You start easy at first. It’s just a bit of fun. You’ve got your iPhone with you, there’s nothing bad about writing a little note that you need to buy bread on the way home.

But then you get that high when your iPhone spots that you’ve left the office and it bleeps to remind you about the loaf.

Suddenly, you get home and you’ve got bread. Instead of a niggling feeling that you’ve forgotten something, you’ve got the makings of a sandwich.

I know, it’s crazy.

Only, tomorrow you need more. You need to remember your mother’s birthday.

Then you’re at work and it’s just that little bit easier to make some To Dos than to keep going back to your email to see what you have to do next. It’s sensible and it’s also free. Apple’s own Reminders app, it’s right there, it’s free, it does that trick with popping up when you leave or arrive places.

It’s nothing, you’re just doing this to be sociable. You can stop any time you want.

But Wunderlist comes next. Just a bit more power to your elbow. Lets you break down big tasks into bits, into smaller tasks. There are myriad To Do apps on iPhone and Wunderlist is deservedly very popular. I’ve never used it.

I used to get my kicks from Appigo Todo instead. Loved that app. Lived in that app. The iPhone one now costs £2.99 but you also want the iPad one. That’s £2.99 too. And you should have the Mac one too. That’s another £10.49.

Soon you’re dividing your To Do list into categories. Stuff for work, stuff for home. A shopping list. Repeating tasks; those things you have to do every day like “Ignore new year’s resolution”.

It all makes sense.

It’s only the next bit that gets tricky.

Back about five months ago, I was an Appigo Todo evangelist. Today, I’m not. In between there was a little curiosity about something else, then a bit of a plunge-taking, then a lot, a lot and three times a lot of annoyance, anger and rage. The annoyance was that I’d bought something fairly expensive: I think now it’s cheap but it’s only that when you know it is what you need. When you think you’ve wasted your money, it’s a lot of cash.

The anger came from it not doing what I needed it to do. This more-expensive, much more highly recommended, ostensibly much, much, much more powerful piece of software could not do things that my Appigo Todo could.

And then the rage.

The rage because as annoying as this new software was, there were bits in it so good that it was too late. So good that I bought another version. And then a third. I hated all three versions of this new one but I could never go back to Appigo.

But ask me today, and it’s completely different: it feels now as if I bought the new software in Damascus.

I even have evenings off. Sometimes, anyway.

Because I’ve switched to using OmniFocus.

If you don’t use this yourself, the quick way to describe it is to say that it’s a To Do list. If you do use it, you are right now emailing me to say come on, that’s like saying XXXXXX is a football team or YYYYYY is a car when really ZZZZZZZZZZ. (Hey, it’s your email, you do the metaphor.)

There is one version that is difficult to use, that I mean you look at it and wonder where in the world you even start. But the real difficulty and the reason you tend to break through it and abruptly find this all incredibly useful, is more a conceptual thing.

Todo was a To Do list. OmniFocus is more a list of things that Can Be Done.

Follow.

If I get a job or think of something I have to do, it used to go in my Todo list and sit there until it was done, with this enormous growing pile of things. I used to find it very satisfying when I could get the number of tasks down from some giant number to some less-giant number.

Now, I’ll do the same with OmniFocus in that I’ll chuck anything from the smallest need for a loaf to a book commission into it. But the difference is that later I’ll check through those new ones and start working on them. That’s for the British Film Institute, that’s for Radio Times, this is for when I get around to it, this is if I can be bothered. But the BFI thing might not be due for a month and I probably can’t start it until next week. So, whack, start next Thursday, finish a week on Friday, I don’t have to think about it again.

It takes longer to describe this to you than to do it.

And the result is that I can look at my OmniFocus list and, if I want to, see only what I need to do today. If I’m in London, it’s typically for Radio Times but this week I’ve got a BBC Radio 4 meeting there so I can also see tasks by location: I can look to see what else I can get done while I’m there. Or types. I’ve got ten minutes before my train, I can immediately see what emails or phone calls I need to get done while I wait.

