres widthways. You need to stand at the far end of the room to appreciate what you’re seeing – up close it’s a mess of unconnected marks and squiggles.

And so (because I’d seen Droo defuse a bomb in Earthshock part two) a question formed in my brain: how the heck did Monet even paint it?

He could have only ever been an arms length away from the canvas. And if that wasn’t boggling enough for you, Claude was also fairly blind when he painted it.

"I've lit the blue touch paper..."

Received in the post from the father-in-law some clippings from the Blackpool Gazette. Front-page news on Friday was that Dr Who will be turning them on.

The web version doesn't show what the clipping does: Tom Baker doing the deed back in '75, all grinning teeth and curls.

I'm especially pleased that Tennant's appearance seems to have been organised by,

"Jackie Potter, Blackpool Council's strategic director of tourism and regeneration."

Have they also booked Michael Sheen?

Small world...

Spent the afternoon being harried round my parents’ garden by two young and tireless nephews. Some attempt was made at teaching them piggy-in-the-middle, and though they enjoyed the chasing they were disappointed that it might involve rules.

The thuggish four year-old was making an impassioned stand against the sectarian – he had on a Superman costume, yet with a pair of Spider-Man socks. And at one point he stopped in the midst of a tackle to share his latest epiphany:

“Uncle Simon, do you know about Doctor Who?”

It seems he was, for the first time ever, allowed to stay up last night. He liked the Things but not the Lady, and shared the absurd miracle that there’ll be EVEN MORE next week – at least, so long as he is good.

(His elder brother had the same response after his first taste of school dinners. He would ask, with great care and when nobody else was listening, whether you knew of such a thing as apple crumble.)

My mum was also impressed with the episode – but she has a weird thing for Roy Marsden anyway, and consultants with good bedside manner.

(Oh, and the title of this post is Sir Sean Connery’s response to an unexpected “I gotta brudda.”)

Return of the Old Adventures

On the flight back from LA a bit more than a month ago, m'colleague Mr Anghelides spoke of lost history. He could not recall, for example, the last time he'd changed a nappy. There was just a time when he wasn't changing nappies any more, but that moment passed unremarked.

Got not-quite through the first of four folders of old fanzino-periodicals today, frantically scribbling the morsels of fact that relate to the development of Benny. It's been fun to see who DWB's nemesis is each week (John Nathan-Turner; no, the executive of the Droo Appreciation Society; no, the editors of Droo's own magazine; no, the folk at BBC Video; no, anyone who dares to write in; actually, let's just go to war with EVERYONE...)

But there's also all the bits of Droo history that kind of passed me by.

"Sylvester McCoy is no longer Doctor Who, that's official. Doctor Who licencees have been instructed by BBC Enterprises to refer to him Sylvester McCoy as the 'former Doctor Who'. The Radio Times itself set the trend in its billing of Sylvester for the Children's Royal variety Performance in May."

David Gibbs (ed.), 'The former Doctor Who'
(news story) in DWB #103, August 1992.

As well as the reviews and letters pages which take Benny's adventures to task, I have also dipped into some of her Old Adventures, to get something correct in "The Wake". And too my great excitement, if nobody elses, I have this afternoon typed the direction:

SCENE 4. INT. CHURCH HALL, CHELDON BONIFACE

Nice work

“Sunday, December 31st [1978] …I listen to the car radio and hear tales of horror from all over the UK. Edinburgh is almost cut off from the rest of Scotland (a fact which the weather only confirms!)”

Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979 – The Python Years, p. 519.

Yes, I have been busy. The Dr bought me this for Valentine’s Day (naw) and to read on the plane out to Gallifrey. Which I did, and got something like halfway though. And then mutchwurk stopped me getting much further.

More than a month later, with bits snatched on trains and in toilets, the end is almost in sight. It’s a great brick of a book, with perhaps too much on the weather and what the author was eating, so perhaps this is the best way to read it.

The diaries cover the period from the first filming on Flying Circus to the furore that met Life of Brian. Palin’s a sharp-eyed observer, and even the briefest entries contain telling detail.

In large part, it documents the progress of his work – the late nights, the famous people, the many meetings and compromises, the flights on Concorde that are not half as glamorous as might have been hoped for. With my own current schedule it’s been good to see someone else barely outrunning the snowball. And it’s weird to think of Palin, that funny old man off the telly, being my age when he wrote all this stuff.

