Downton Abbey beat Doctor Who and Sherlock to the prize of Best Drama at the National Television Awards this week and the odds are that you know that. Skyfall was snubbed at this year’s Baftas and that made the news too. Lincoln looks a shoo-in for a Best Picture Oscar even though Les Mis probably deserves it.

But name last year’s NTA drama winner. Or Bafta. Or Oscar.

I used to know this stuff. I worked for Radio Times, I worked for BBC News Online’s entertainment section, I had this stuff at my fingertips and it was important. Today I can’t tell you without cheating – and I don’t only mean searching Google for last year’s winners. I just had to search for this year’s nominees too.

In 2010 or 2011, I cut a short promo video for Radio Times that had Dermot O’Leary calling for us all to vote in the NTA Awards. The script was funny and clever, he delivered it very well but I knew I wouldn’t vote. I studied that video almost frame by frame: it was the first time I’d replaced green screen with a new background and the studio’s green backdrop was crinkly, sometimes a shard of green poked through the video. So even now I can bring to mind every gesticulation, every beaming smile, every joke of that video. But I still wasn’t persuaded to even watch that year’s NTA.

I’ve stopped watching the Baftas. Haven’t seen the Oscars in a century. For a while I did regularly take part in a twitter fashion critique where a huge number of people and this one straight man discussed the Oscar frocks in the red-carpet coverage. But I’d switch off after that, only partly driven away by how the banality of the red-carpet presenters make you ashamed for your species.

It’s not as if presenters of the main awards shows are all that much better, except when they are: I would’ve stayed up for the Golden Globes this year if I’d realised how great Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were going to be.

But this is the good stuff you can check out on YouTube the day after. Someone else does the watching of the show and someone else does the compiling of the good bits. Everyone else, absolutely everyone else lists the winners and talks about what a significant and great result it is or isn’t for Britain, about how it does or doesn’t send a signal about what will do well at the Oscars.

I’m not exactly on my own in awards disinterest: ratings for TV coverage is trending lower each year. But you wouldn’t know that from the number and length of news reports so I feel as if I stand alone.

I can’t help that. Maybe it’s because the voting is always the same. I wasn’t very keen on Skyfall but you knew its Oscar buzz was nonsense: no Bond film will ever win Best Picture. I am very keen on Safety Not Guaranteed but even as it moved me and I’d surely call it tremendous, it didn’t even occur to me that it would be in with a chance at a Best Picture Oscar. It wasn’t.

Maybe it’s because the voting can never be anything else. Even among the type of films that tend to get nominated, the winners feel the same each time. Our culture does laud actors but an acting performance stands on the shoulders of the script, the direction and the whole production. So comparing Denzel Washington with Bradley Cooper (I cheated and looked it up) is as much comparing their films, Flight and Silver Linings Playbook.

You do suspect that the Academy and maybe all awards organisers have yet to twig that. Otherwise you’d never get the ridiculous situation where a film wins Best Picture but the script isn’t even nominated. Actors make it all up, plainly, and for me that undermines the whole concept of awards being a genuine celebration of film and TV.

You can’t compare two actors beyond whether you enjoyed one film more than another. Maybe if you had two actors playing the same role in two otherwise identical films you could actually measure and rank acting skill. We might be able to compare Michael J Fox with Eric Stoltz if the latter’s Back to the Future performance were released. But otherwise, it doesn’t happen because it won’t happen because it can’t happen.

Equally, you can’t really compare Citizen Kane with The Maltese Falcon but the Academy tried to in 1941. (I relished them both but the Academy preferred How Green Was My Valley. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

So when a ceremony declares this film or that actor to be the best, the actual best, the really best of the whole year, it simply is not true. It simply can’t ever be actually true. You can’t measure so you can’t rank so there can’t be a winner. Best Picture, Best Actor and the rest are only We Really Liked This. You’re thinking now about voting bias and favouritism and giving a director an award for this film because he didn’t get one when he or she should have. You’re wrong: it’s never a she.

Even if voting was always pure, the kicker for me is that winning an Oscar has no bearing on whether I’ll enjoy the film. It used to have a bearing on whether I’d go see a film but I’m afraid now I doubt I’ll even remember to watch a movie called Silver Linings Playbook regardless of how it fares.

No award makes me see a film. Actually, no actor makes me see one either: I think Jodie Foster is a fascinating talent – listen to her on the commentary track for Contact where she is just so interesting – but that doesn’t guarantee I’ll go see her every movie. Writers might do it to me: I will eventually check out all Aaron Sorkin movies and for a long time I used to go see see every Woody Allen one.