So you see, it is Tasks You Can Get Done Now more than it is Tasks To Do. Take a look at the difference:

I took that screen grab just before I stopped running OmniFocus and Todo in parallel. So it was for the same day, with the same lists of tasks to do. With Appigo’s Todo – which I’m not knocking, I liked it a great deal until I found OmniFocus suited me better – I obviously didn’t have to do all 30 that day, but I had to keep going into it to see what I could do now, what I could postpone. With OmniFocus, though I was getting through the same amount of work, one glance told me that yes, I could knock off for the night.

I thought that having tasks only show up when it was time to do them would mean I would forget them and would be forever behind but somehow it means the opposite. I know I’ll get to them, I know I’m making better use of my time overall. And there are many ways in which OmniFocus shows you what’s coming up, so that you can usefully tell when you can and can’t take on anything else. This is my favourite: the Forecast view in OmniFocus for iPhone:

Things that I have to do at the top, tasks I need to get started in the middle, and below that a quick calendar of the day. There’s more up above and down below.

There’s also a way to see only the tasks to do with, say, my book. So this coming Thursday, for instance, I can see I’ve only got one thing that truly has to be done then so I can take on more. In fact, I’m probably spending Thursday on my book for that very reason – and come Thursday, I’ll have OmniFocus just show me the tasks I need to do for that one project.

I think this all sounds like a lot of work and that was part of the reason I found OmniFocus annoying at first. Felt like I had too much to think about, that I could spend longer playing with this than in getting the work done. Yet in practice, it all just flows so easily – especially on the iPhone and iPad versions – that I spend much less time than I used to thinking about whether I’ve got everything covered.

The location reminders don’t work as well for me as they should (and OmniFocus Support can’t fathom out why) and I’d like the Mac version to be as slick as the iPad one or at least just a bit more slick. But I love how when I get an email on my Mac that I’ll need to reply to later, I can tap a couple of keys and it’s in OmniFocus as a task with what it’s about and a link to that email.

I also love that I jot down something on my iPhone and know that it’ll be on my iPad and my Mac the next time I look.

So I’m a convert. Join me. Come to the dark side. But only tell me about it after you’ve got through the bad bits and are a fan too.

Just so you know, there are three versions of OmniFocus and you don’t need all of them but you will end up buying the lot. OmniFocus for iPad (£27.99) is the best, OmniFocus for iPhone (£13.99) is the handiest, OmniFocus for Mac (£54.99) is the toughest to use. There’s no PC version.

It’s 18:00 on October 31, 2011 and as of this moment, I no longer work at all for the BBC. Slightly strangely, I haven’t left the Corporation – the BBC has left me.

There’s this guy. He thinks I’m a computer geek and I can’t change his mind about it. Normally you’d give up trying, you’d soon shrug but it did start to matter a little bit when he kept consulting me on anti-virus software he was thinking of buying.

“Have you read the back of the box?” I asked him. “Then you know more than I do.”

It seems he thought I was being nice and encouraging, that I was praising his expertise. I know that he actually doesn’t comprehend that I can have not the faintest idea about computer viruses. This is not a conceivable thing for him and he chuckles sometimes like he knows I’m trying to make a joke and he wants to be polite.

I used to work in computing, did I tell you that? Studied the things for a bit, managed to get out and onto computer magazines. I was always a magazine man more than a computer one, more of a drama nut than anything else. More into people than wires.

But you do learn a thing or two and it is surprising what still lurks in the back of my head so when he told me his several new computers were having trouble connecting to the internet and asked me to take a look, I did. How long could it take?

Five hours.

And I failed.

I don’t feel very awful about failing to get these PCs online because Dell didn’t manage it either. Some support expert from across the world dialled into the PCs and couldn’t fix them. (How? How can you dial in, connect remotely, but not have fixed the internet? Mysteries. Alchemy.)

What I most remember about that day, though, was sitting there in front of each PC in turn, entirely failing to get them to recognise that there is such a thing as wifi – while I looked up technical advice online through my MacBook. Plopped myself down by the PC, opened the MacBook, told it which wifi network I wanted, was online before I’d really finished opening the lid.

Those PCs never worked reliably with the internet, not over wifi.

