Vanity Searches

I'm struggling to get going today. It seems the more work I have, the harder it is to start it.

So, instead, I googled myself. What a tw*t.

First up is an interview I did for the Off the Telly website.

A (frankly bloody glowing) review of my Scorsese book from the Scorsesefilms website, and another from Kamera.co.uk.

Nice to see myself in The Times, back from when I worked on h2g2, plugging our then-new mobile service.

... and speaking of which, here's an interview I did to coincide with the launch of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. You need RealPlayer to hear it though. The interview was part of OnPoint, a news magazine broadcast by WBUR-Boston and National Public Radio USA. I didn't actually know it'd go out nationally until after I finished the interview. Gulp!

I was once the official BBC expert on Spooks, answering viewers' questions during series 2. Despite my extensive knowledge of the show at that time, most of the questions were about how to get a job in the Security Service - to which I was tempted to say 'Learn how to spell.'

A real blast from the past, this one - a site that lists some of the games I was credited on when I worked for PlayStation.

Nev Fountain's blog provides a handy reference to the Aardman-style model I made for a Dead Ringers sketch.

And blimey! There's a review of the DVD of Pyramids of Marson this site (unfortunately can't direct-link to it) that even has a pic of me (which I've stolen for the top of this blog).

Yesterday, a young colleague told me she'd used one of my books for an essay she wrote at university.

Random, eh?

Annoyingly, something has changed in Blogger that doesn't let me paste text into a blog. Instead, it appears at the bottom of the page. This has taken a bleedin' age to do.

Lunch, anyone?

Wimbledon Crescent

I walked into the living room on Monday night to find my flatmate watching the men's game - some French man was beating the guy from Napoleon Dynamite, when suddenly Dynamite started winning.

I know tennis is the one sport my flatmate tends to enjoy, and as it had gone into extra time, and the on-screen announcement hinted that this was a big thing, I sat down and watched.

So, firstly, the counting goes 15, then 30, then 40, then if they've both got to 40 there's deuce, then an advantage and then they have to get a second advantage - in which case they win the game - or it goes back down to 40.

Then there are certain parts of the grass that the ball can go into, and some parts it can't. It's allowed to hit the net, but only if it bounces back off and heads into a particular bit of the court...
After discovering that 'Henman Hill' is now called 'Murray Mound', I turned to my flatmate and asked if this was like the sports equivalent of 'Mornington Crescent'. Or Calvinball.

And after all of that, he told me it wasn't the men's finals as I'd thought, but a qualifier for the quarter finals.

What a load of crap.