But I’m persuaded more by the story than who’s in it. Until there’s an Oscar for Best Interesting Story or Supporting Idea for a Film, awards won’t mean a thing to me anymore. Best Trailer, that’d be a good one: trailer-making is an enormous and fascinating skill but of course it never gets any time in the spotlight.

Whereas it’s all spotlight for the Oscar winners even though there is truly only a finite amount of genuine news you can get from one film being picked for an Oscar out of nine nominees.

But you wouldn’t know that from how much news coverage the winner will get.

Until next year when it’s forgotten by the news and by you. Join me ahead of the curve: get in early and forget them before you ever knew them. Ignore what wins and what’s nominated and instead ask your friends what’s good instead. Go see Safety Not Guaranteed, would you? Got any recommendations for me?

Nobody liked Annabel. But that was okay because she didn’t like anybody. They were all stuck up and so what if she whistled a lot? Didn’t hurt anyone. Gran liked her whistling, she always said so.

But gran had died. Annabel sat in class, quietly whistling while Mrs Sawbones told her off for not paying attention. She got sent to the headmaster – but as she walked out of class, she decided to keep on walking. She walked out of school.

She walked out of town. Passed her housing estate, passed the train station, out as far as she’d ever been.

It was cold and a bit scary. She tried whistling to keep her spirits up but she couldn’t hear herself over the sound of lorries on the main road.

So she kept on walking.

Her phone rang but she ignored it and its whistling ringtone.

She walked on.

It was much further than she’d thought. She’d been in her mum’s car last time and was sure it wasn’t as far then.

Hours and hours went by. Annabel was tired and her dad kept phoning but she didn’t want to talk to him. She wanted to talk to her gran.

By late afternoon, she found somewhere she recognised. The car had turned here. She was sure.

So she turned too and began to walk down a hill and away from all the traffic. Soon all the sound of cars seemed to vanish behind her and she could hear only birds. They sounded like they were whistling and she whistled back.

The sun came out exactly as Annabel saw the big tree at the far end of the cemetery. And saw her gran’s grave with the cross on it.

Annabel sat at the grave. She pulled away at some weeds that had already begun growing by it. She tidied away some litter that the wind had blown. And she talked to her gran. And talked and talked.

She talked about rotten Mrs Sawbones. She talked about how horrible everyone was at school and how she had no friends.

Her gran listened.

And when Annabel had finished, her gran just kept listening. Waiting. Until Annabel said “Alright, well, maybe they’re not all completely bad. There’s Sydney. She asked about you. And Paul in the year above me, I like him.”

Her gran listened some more.

“But it’s not the same. Nobody listens like you do.”

“I do,” said her mum.

Annabel’s mother stood behind her. “If I don’t listen, how did I know where you’d go?”

Annabel tried to whistle a kind of shrugging I-don’t-care whistle but her mum kept talking and the birds kept whistling so much better than she did.

“Annabel.” Her mum knelt down by the grave. “Your gran is my mum. I come here every week but I was sure you weren’t interested. I’ll bring you. Okay?”

“Okay,” smiled Annabel.

“But next time, we drive. Promise?”

“Yes, mum.”

“And next time you never skip school again, okay?”

It’s hard to believe now but we started this journey with eight terrific contestants, any one of whom could’ve been standing here tonight in our hunt for Britain’s favourite writing instrument 2013. Tonight is decision time in Strictly Come Writing with the Stars on Ice Factor.

I know we say this every time but, seriously, this year’s entrants truly were the best we’ve ever had and before we get down to the Moment of Truth, let’s look back at the highlights of this incredible journey.

I mean, who can forget the drama of week 1? Despite a perfect score from the judges, once the public vote was tallied, Quill Pen had to write again to survive.

“I tried to keep it light and fluffy, you know?” said Quill. “It’s been an amazing journey for me and I think I’ve become a bit of a icon for all the old writing instruments out there. We can still do it, you know. Don’t rule us out just yet.”

Unfortunately, our judges did. So Quill Pen’s dreams were over before they really began.

Barely had we got over that shock when it was Week 2 and the speed test which saw Morse Code telegraph machine stumble.

“.. – .—-. … / -… . . -. / .- -. / .- — .- –.. .. -. –. / .— — ..- .-. -. . -.–,” said Morse. Which, while a bit slow, must be the most moving thing we’ve heard here on Strictly Writing. Morse is a real pro, I’m sure we’ve not heard the last of him.

But the contest presses on and barely had we got over that shock when it was Week 3 and the controversial wardrobe malfunction that saw everyone rushing to the stage to mop up ink.

“What can I say? These things happen,” said brave Fountain Pen. “The judges and the public praised me for the elegance of my lines and that’s what I’m going to take away from this, that’s the memory I’ll keep with me. Thanks for having me on the show.”