But it’s not just the hard graft of the writer that’s of interest. It’s a fun and engaging historical document. As well as definitively telling us what day Brian was first thought of, he notes the world as it changes around him:

“Pre-lunch cocktails with the two neighbours and their three daughters, who bring with them a game called Twister, which involves participants in a grapple on the floor and, in the immortal words of Eric’s joke salesman, ‘Breaks the ice at parties’.”

Ibid.

Palin is, as his later travel documentaries have shown, a sharp and witty commentator, and his remarks on politics and life in Hampstead are often warm as well as comedic. But there’s also more insight into his own life and feelings than I think we’ve ever been prey to. There’s the slow decline of his dad and a fair amount on his poor teeth.

I’ve seen some reviews mutter that it’s not more salacious, that Palin is too nice about everyone. Yes, that’s apparently a bad thing.

Anyway, he can be quite tetchy and is especially impatient with anyone who makes life more difficult. That reminded me of the last of his 80 days round-worlding, when his temper is beginning to fray.

(On this very point, he told Saga Magazine how he can “fly off the handle ... Usually at the most stupid things.”)

But it’s to Palin’s credit that he was seen as a mediator by the Pythons and others he worked with. It’s because he was the one that everyone talked to that his history is so comprehensive.

I shall tell you this

Codename Moose turned up at half eight yesterday, when I had hardly begun making my toilet. Mrs Codename Moose had turfed him out into the street, and were it not for our agreement to get a smidgen of script written, he’d probably have been playing in traffic.

Work proceeded pretty well, fleshing out notes I’d made into three separate sections, with some chipping in and chivvying of additional bad jokes and ever improved ideas. By one, we’d completed something we’re both quite happy with, and felt able to take my second wife, M., out with us for lunch.

Basked in the sunshine and ate a breakfast so mammoth they’d named it after me. (Or at least after my parents’ nickname.)

The trendy elements of Penge straddled by, not all quite complicit in pretending it was summer and that the high street was all continental. The keen waiter seemed most impressed with M. and ignored anything said by me and Codename Moose. M., of course, remained entirely oblivious to this, bless her.

Back home, and while M. and Codename Moose enjoyed Casino Royale I got up to 8,700 words on The Wake. Still have to write up some pre-titles set-up and four key scenes from near the end, but might even have a draft by the weekend. Hooray!

By the time the Dr had gymmed and shared gossip, M. had cooked us a feast. We watched some old telly, and I pointed out the actors from Droo. The Moonstone featured Peter Jeffrey, who was much more lenient this time.

Rab C Nesbitt’s Seasonal Greet included Garron and Commander Uvanov. This, the first full-length outing for Rab back in 1988 (years before we met his Dr Who brother (PDF 80kb)), sees him gobby and Scottish with sticky-up hair, and wearing pin-stripe and trainers…

Can't think who that reminds me of.

Some announcements

Hasn't it been ages? I am up to my handsome eyeballs in various books and scripts, and this 'ere blog wossname has been out-prioritised.

"The Two Jasons" proceeds apace, with the latest draft just in from Dave Stone. It's possibly the most personal thing Dave's ever written, and yet still crammed full of the daftest possible jokes.

I have also recently interviewed Dave, along with Matt Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Neil Penswick, Gary Russell, Simon Winstone and a bundle of other people about their part in the development of Benny, and the "Inside Story" is coming together pretty well. May even have a cover to show off soon.

The Big Finish website now has details of "Snapshots", including Stuart Manning's rather marvellous cover. My contribution is called "There's Something About Mary", and may be the first ever Dr Who story set in Preston.

Also crawling through the never-ending heap of short story competition entries. Not to be spoken of until we reach the end, though.

A few other fun things can't be spoken of either, hence the mad glint in mine eye. And according to Alex, I'm one of his five thinking bloggers. How badly he is deluded.

¿Cuál es la palabra para "el tejón"?

Back from a much-needed break to Malaga to see A. and J. (we went to their wedding last year). Apart from a quick mooch round the Picasso Birthplace Museum, it was uncharacteristically lacking in being good for me. Yes, even the Dr wanted a holiday. Instead we wandered to nice eateries, ate lots of fresh fish and sampled bars that don't get going before midnight.

In one trendy place that served very good mojitos, J. pointed out the flag hanging above the bar. The Spanish flag is three horizontal bars: red, then yellow, then red again, the yellow band twice as thick as the red ones.

In the dim and disco lighting, it took a moment to realise what was different: this one went red, then yellow, then purple.

