You Heard It Here First!

I’ve just spent an absolutely charming afternoon and evening at the home of a very talented young writer whom I predict will be a name to watch in the future. Stuart William Hosker has the flair and aptitude to write well but what’s more, he has the drive and ambition to get noticed (and that’s often what it’s all about in this business). I was lucky enough to be asked to critique the first episode of a new drama he’s working on for television. It was a privilege and I was more than happy to do it.

It’s a very good script, and the idea is brilliant and original - one which I think will delight both television moguls and audiences alike. I’d like to think that I have played a small part in helping Stuart to hone his already excellent script into something sharp enough to be acceptable. When (in a few years time) people are talking about Stuart William Hosker in the same breath at say, Russell T Davies, I shall be proud to have been in at the start, when we sat around his sitting room, pages from the script strewn around the floor (Abba the kitten mischievously chewing the odd one), laughing our socks off. It's not that the script is a comedy, just that we were having so much fun. And then, for some icing on the cake – Stuart gave me dinner! In business parlance, a win-win situation.

By now, you will all have heard that the machine is broken. This is propitious news indeed, not least because those sneaky, pesky boffins at CERN had been planning to begin the collisions much earlier than previously announced. The cheeky bastards – here I was, expecting to be safe until October 21st, when all the time they were planning our annihilation without even giving us the chance to have a decent party! I’d bought jelly and everything, too. So, the machine is being turned off and hundreds of tons of liquid nitrogen are being poured into the chambers to cool it down, and the inconsistencies that its careering protons were already causing to our natural order are, for the time being, abated.

Just as well, really. It will buy enough time for Stuart to finish his fabulous script, and for me to sell everything I own and spend the proceeds on enough booze and fags to keep me going until the big bang engulfs us all. I wonder if they’ll let me take Bruno, my pet armadillo with me? I’m not planning to sell him – he’s the only one on this godforsaken planet who loves me!