Barely had we got over that shock when we faced the Halloween Horror Special in week 4. Hopes were especially very high for one of our contestants in week 4 which made this exit all the more devastating. Yes, we all were all so certain that this was going to be Blood’s week, but no.

“Ow,” said Blood.

Barely had we got over that shock when things really hotted up for the semi-finals.

“At this stage, it’s really anyone’s game,” said head judge Alesha Dixon. “I think Biro has a lot more to give: it’s been a steady contender rather than a standout yet and maybe it has to pick up the pace now, maybe it has to show us what it can really do.

“But then I actually think that Pencil is the dark horse of the competition. It has had all that experience in space, that’s not to be discounted, and I really think it still has a point to prove. The only question for me is whether Pencil can really last the distance. I’m sorry to say but at times it does look worn down.

“Whereas our last two contenders, Typewriter and Computer Keyboard, I have to say they look the same to me. I can’t call it.”

Wasn’t it the most dramatic semi-final we’ve ever had? You have to take risks at the semis, you can’t play it safe, but risks are a risk and Typewriter paid the ultimate price when it tried to introduce music into its routine and things just went horribly wrong. “What can I say?” said Typewriter. “I just like jammin’.”

Of course, that wasn’t the only drama in this year’s semi-finals as for the first time ever, we literally lost one of the contestants. We could’ve sworn Biro was right there where we left it.

Barely had we got over that shock when we reached tonight. And our two finalists have done their very best.

Pencil, Keyboard, it’s been an amazing journey for both of you, but now you’ve done all you can. You’ve written for the last time and tonight one of you is going home, one of you is going to be crowned Britain’s Favourite Writing Instrument for 2013. Do either of you have anything you want to say to the judges and the millions watching at home?

“I’d just like to say what a privilege it’s been being on this incredible show,” said Keyboard. “And I’d just like to take this chance to say thanks to my lovely husband Qwerty and gorgeous daughter Azerty who’ve had to put up with my being away all this time.”

“That’s lovely,” said Alesha.

“Is it bollocks,” said Pencil, who unfortunately had to be immediately disqualified for snapping.

I thought this was you and me. But I just went to see what we’d talked about most for the last year and there are, like, thousands of people reading. You’re very nice but, seriously, I only get in enough biscuits for the two of us.

We need to talk this through. I’ll put the kettle on.

And in the meantime, happy new year – and here’s what was most popular on this Self Distract blog in 2012. I am truly surprised but you know it’s nice really.

One thought. Where a blog was about a particular thing, I’ve included a link straight out to that so you can skip my nattering and go there. Most of it has no connection to me but where it’s one of my books or dramas, I could conceivably get a few pennies from your buying. I promise to spend foolishly.

Done To Do, what’s next? (23/1/2012)
If I thought I was alone in looking for better To Do apps, I am an eejit. This was a piece that ultimately evangelised the one I’d just moved to, a whole series of apps called OmniFocus. I look back at it now and think… yep, that was right. OmniFocus transformed me. I lost my biggest single journalism client this year and replaced it with a mass of complicated projects and I seriously wonder how I’d have handled all that without OmniFocus. No kidding. 

I did recently find an Anonymous comment about this one. Actually, I’m always finding Anonymous comments: they get sent to a penalty box if they look like spam and I get bored because they always are. Except this one. I should answer that. Maybe when the new version of OmniFocus comes out shortly.

Just one more thing (1/6/2012)
You like Columbo too? I knew we’d get along. You don’t have to do much to get me talking about this show but the leak of Columbo scripts online forty years after they were written made talking about it an absolute requirement. Stuff my enthusing, go straight to the scripts.

Indicing with Death (15/6/2012)
Oh, I am so happy that this made the cut. I bounce in this one. It’s about how years ago I wrote an article about software that helps you build an index for books and how minutes ago I finished doing one for real. I’d that minute finished the index for my book BFI TV Classics: The Beiderbecke Affair. If you haven’t spent your life reading indexes, you’ll think my excitement is very strange. You might be right, but.

What’s it about? Uh-huh. And what’s it really about? (22/6/2012)
Self Distract may look like us nattering about Strictly Come Dancing and I can’t pretend it isn’t, but I can pretend it has a format: it’s meant to be about what we write and what we write with, when we get around to writing. This entry was a serious bit of writin’. It was about the difference between a plot and a story. And I can tell you now that the script I mention in it is Doctor Who: Spaceport Fear, which came out rather well in the end and comes out in February.