And as time ticked by, this guy replaced them all.

Now, on the one hand, I’m still using my Mac from a couple of years before he bought these PCs, but I think the issue is not how fast PCs wear out but how this fella bought three more PCs of the same type.

I did mention Macs.

Quite a bit.

He argues, though, that Macs are expensive and they don’t do anything you can’t do with PCs.

His new PCs had the same problem.

I’m missing an episode now because at some point something did happen to get them online eventually. But the next time I am involved, it’s to set up a couple of laptops.

Two identical Windows laptops, bought from the same shop, bought in the same week.

One of them couldn’t play the sound off DVDs.

The speakers are fine, it could play anything else. But not DVDs.

I downloaded drivers, I changed settings, to be frank I was stabbing wildly at any option presented to me and nodding sagely whenever asked “Is it done yet?”. Eventually, I found a really clever workaround. I can’t remember what it was now, but I was actually proud of myself: I’d thought my way around and over a problem. Immensely satisfying.

For about a minute.

This is what computing is to this guy. A pain. A pain where two identical Windows computers don’t work the same and in fact don’t work.

He doesn’t think I’m a geek because I once studied computers, he thinks it because I spend all day at one and in the evening turn to another. Choosing to put yourself through that, to voluntarily keep going back to a computer, that equals geek.

The difference is that I use Macs. You know this already, you know this is where I’m going with all this. And you know why I’m saying it today. But actually, I want to argue that the difference is that I don’t use computers.

I don’t get up in the morning and think ooh, I can boot up my computer now. I don’t think I’ve got five minutes, I can spend more time at my computer.

Instead, what I’m doing is turning to the book I’m writing. I’m turning to the film I started watching on the train yesterday. I’m reading the news. I’m editing video, cutting audio, photo editing, laying out pages, I’m interviewing people, I’m transcribing audio, I’m listening to the radio, I’m watching TV. I’m doing a lot of work here in the UK and I’m doing some in the States, from that same Mac.

It all goes through my Mac, yes. But it also all goes through my MacBook, my iPad, my iPhone.

It goes through me.

I reach for the work and for the fun, I don’t reach for a computer to geek out over and I never have to.

I have had people ask me to recommend a phone and when I’ve said iPhone, they’ve tutted. Typical, they say. It would be Apple. Nobody needs that stuff and I bet they never use any of that fancy stuff, they can’t, they can’t understand it, it’s rubbish. You’re an Apple fanboy: it’s all style, you’re buying into the Apple hype when I’m being real, you’re a fashion victim and I know the truth that this ten quid Nokia phone and twenty quid PC are far, far better.

“So why’d you want me to recommend a new phone then?” I asked.

I know that I’m not won over by hype. Microsoft hypes a lot more but I don’t get interested in their stuff, probably because they’re better at the hype than at delivering the product. Microsoft hypes away about what they’re releasing next year. Apple hypes away about what they’re bringing out today.

But I did wonder about me when I found I was waiting to hear Apple’s news this week about the next iPhone. So, for pure curiosity, I kept an eye on how often I used my iPhone.

You know it’s going to be a big figure. I knew it would be. Several dozen times, easy.

It was 230.

Exactly 230 times in one normal day, including six phone calls but not including how ever often it was that I used to look at it to see the time.

Apple kit is woven into my life. Maybe it is in yours, maybe it isn’t, I’m not here to tell you anything but how I roll.

Apple is more than one man. But Steve Jobs made a dramatic difference in how I live and we have lost someone remarkable today.

I know I can’t have always wanted to visit the Strictly Come Dancing set because the show’s only been running for a few years. But it feels like I have because I’ve wanted it that much.

I came close once: Angela got to go to a live show and I drove her and Lesley, a friend, to London, spent the evening kicking my heels, giving a lift to some tourists who’d come to the wrong hotel, crashed my car, wrote it off, got a hire car and drove Angela and Lesley home again.

Angela and I have different emotions about that night.

But today, it was going to happen. I was booked to go to Studio 1, BBC Television Centre for the first of two days filming the Radio Times photo shoot with all the dancers and their celebrity partners.