This republican flag from the 1930s, J. explained, was banned in Spain under Franco, and even now it's a bit of a shocker. He spoke of the frission of seeing it hanging from the arm of the Philip IV statue in Madrid, in the midst of a political protest.

The nearest I could liken that was to Winston's turf mohican.

(The Internet also tells me of the irony of the purple band: it's not purple, but royal Castilian purpure.)

J.'s own republic sensibilities would be stronger but his king is helluva tough. Our Charles III did something similar, I said, in the first issue of 2000AD.

As well as the politics, we discussed how Bowie's lyrics translate and pretty much everything under the sun. My best effort to explain a reference to badgers was "a sort of mash-up of a boar and a tiger".

No time like the present

I have been to a stag do and to a funeral, and been off to do interviews in between. Also pitching for something and been asked to do something else, and still battering away at the History of Benny and that there short story competition.

One project looks close to completion. One.

I shall look back on this period eventually and laugh.

Not because they are easy

The rather grainy image right is from a few hours after last night’s eclipse. We sat in the Dolphin and peered out the window as the moon turned eerily red. Nimbos nimbly explained why it does that, using empty pint glasses as props. This is the best of my pictures. Oh well.

In timely fashion, I’ve got three episodes into the lavish Tom-Hanks funded dramatisation of the Apollo missions, From the Earth to the Moon.

S. who knows about technical specifications, offered the Region 2 discs cheap having just bought the Region 1 versions. There’s apparently a slightly judder in the NTSC transfer that spoiled the whole thing for him. I explained I forget to change the aspect ratio watching Droo DVDs, and am quite content with Logopolis in widescreen. He went a bit pale at that.

Haven’t noticed any problem with my inferior version. It’s an extraordinarily sumptuous series, the sort of prestigious thing that over here David Attenborough might have commissioned. You can see the money that’s been bunged at it. The first episode is especially grandstanding, a bold fanfare from start to finish.

Hair-raising at times, you can’t help but be wowed by the ballsiness of all those involved. Episode 2 gets is much more involving as things start to go horribly wrong. Death and disaster and steely-jawed jokes really help ratchet up the drama.

It also avoids repeating too much of the stuff covered in The Right Stuff, so – at least to me – feels fresh and surprising. The third episode has also spun a new angle on the format, by telling its bit of the story through the eyes of a documentary team. The hippy director in his rose-tinted specs gives a much better sense of context than the news footage. I also realise now I come to write it that episode two is about two guys eaten up by the system, which helps to convince us of the scale of everything involved.

That said, it’s a pity it’s so US-centric and less about all the players in the space race. There’s no effort (at least so far) to deny that the whole mission is an exercise in pissing higher than the Russians. I’d have liked to have seen more of the Russian programme, comparing their struggles with NASA’s. Appreciate that’s not really in the brief.

In fact it reminds me of The West Wing a lot: brave and idyllic and with exemplary performances, but a little naïve about foreigners. You can play spot the West Wing cast, too.

Bird watcher

K. is staying with us at the moment. Last night we went to see peg-leg P. who suffers with a broken bone. Ate pizza, drank girlie white booze and gossiped outrageously, and then fell into a taxi home.

Prior to the night's festivities, K. managed a brief siesta. She closed the living room door so as not to be disturbed by the cat. But the cat is very disturbing. He clambered up on to his scratch-post / house / wossname and spent the whole time watching K. sleep. In the manner his sabre-toothed ancestors might once have watched sabre-toothed mice.

He is an odd animal.

Write away

The new issue of Pantechnicon is just out, and features a story by me. For the time being at least, you can read "The Bounty Hunters" online and for free.

Writing continues. Was meant to interview someone this lunchtime, but they're caught up in writing of their own. So I've had a chance to get up slowly, drink tea and read Droo's magazine.

It's an especially corking issue, and I'm very pleased with page 63.

"Delivering on its ambitious promises, Time Signature is an exceptionally strong anthology, containing some honest-to-goodness mini-masterworks ... It's the best Short Trips collection since The Muses, and, in its delicate balance between standalone entries and arching plots, a fabulous example of having your cake and eating it."

Matt Michael, "Off the Shelf",
Dr Who Magazine # 380 (28 March 2007), p. 63.

Matt's equally nice about my efforts on "Dalek Empire", calling it,

"...as good a Dalek-themed anthology as you're likely to get",

and describing one of my two stories, "The Eighth Wonder of the World", as,

"a good, well-paced yarn".