Sandy Glasser owns a cheese shop (27/7/2012)
Nobody commented on the title, a quote from Grosse Pointe Blank, but an awful lot of people seemed to share the sentiment: this was about finding an old school photograph online and trying to spot the person you’d asked out and who smashed your heart like a lollipop right before double maths.

Is this why actors claim to rewrite their scripts? No. (24/8/2012)
Far and away the most popular thing I’ve written on here – and you can be sure that was because Graham Linehan (@Glinner) tweeted a link to it. The cast-to-die-for of New Tricks had just revealed that they think their show is dreadful and that they save it by rewriting the scripts themselves. Everybody bar the real writers enjoyed laughing at them and I wondered about how you get to that level of disconnection from reality. 

J’queues Apple (21/9/2012)
This one was so popular it got reprinted in a Mac magazine. The only thing that could be better than that is if they’d kept my headline: the piece was about queuing to buy an iPhone 5 and I was – and am again today – preposterously proud of the headline pun. Small things make me happy. Like my iPhone 5.

The News Cycle (26/10/2012)
You name an event and this blog details every news story that will ever happen about it, in sequence. It’d be funny if it weren’t true. I hope it’s at least a little funny anyway.

The Prince and the Spinning Wheel’s Angular Momentum (16/11/2012)
This year I started working with writer Maeve Clarke, helping out at a Writing Squad she runs for school-age children in Walsall. (Writing Squads run all over the place: here’s what the fine Writing West Midlands people have to tell you about them.) It’s a terrific group and I wish there had been something like it when I was in school: it would have changed my career. Or at least got it on the right track dramatically faster. In one session, Maeve got the group to write a fairy tale – and I did one too. I would not have thought of trying one and yet I so enjoyed it, I wanted to share it with you. I did a sequel, too: The Princess and the Li-On. Just between us, there’s at least one more coming your way.

Live blogging Doctor Who at Christmas (21/12/2012)
The joke’s not so obvious now but this came out before the Christmas Doctor Who episode aired and though some fans believed I had seen it in advance and was out to spoil it, I was of course really trying to spoil all live blogs everywhere. If I could spoil them enough that they went away, job done. It looks like I’m not alone: this last entry of the year got shared all over the place and I got a nice note from Steven Moffat. 

—

It’s a silly thing to say, but I didn’t realise I’d talked so much. It’s especially silly because I set out to: I very much enjoy the weekly blog by Ken Armstrong and I decided last year to try emulating him at least in volume and regularity. He posted a rather moving piece about time travel last week that’ll give you a taste of what he can do. 

I’m obsessed with time, which may account for all that wibbling on about To Do apps and you have to think it may just play a little bit into how I write Doctor Who dramas. It is also what is making me think you are a pal for reading all this today and over the year.

Thanks for 2012: I had a time, I hope you did too, and now what are we going to talk about next?

William

Hey,

Sorry it’s so late but here’s the live blog for Christmas Day’s Doctor Who. What poor sod’s got to check the site on the day? Make sure they keep an eye out for when it actually TXs: I’ve done all the timings from 6:15pm but last year BBC ran it two minutes late and we looked right prats.

Also, the BBC preview doesn’t include the ending so I’ve just finessed that a bit.

I’m off until the 4th now but you’ve got my number. Phone any time except Tuesday: I’ll be stuffed rigid with the worst Christmas dinner you’ve ever imagined.

Have a good one and thanks for putting this into the CMS for me,
William

PS I’ve put in as many Google Adsense words as I can but could you add our Amazon affiliate links before it goes live? I’m below my quota for monetising this month.

—-

DOCTOR WHO/LIVE BLOG/GALLAGHER

*****RUN FROM 18:14 ON 25/12/2012*****

18:14 Who’d have thought that pair would win Strictly? Well deserved, mind.

18:15 And we’re off, this is what we’re here for. Doctor Who at Christmas. Does it get any better than this?

18:16 That’s rubbish.

18:16 Oh, pardon me, did you hear that? I belched. Just had the most delicious Christmas dinner of all time. I wish you could’ve been here for it. Bit drowsy after it, if I’m honest.

18:20 What? Missed that bit.

18:21 Oh-hoh, here we go, here we go. New title sequence! New arrangement of the theme music! I love that they do this, it’s so exciting.

18:22 Hate it. What was your favourite Doctor Who title sequence? Bring back Delia Derbyshire. (Did you know that there’s a Delia Derbyshire Day on 4 January?)  The story goes that Ron Grainer penned the Doctor Who theme music and when he heard how the Radiophonic Workshop had realised it, asked if he’d really written it. Delia says: “Kinda.” Or something.