You’ll see who got who on Saturday night when the launch show is aired but it was recorded yesterday evening. (And you’re wondering, or at least I’ve always wondered, but no, nobody knows who they’re getting before the launch show.)

Last night, Studio 1 had the full ballroom set. Tess’s area. The judges’ table. The band pit.

This morning, nothing remained. Not a sequin, not a speck of glitter.

Instead, this huge studio was divided into four or five areas. I don’t know what each one was but Radio Times had one and there was a big green-screen portion where the title sequence was being filmed. That sequence we get very familiar with each year that shows the contestants and their professional partner swirling amid glitterballtastic sparkles.

I watched Rory Bremner and [redacted] film theirs. Was tickled by Anton’s stream of beaming good humour with [redacted].

And Strictly is all about fantasy, isn’t it? You think about what it would be like to take part. Allow me one little fantasy. Which goes thisaway:

I watched Katya and [redacted] filming their spot and she kept watching me. I’d pass her in the studio and she’d look me over. I know it was suspicion and that anyway I had a chocolate biscuit stain on my shirt, but you could believe that she fancied me.

Okay, you couldn’t. But I could.

Okay, I can’t either.

I’m using the new Google Blogger app on my iPhone: this button here is either Delete And Don’t Make a Fool of Yourself William or it’s Publish.

May there be a God and when he’s done sorting everything else out, may this God take a minute to forgive me: I’m being organised and it’s working. I want to tell you about it and I’m not sure whether it’s to get it off my chest, whether it’s ask you to glare at me until I stop being lazy, or whether I’m hoping to groom you into joining this Organisation.

I honestly hate this in me. I used to enjoy writing in the middle of the night, writing an inch before the deadline, writing 50 pages in day when absolutely necessary. I used to just enjoy the night: going to bed before 1am feels sinfully wrong. It’s a good way to work, it conjures up the kind of sound and furious action that I so relished in newsroom writing.

But it was always reacting to something, some deadline set by someone else. Things were getting done but not enough and not well enough and I would always be having ideas for projects I just couldn’t find the time to do. I would forever be busy and I mean forever: there was never, not ever a point when I’d be able to say I was done for the day. I enjoyed that, I still enjoy it now, but sheer harsh, cold self-examination is never kind. Last year was very successful for me but it is easy to see that it should’ve been much more so: perhaps not in terms of what writing I got produced, perhaps not financially, but in terms of me and what I was able to create.

So.

January the 1st was 196 days ago.

I know this because for every one of those 196 days I’ve written for at least an hour. If the day was spent writing on Radio Times or Doctor Who, for example, I still wrote something else for an hour afterwards.

That’s all. Not a big deal, not really worth shouting about, but…

Because of this unbroken pattern, since the start of the year I have – wait, I haven’t worked this out yet and it may depress me; grief, I hope it’s a lot of work… okay… well… it’s not bad. Since 1 January I’ve written a four-part Doctor Who audio (recorded the other week, due out some time next year), half a new stage play that I abandoned on account of it being rubbish, a half-hour film, a one-hour film, a 15-minute sitcom, a one-hour telly spec. I also wrote 90,000 words of a novel but threw away 40,000 before sending it to Paul the Agent Guy.

Plus I’m only about 2,000 words into my book but I’m running the research for it in a rinkydinky FileMaker Pro database of mine and currently I figure I must’ve written about 10,000 of the words in that. I suppose I also wrote and shot a couple of How To videos for friends – I’m easier to bear when you can pause or fastwind me – and probably made about eight or ten pitches to people.

I can’t work out how many pages or words I’ve revised on top of this but I know, for instance, that I began the year with a substantial rewrite of a stage play which is now with a producer who’s raising cash to stage it. At a rough guess, I’ve at least revised 300 pages of my own scripts. And if you tell me that I’ve read fewer than 2,000 pages of other people’s scripts, I’ll believe you but want to see your working out.

I don’t know.

Doesn’t matter, really. A lot or a little, worthwhile or rubbish, all that’s important is that it is geometrically more than I wrote last year or the year before. And more of it is out there getting produced or commissioned than before, too.

