Had a bit of a Wiffle-intensive day today. My Hodder correspondant Heather called this morning to chat about the final adjustments to the book before it goes off to the printers, and we were on the phone for two hours discussing whether the comma on line 4 of page 136 should actually be a hyphen, and whether “The Doctor” should be “the Doctor” without the capital “T”, and if that still applies when you chuck a number into the equation like “the Sixth Doctor”. It’s actually the longest continuous conversation I’ve ever had without the aid of artificial stimulants, and embarrassingly I had to break off halfway through to go for a wee. I put the phone down first, though.
And then Henry from publicity called to discuss Important Things like “How do we make people who don’t want to buy your book buy it”, and we decided the best policy was for me just to never refuse any single opportunity for free press. So apologies in advance if you soon get utterly sick of the sight of my fat face clogging up otherwise perfectly fine newspaper pages, or my grumbly Northern voice chuntering on over various airwaves. Still, as Lionel Blair once said to me as I lit his cigarette on the balcony of Durham Gala Theatre, “Never turn anything down Bob, and you’ll stay in work for the rest of your life”.
True that, I also bought him a large scotch and talked a little about the day he spent in 1964 working on A Hard Day’s Night. The film that is, not the album. He doesn’t play the castanets on Can’t Buy Me Love or anything like that. He was lovely, though.
And then I ate bangers and mash with my girlfriend while we watched The One Show. She offered me some brown sauce. I didn’t turn it down. Lionel would have been proud of me.
Wiffle Lever To Full! 
The One Show? Don’t you mean a fan produced DVD of a Doom Patrol / Robin of Sherwood crossover film from 1993?