18:23 I’m not following this plot at all. Typical Stephen Moffat. [XXXXXX EDITOR TO CHECK: is it Stephen or Steven? XXXXXXX]

18:24 I do like this new look for the Doctor. What do you call that hat he’s wearing? Top hat, topper, black silk/fur melusine top hat, grey silk/fur felt/melusine top hat, black cloth/silk opera hat, black silk/fur melusine top hat with mourning band. Something like that.

18:24 Hang on, I’ve got a mince pie left somewhere. Just have some nice Bell’s Whisky to wash it down.

18:25 I love Doctor Who. We don’t need this bit, this is just running around.

18:27 Still running around.

18:28 What’s great about live blogging is that we’re doing it together. I’m here, you’re there, the telly’s on. We can talk all the way through the show.

18:29 Didn’t see that coming. As I was saying, I’ve nipped in from the family to see this as it airs. BBC has a previews site now where journalists can download programmes in advance, we don’t get tapes or DVDs anymore but there is just nothing like the real deal, on the TV, on the night. I’m your Doctor Who expert in the corner, pointing out what you need to know to enjoy this properly.

18:30 Oh, come on. The Doctor did exactly the same thing in that other episode. See for yourself right here [XXXXX ADD AMAZON AFFILIATE SEARCH FOR ANY OLD DOCTOR WHO DVDS WE CAN SELL XXXXXX]   Moffat just can’t write anything original.

18:31 I think we’re supposed to get that the Doctor’s upset over losing Rory and Amy. I think he’s just twigged that the Statue of Liberty can’t be a stone Weeping Angel as it’s made of copper. I went to New York last year, you know. Got a very good deal with Virgin flights.

18:32 Finally, some action. That was a good bit.

18:35 What’s happening there is that the Doctor has realised.

18:40 Now we’re in trouble.

18:45 And a corridor.

18:46 Hate this. Bring back Patrick Troughton.

18:47 While you’re watching this, have a look at the many, many galleries of photographs we’ve done on the site from this episode.

18:48 We’ve also got my preview of what all the rumours said would be in this episode and my take on what makes a great Doctor Who Christmas.

18:49 I said they’d do that. It’s so predictable.

18:51 The new companion is rather good. [XXXXX ADD IN HER NAME XXXXX] Of course, I knew how they’d get her in after that Dalek thing.

18:52 Aren’t you glad you’ve got me to explain these things to you? It doesn’t say a lot about a show that I’ve got to tell you what’s going on.

18:55 What’s going on?

18:56 Matt Smith should do Strictly Come Dancing.

18:59 Heading for the endgame now. This is what us professional writers call the third act on the hero’s journey from the inciting incident to the last-beat reversal on the story mountain. I could do better than this Moffat.

19:00 [DID MOFFAT WRITE THIS OR WAS IT GATISS AGAIN? CHECK]

19:02 That was good.

19:04 The problem is that it’s just not setting up the scene correctly. Back at the start, it should’ve told us that these snowmen were dangerous so we’d understand it now. Not everybody’s concentrating as much as I am. Amateur stuff, it really is.

19:05 That was good.

19:06 I see where this is going

19:08 Oh. Didn’t see that coming.

19:11 Listen, I’ve worked out the ending now, but I won’t spoil it for you. You just watch the rest and then get straight on the comments page afterwards. That includes you, Mr Moffat, though I bet you won’t. You never come on comments pages, you just keep writing the next episodes like that’s what’s important.

19:12 Christ, my mum just came in with more mince pies. I’M TRYING TO WATCH DOCTOR WHO! What’s the matter with people?

Someone is making a Hungry Hungry Hippos movie. For real.

If you went to see the blockbuster* movie Battleship this year, please tell me if any character suddenly whines, shouts or emotes: “You sank my battleship!” For when anyone argued that you cannot make a major motion picture out of a two-person board game, I spent this whole year saying wait – they made a classic TV advert and that’s got to be a start. Actually, more than one advert.

Unfortunately, that Battleship movie truly was a start. And despite blockbuster* status, it’s not the end either.

*I keep saying blockbuster. Apparently Battleship earned $300m, which is somewhat more than I did this year but then I didn’t spend $200m making it. 

Someone thinks that’s a good deal and – do you know this already? I only learnt it yesterday and it took me 24 hours to believe it –  the big joke when Battleship came out has become real. There truly, genuinely, is going to be a Hungry Hungry Hippos movie.

Prejudice is bad, of course, but just sometimes it’s quicker: Hungry Hungry Hippos will not be a good movie. There will be no Oscar buzz. (“For Your Consideration: Jeremy Renner as Yellow Hippo.”) If you are over eight years old when you see it, you will have been dragged there by your eight-year-old. (I don’t have children: I’m a civilian.)