If I decide that this is a lot of writing, then it sounds like I’m saying quantity is key.

I think I’m saying quantity is key.

Since I cannot dare speak to the quality, I can at least look at how there’s that abandoned stage play, for instance: last year I might’ve had the idea but not got around to it. Now I’ve tried it, I know it doesn’t work, it’s gone.

And this one-hour-per-day minimum is brilliant and exciting and satisfying when you’re in the middle of a script and you know you can’t wait for the next unbroken hour on that project. It’s still pretty brilliant when you know what bit you have to do in that hour and you’re afraid of it. It’s hard when it’s already 1am and you have’t started.

But it’s only actually awful when you’re between projects and have not the faintest idea what to do but you won’t cheat.

I call those Forced Hours. An hour where at the start you have zero in your head but you’re going to bloody well sit there and work until you’ve got something. I’ve had about four of these in the 196 days so far and each time I’ve ended up with a new idea. Last year I had the problem that I never got around to ideas, now I’m trying to get through them quickly so that I can get to the next ones I’ve now got waiting. I have a queue. Can’t believe it. A queue.

I can cope with this level of organisation. There’s a line in Carl Sagan’s Contact that Angela and I often quote to one another: “Small moves, Ellie”. Doing a little bit often appears to work for me and I’m okay with that. I can feel a drama precedent in it, so long as I don’t examine it too closely. So long as I don’t, for instance, blog about it.

Anyway, there’s a problem. By May I was aware that I hadn’t yet skipped a day and it didn’t look like I was going to. So I added to it. Can’t tell you what, but as well as this hour writing I added a mandatory daily half-hour on this other thing. Then in June I was commissioned to write a book and it was one that would take a lot of research work, so I added again: half an hour every day on the book too.

These two half hours are not enough for their particular jobs but guaranteeing to do them means I start them and almost always burst the measure, spend longer than the thirty minutes. Same with the hour’s writing.

But setting a limit and being able to see that it is working over time, it means there have been five nights this year when I honestly felt I was done for the evening and could relax.

That was horrible.

So that’s a problem I haven’t solved yet.

Also, I used to live in my Todo list, constantly chewing over deadlines and pitches, yet I’d only glance at my calendar when my days at Radio Times changed around. Now for some reason the work I’m doing takes a lot longer and means me blocking out times to do this, periods to be here, days I must be elsewhere. I spend ages dragging appointment blocks around my week’s calendar like I’m playing Slow Tetris.

Suddenly I’m really good at estimating how long a job will take. I can tell you what time I’ll finish today. I can clear a hole in the week and know by when I’ll have made up that time or that work.

Except the hour per day. That’s inviolate. Sacrosanct.

And of course I recommend it or I wouldn’t be bending your ear about this madness. Only, if you do this, if you do find that it works for you, promise me you won’t start your day’s two hours at 1am. I have fallen asleep while writing my hour that late at night; you look again in the morning and your very nightmares are on the page. You’ve written whole scenes, huge arguments, between characters you’ve never heard of about topics you don’t understand. It’s borderline psychotic and if it’s funny sometimes, there are other moments when it is profoundly, frighteningly disturbing.

So, you know, there are some wrinkles in this plan.

But I’ll work them out.

Probably an hour at a time.

William

Listen, I’ve no clue how to start this but I’m burning to tell you so can you just grab a biscuit and we’ll crack on? Last Saturday I was at the Big Finish Day in Barking and I was signing autographs.

Maybe you should get two biscuits.

Plainly, I was not alone on that day and I’m far from the first person to squiggle on papers and if you know Big Finish, you know this was Doctor Who. And you certainly know just as well as I do that Doctor Who somehow comes with a magnifying glass: I was included there because of the way the lens of Doctor Who burns into so many of us.

There were some 60 people signing and I don’t know how many guests: a few hundred through the day? I’m rubbish at estimating anything. But I did have a quick gander through the guest list and without question I had done the least of them all: so far I’ve only had one 25-minute Doctor Who audio episode made. It turned out to be popular, but it’s still only a one-off 25-minuter. I’ve got a four-parter coming out next year so hopefully if I get to go to the next one I’ll feel less of a fraud.