To his right, Vanessa Bishop has nice things to say about "Collected Works". Which is all Nick Wallace's work, but I shall take credit what with being the boss. Now off to have lunch in the sunshine. Tra la la.

Cornell writing the news

"Church reveals she is pregnant" says the BBC. How very New Adventures.

Danger, Will Robinson

This was on the wall of our hotel in LA, just down the corridor from our room.

Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice

... is like drinking the dirty water left over from washing up.

Ick.

Mile-high film club

Marie Antoinette is a colossal exercise in missing the whole ruddy point.

It looks nice and is stylishly played, but the emphasis of the script is all in the wrong place. We watch Marie leave one sumptuous court for another. She learns posh gossip and how to excite her husband. She dances about in the gardens and goes to some very good parties. And then some yokels turn up and she’s very brave and won't run away.

Since she’s a bit of a free spirit (no, she will go to the party!), there’s a lot of punk music and typeface. This juxtaposition of the contemporary and historical would be pretty revolutionary, if we’d not seen the same thing before. It’s Casanova, it’s A Knight’s Tale, it’s Britney in the End of the World.

But it’s also pretty dim. You have to fundamentally misconstrue history to see Marie Antoinette as a punk. Rather it’s the mob who tear down her glam lifestyle – and we hardly see them at all in the film.

The film entirely fails to deal with why the mob might have grievances. The nearest it gets is to have Marie protest that she never said, “Let them eat cake!” But this is an age of public flayings and the guillotine. The general violence offended both Casanova and de Sade.

By not dealing with that – by consciously not showing it – the film is more perverse than anything those two got up to. The French court was not merely a fatuous bubble of champagne parties: in context it was clearly offensive.

Flushed Away was fun (though not helped by DWM pointing out how the lead rat looks like David Tennant). It lacks the charm of Wallace and Gromit, and that’s not merely for being set down the toilet.

It’s fast-moving and full-of-gags enough to hide a pretty ropey plot about a posh boy falling for a working class girl. Like the singing mice in “Babe”, there are singing slugs to raise a smile whenever things get a bit unfunny. And, as S. said, it’s telling how often the slugs feature. I laughed a lot, but it’s not one to watch again.

The Prestige was probably the best of the lot, about the rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians. Leads Batman and Wolverine were as manly-tough as you’d expect. Bowie had a nice turn as Tesla, and Michael Caine was as effortless as always.

Unfortunately I sussed the various elements of the ending before we were mid-way through. This may have been due to discussing The Time Travellers all weekend, which turns a few of the same tricks. (Well, it does if you can make the cognitive leap that Hugh Jackman is playing Scott Andrews).

It’s clever and deft from the start, with all kinds of nice palming of plot device. But the real trick of magic is not merely the mechanics of the con, but of managing to disguise them. The audience has to be left mystified.

Lag

Dr Who’s companions never seem to suffer from jet lag.

I assume this is because the TARDIS monkeys with their brains at the same time it learns them Swahili. It stops the whole pink-eyed, dazed and a little all over the place thing. Which wouldn’t help in the stopping of monsters.

Have spent since Thursday in a wonky sort of daydream. LA is the furthest I’ve ever been from home and already feels like a film set. It is much harder travelling back east. Everything feels a bit unreal and two-dimensional when you’re very, very tired and yet unable to sleep.

Gallifrey was everything everybody had enthused to me – generous and friendly and funny. Highlights were Eric Roberts leaping from his chair to come over and shake my hand. “Hey,” he said, “You must be Simon!”

After a moment of open-mouthed gibbering I remembered I had on my name badge.

Was incredibly well looked after, and met some very splendid people. So much keen interest – and even from pretty girls.

My many charms didn’t work on Paul Cornell, who fell asleep in the midst of my hilariosity on forthcoming Muppet movies. Am particularly pleased with Muppet Deliverance (the Electric Mayhem on banjos and the line, “Squeal, Piggy, Squeal”). He missed the Muppet Exorcist and Muppet Blue Lagoon.

(See previously the Muppet Show of Weng-Chiang.)

On the basis that I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to stand up and speak in front of people, my own panels went pretty well. Just talked a lot and quickly until the moderators said time was up.

Our behind-the-scenes-on-Benny film seemed to ignite interest and shift the required stock. Yes, it’ll be on a CD sometime. So everyone can see my sticky-uppy hair.