Everybody whose name will be written on the end credits will at some point or another convince themselves that they are doing a good job and that it’s worthwhile. Only the credited accountants will be correct.

But a film is an accomplishment whether it’s good or bad, it’s a true achievement whether or not you’re subsequently willing to leave it on your CV or not. It is a physically hard thing to do to get a movie made and so the core force in a film, the very DNA of getting that project done, the oath that a filmmaker swears, is not to do with quality and it is not to do with artistic endeavour, it is to do with getting the bloody thing made.

To make Hungry Hungry Hippos, you have to fool yourself into thinking that it is at least worthwhile enough that you can look anyone in the face during a production meeting. 

And the first person who has to find a way for all the other people bar the accountants to have anything to do whatsoever, is the writer.

IMDb says Hungry Hungry Hippos is in development and that if I pay to join the IMDb Pro service I can find out who the writer and producer are. I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to know the names of people suffering.

But you’d tell me if it were Aaron Sorkin, wouldn’t you?

Somewhere out there, most likely in California, most probably within a ZIP code or two of Hollywood, there is a writer who has just opened up a new blank document in Final Draft.

He or she is a pro and, unlike most Final Draft writers, has remembered how to find the title page. Wherein this has been written:

Princess Hard Centre had a secret temper. It wasn’t the same temper she had when Prick Toffee-Caramel lost her spinning wheel up a beanstalk, that was a fine and reasonable temper that anyone would’ve torn him apart for.

This was a secret temper.

Everybody knew about it, obviously, as a temper that you really keep to yourself isn’t a temper, it’s an ulcer.

But Princess Hard Centre believed it to be secret and it’s impossible to find out the truth about anything when you’re a princess. Try it. Ask anything.

For when a princess asks you, say, whether you think she’s clever, your first word had better not be “Well…” because there’s a fair chance it’ll be your last, too.

The good people of Chocolate Box Land and especially those who enjoyed being alive at Castle Cadbury had long ago learned to begin any answer with “Of course!” and a big smile. It wasn’t foolproof and it had caused some beheadings but all the heads on the castle railings were smiling and statistically speaking it was the safest reply.

It just wasn’t a useful one. “Tell me, my little Fondue Set, who is the fairest in the land as ranked by height, weight, academic achievement and fashion sense?”

“Of course!”

“Are you being funny?”

“Well -”

chop

To be fair, the well-gets-you-beheaded rule had begun generations before when royals were much more powerful and consequently much more angry because they could be and you couldn’t stop them, so there. Princess Hard Centre was just the latest in a very long line and she was genuinely clever, she had figured out that the secret to a good answer is the right question. But that’s harder than it sounds.

For instance, it means really having to figure out the answer before you ask the question so that you could instead ask: “My little Fondue Set II, is it correct that Princess Boiled Sweet is the fairest in the land as ranked by height, weight, academic achievement and fashion sense?”

“Of course!”

chop

The mistake there, of course, is that it might be correct that Princess Boiled Sweet is the fairest in the land as ranked by height, weight, academic achievement and fashion sense, but it isn’t right and I hate you. Princess Hard Centre knows much more than Boily ever did and everybody says they can’t see the spot on her nose so that clearly doesn’t count.

Late one night, as Princess Hard Centre lay down to sleep and Fondue Set III applied just a little bit of acne cream, the princess suddenly shook. “Hang on,” she said. “There’s a logical fallacy here, isn’t there?”

“Of course!”

“Unless I can get accurate charting and a reliable system of data tracking, I can’t work out who is the fairest in the land as ranked by height, weight, academic achievement and fashion sense. So I can ask if rotten Boily is best but then I have to ask if Milk Duds is best and then I have to ask about M and then I have to ask about the other M. There’s no end to it.”

“Of course!”

“You’re no use at all,” said Princess Hard Centre. “Give me that cream. And one more thing.”

chop

Fondue Set III fell towards the floor. Servants never hit the ground, that would be unseemly, so they were always caught by the Palace Guards who had become terribly well trained and even more practiced at swooping in to catch falling bodies.

“Oh, where will I find a Fondue Set IV?” cried the Princess.

“Craigslist,” muttered a Palace Guard.

chop

It was a disaster. The surviving guard who had already caught Fondue Set III exactly one half of one pixel off the ground now had to throw her body up in the air in order to catch the dead palace guard before he dropped to the floor too. For a single precious moment, it was a frozen tableaux. The one breathing, sweating, panicking guard held himself off the ground with all his weight on just his little pinky finger, scooping up the dead palace guard with his other hand exactly as Fondue Set III landed on his upturned feet.

The acrobatic guard stretched out a second finger and used the two to make teeny tiny steps back out of the room.

Princess Hard Centre didn’t notice.