But as frauds go, I am struggling to remember a day when I had more fun. It is a hell of a boost having people asking you autograph your writing, it’s even more of one when they’ve come seeking you out. I was happy just being one more person on a table that people worked their way along. To be asked if I’m the William Gallagher they’re looking for and having to answer that no, I’m not the man who wrote Lark Rise to Candleford or used to play in Oasis, is a treat.

More than that, it’s a delight and I won’t pretend it isn’t.

But if you knew me in my podcast, you’ll know what I really liked, what made this a stand-out day for me: I got to natter to people. Oodles of people. Every body up and interesting and enjoying themselves. I was going to say that equally included fans as well as other writers, but there’s not a lot of difference: in breaks I’d nip into other autograph sessions and be a fan myself.

So many struggles in my head, though: from why would anyone want my autograph – I’m not kidding, I don’t understand autographs at all, let alone mine – to why I might think you’d want to know about it. I don’t. But I’m having such a bubbly time I had to tell you.

So. Spill. What’s happening with you? I want details.

William

Wait, that doesn’t work, does it? What’s everybody else supposed to do while I hold them up?

I feel like I’m the last one to the party here but also a wee bit chastened: I’ve been so busy – heavy, dramatic sigh, bring on the gypsy violinist – that I’ve not caught up with Danny Stack’s Liquid Lunch series. I look back at what I’ve been so heavily, dramatically, sighingly, violinistly busy on and can’t quite see anything. And in the meantime, he’s got three episodes out along with backstage videos and the scripts.

Consequently all I’m really doing here is getting in your way when you want to go watch Liquid Lunch. Tell you what, you head for the site that is Liquid Lunch and I’ll get the drinks in.

What’re you having?
William

I mean, yes, the actual news is that there’s a Doctor Who event in London this weekend. And of course big news is that Big FInish is announcing the new companion for the Colin Baker Doctor Who stories.

Then the kicker, the real detail alongside the news, is that this all takes place during a gigantic sale of Big Finish audios that is going to entirely consume what they paid me to write for them.

But that’s what I’m focusing on. Only with you, okay? Only because you understand. Forget news, forget Colin Baker, forget new companion, forget bargains: I am signing autographs at this event.

In theory, anyway. It rather depends on anyone wanting my autograph. So you may find I go very quiet about it on here afterwards.

If you’re going anyway, if you’re now tempted by the news and the bargains, it would be a treat to see you there. I’ll even sign anything you like, bar cheques.

Full and proper details of everything are on the organisers’ official site.

William

“My name’s William Gallagher, I’m a dynamic young force in writing. Don’t tell me I can’t write something, just tell me where the paper is and watch me fly.” Gallagher flicks his hair and smiles that rogueish smile we’ve come to know from the opening title sequence. “Don’t tell me Shakespeare’s better, I don’t know from any Shakespeare. I just know he didn’t give writing 110 percent like I do, nor maths neither.

“Words are my life: I was born with a crayon that I still use for cheques. When I go to the beach I wear a diphthong, and if you can’t correctly use the word myriad in my company, stand aside for a man who can – every time.”

It’s been a tough journey for Gallagher but if he thought mastering the keyboard’s shift key would be enough to see him through, now he’s really got to face the challenge of his entire writing life.

Our top-class judges – Jeffrey Archer, Dan Brown, the Estate of Enid Blyton and Cheryl Cole – mean business. Gallagher must complete this blog: it must reach all the way to the end. The slightest hitch and he’s out of here in the car we call the dreaded write-off.

Coming up: will first-day nerves destroy his chances? And there’s a calamity over the cap of a biro. I’m Vacuous Poorly-Paid, don’t go away.

Welcome back. We’re following William Gallagher as he attempts to beat first-day nerves and hopes against hope that he can get the cap off his biro. But what colour pen will it be? Join Claudia to find out later in Writing Blog Challenge 2011: The Extra Sentence on ITV7.

But here, right here, right now, our would-be writer’s journey is just beginning.

“I know I’ve got it in me to reach the end of this blog,” says Gallagher. “I’ve beaten scores of people to get even this far. Emily Dickinson, for instance, I really rated her chances, I thought she was the one to beat, but she fell at the first hurdle because she couldn’t even write the correct website address of the blog. Kept saying it couldn’t be three ws and nobody writes ‘forward slash’.

“Then Carrie Fisher wrote cleverly and wittily but it turns out the one thing she just can’t write is the correct account username. Aaron Sorkin, Alan Bleasdale and the men and women who wrote The Simpsons back when it was good, none of them could go that extra step and pull off entering my correct password.

“I did have a sleepless night when I learnt Paul Auster guessed that I was one of the many who always use the password ‘myriad’. But he just threw his shot away by turning in a draft blog about a character called Paul Auster guessing a password to let him write a draft blog to turn in to a writing contest. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know where to look, to be honest.

“So now it’s down to me. The blog is mine to lose but I’ve practiced, I’ve worked hard, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I’ve prayed and now I know I can achieve this. It’s inside me, it is. And I also know that the judges are 109 percent behind me.”

Archer looked up from his Blackberry. “Never heard of him,” he said. “And I’m billing you for these 12 words.”

“I’m dead anyway,” said the Estate of Enid Blyton. “What I really miss is ginger beer.”

Dan Brown said: “William is going to look at the blank screen and I just know he’ll be reminded of the Knights Templar, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers) or simply as Templars, who were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders.[3] The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages and what they didn’t know about blogging then, nobody did.”

“You’re so right, Dan,” said Cheryl Cole. “That’s like exactly what I was going to say.”

Coming up: Gallagher has to take the plunge and switch on his computer. Will the epic journey of waiting for Word to load take its toll? Will the computer even get that far without every writer’s most-feared demon, the blue screen of death?

Welcome back. The epic Word journey has begun and –

“I’m on a Mac, it started ages ago while you you were off on the commercial break,” claims Gallagher. “I’ve written half the blog already.”

Brave words from the man who only dates women with names like Polly Syllable or Paige Turner and who so far never date him back. He’s got to be hoping being crowned Yet Another Blogger will change his fortunes.

But in the meantime, behind the outward signs masking the inner hidden turmoil of the apparently calm but really invisibly visibly quaking man, things have actually got off to a very bad start.

Gallagher, taking what was surely the deepest breath of his life and giving us the most up ever of thumbs-up signs, crosses to the writing desk –

– but there’s a chair already there.

“I tell you, I wasn’t expecting that, I haven’t practiced for there being a chair, it just wasn’t in the plan,” he says. “There’s no indication I can see of how to use it or whether it’s even meant to be used. I have to be think that someone could be simply storing it here and there is no way to tell. This is huge. This could wreck everything for me.”

With time ticking away, Gallagher has to make a decision. But he knows only too well that if he gets it wrong even a little bit, he’s going to have backache for the rest of the day.

He’s taken the plunge! He’s gone to sit on the chair –

and he’s missed!

This is terrible!

“A chair is a stable, raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person,” explained head judge Dan Brown. “In ancient Egypt chairs appear to have been of great richness and splendor [citation needed]. Fashioned of ebony and ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were covered with costly materials, magnificent patterns and supported upon representations of the legs of beasts or the figures of captives. During Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD), a higher seat first started to appear amongst the Chinese elite and their usage soon spread to all levels of society. By the 12th century seating on the floor was rare in China, unlike in other Asian countries where the custom continued, and the chair, or more commonly the stool, was used in the vast majority of houses throughout the country.”

“Golly,” said the Estate of Enid Blyton. “Really, just a little ginger beer, it’s not that much to ask.”

“Now you owe me for 21 words,” said Archer. “Plus VAT.”

Coming up: can William Gallagher recover from this disaster? Will a set-back mean a set-to with the judges? Will there be a stand-off over the standfirst?

Then just who is going to lose their cool over a paper jam – and who will get hot under the collar about the cost of replacement ink cartridges? Don’t go away now.