She was thinking about Craigslist.

She was thinking about Google.

The next morning was a new day.

It was a new world.

Suddenly, Princess Hard Centre was floating around her castle. Instead of asking questions, she was answering them – and you’d better have a question.

“Um, how far is it from Castle Cadbury to the nearest Hershey Bar?”

“What’s the calorific content of chocolate? Are you sure?”

chop

“If a man leaves Castle Cadbury at 92mph in order to leave a box of Milk Tray, how far is it to the Mars Bar?”

chop

“Ask me something sensible. ”

“Well,”

chop

“My dear Fondue Set VIII, ask me something useful right now.”

“Of course! What’s the speed of light?”

“It’s 186,282.4 miles per second in a vacuum, approximately,” beamed the Princess.

She did a lot of beaming now. All knowledge was hers. Nothing was filtered by wells and of-courses. She was more informed than any royal in the history of Chocolate Box Land. “And that damn well includes Boily and Prick Toffee Caramel and I don’t care that they’re getting married. It won’t last. I give it 20.8 years, based on current census averages.”

All morning, every morning, Princess Hard Centre was a mine of information and everybody loved it, they absolutely said so.

But come the afternoon…

If it had been a hard day of serious and useful questions with brilliant answers, the darkness could even begin around 3pm.

If Princess Hard Centre took it carefully, then maybe she’d make it to 6pm.

Once she’d even gone to 10pm but that was then the same night that Fondue Set VII failed to plug the Princess’s iPhone in to be charged. She never made that mistake again.

For Princess Hard Centre’s beaming, her entire demeanour, her very life became tied to the battery power on her beloved iPhone. She loved no one like she did her iPhone and her iPhone didn’t love her back because it was just a phone but that was okay, it would learn to, she was quite sure.

Its lovely screen made her face glow. And the way that Siri was connected to Wolfram Alpha’s research database made her heart sing. It was very handy for eBay too, and she’d hired the last seven Fondue Sets through www.jobsite.chocolate.box.land.

But come the low battery, come the darkness.

Servants who previously pretended that the hadn’t seen how the Princess got all this wondrous information were now openly peering over her shoulder to see what percentage battery life was left. From 100% down to maybe 80%, everything’s fine.

From 80% down to 60%, well, chop

It always seemed to Princess Hard Centre that, try as she might, she couldn’t make the battery last as long from 60% down to 40% as she could 100 to 80 or 80 to 60. She considered turning it off.

But as she stroked the iPhone, she knew she could never leave it alone. And so she’d ask it less and less as the day went on, she’d hold it and cherish it and nurse it and hope that the battery would last.

It never did.

Slowly, so very slowly, as the battery would die, so Princess Hard Centre would begin to stoop and to slow down herself.

“Well,” said Fondue Set XXV. “That’s a fine thing to be seeing.”

The Princess just looked at her. Spent. Unable to raise a blade.

Dependency on iPhone is a recognised medical condition, she’d asked it that and it had said “Of course!”, but it didn’t help.

Until one day…

One bleak and lonely day when the union of Fondue Sets had said enough was enough, we’re all for job creation but we want our members to survive just a little bit, the Princess was left alone.

A storm began to rage outside.

Good, she thought. That’s the only bright spot in my day.

Between the lashing wind and the crazed rain, though, she could still hear the sound of laughter from Boily and Prick’s wedding party and Princess Hard Centre wept.

A tear fell on her iPhone’s Retina display.

It was a royal tear.

It was a Princess’s tear.

And the iPhone’s multitouch display registered it.

With its last spark of battery power, it brightened up its screen – and at that very moment, as if conjured by the phone itself, the castle door opened.

The roar of the storm rose. Rain smashed in. And there were flashing lights and strong language from the start.

Prince Dark Chocolate stood in the doorway.

His princely tunic was torn, ravaged by battles unseen until the prequel, and his chest rose and fell with the breath of a strong man with a stronger heart. He gave one manly shake of his head and a single drop of rain ran down his face, ran down his chest, ran down across his hairy, strong, masculine chest. The Princess’s gaze followed it down, down, far further down than you should be thinking about right now.

Life stood still.

Time stood still.

Prince Dark Chocolate’s lips parted with a breath and a faint smile, a faint but knowing and so very commanding smile.

The Princess’s heart skipped a beat to catch up with where her eyes had looked, where her mind had gone and where her other organs were none of your business. “Yes?” she said.

“Delivery for a Princess Illegible Squiggle?” he said. “Sign here.”

And so Princess Hard Centre finally took delivery of her Mophie Power Juice extra battery with lithium ion pack for her iPhone. It was a good day.

A few weeks ago I mentioned finding an old school photograph and how it felt to see Whatsherface, a woman I’d been particularly keen on. I’ve been asked several times since how, if she was so great, I can’t remember her name.

Of course I can remember her name.

I just don’t want you to.

So she’s Whatsherface. And while we’re talking about names and being keen on people, I’d like to tell you a very short story about how my own name prevented me going out with someone.

Actually, my name’s surprisingly problematic. Only this week, when it was my birthday, there was an issue of whether my niece and nephew still call me Uncle Lemmy. When my nephew was four or five years old he was plainly deeply into heavy metal lore and saw in my height and girth something of the rock god legend. Or “William” was just too difficult to pronounce.

Apparently Dar Williams is called Dar for similar reasons: I can’t remember who but someone very young in her family couldn’t say “Dorothy” and it kept coming out Dar. I assume that’s passed, that this person who is very young in her family has now grown up, but Dar stuck and I’d have taken that too. I like Dar. She gets a whole thing with the Daughters of the American Revolution thinking she was named after them. And I get Lemmy.

We compromised this year and they settled on calling me Uncle William. I don’t feel like an uncle; uncles are old people or have names like Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. But I am an uncle and in fact I am their only uncle. My niece sent me a card with a line about my being a Number 1 Uncle and I thanked her for the sentiment, the thought and the mathematical accuracy.

I think I’ve told you before that William Gallagher also gets phone calls from people wanting to work on Bill Gallagher’s TV shows. Whenever one is on, I gets the calls. I do wonder at people who are applying to me to work on, say, The Paradise, when the show is already airing. The Paradise was still in production when it began airing but, still, you’d think they’d have staffed up by then.

Just staying off the point here and trying to build up some drama, the other week I was in the offices of Doctor Who Magazine and was asked if I were the William Gallagher who was a Doctor Who fan and did lots of fanzines in the 1980s. I’m not.

I’m also not Liam Gallagher.

But it’s a funny thing. You know how we are ultimately all related to one another? We still draw a line somewhere. I don’t know enough about the third-cousin-twice-removed lark but I do know that there is a line. Up to a certain point, we’re related. After that point, we’re not. The line is Liam Gallagher.

I am related to Liam Gallagher but not to his brother Noel.

None of this has much to do with the thwarted love life I did – or I suppose did not – have back when I lived in London in the early 1990s.

My problem is – well, it’s far from my only problem but focus on this for today – my problem is that I cannot conceive of the possibility of you fancying me. Generally speaking, this is completely accurate. But just once in a while… Whatsherface, for instance. I still don’t think she was interested but seven or eight years after I last met her, I realised that she might have been up for trying me out and seeing how it went. But since she’d already rejected me once and since I am an especially stupid man, it took me those years to notice that maybe her torrent of complaints to me about her boyfriend might – might – have been a hint of an expression of a chance of a thought of an interest in maybe – maybe – suggesting I ask her out.

Eight years.

I blame myself.

But she had rejected me. I’d chanced my arm, I’d tried my hand, I’d burnt my fingers.

Still, eight years.

The only time I’ve ever been faster was this moment in 1990s London when it only took me an hour to suspect that someone was interested. I’m going to have to call her Whatsherface II.

I need to flash forward a bit here and point out that I got married and that so long as I keep feeding Angela the drugs and top up the hypnosis, I think she’s as happy as I am.

But back to the 1990s.

It was Pizza Hut.

I lived in a flat and they opened a Pizza Hut opposite my window. The bastards. They knew my weakness. They knew I’d seen Pizza Hut heavily featured in Press Gang. They knew I just liked the stuff.

I set a record for the time between availability and ordering that I have in fact only broken today, this morning, all these years later when Apple’s new iMacs went on sale and I bought one before reading all the way to the end of the word iMac.

Back then, Pizza Hut opens its doors for the first time and instantly I am in there. Whatsherface II is on staff and, honestly, I think I am in there. It takes me an hour to realise this as I put it down to a general I-smile-at-everyone-because-I’m-paid-to-work-here but, honestly, it got more. If I noticed it, it got a lot more.

And I did like Whatsherface II.

But it was never to be. It couldn’t ever be. And that was because of my name.

Harry.

She couldn’t take my order without entering my name and address into their rinky dinky new computer system. It didn’t matter that I was there to get it, it didn’t matter that I lived less than sixteen metres away and even I would never, not ever, not once get someone to deliver that distance. No name, no pizza.

“Harry Broderick,” I said.

I can’t remember now but I must’ve made up an address too.

What I remember is that I used to go to that Pizza Hut quite a lot. I was working way across London, I’d actually got a flat in about as far away from my work as the Tube network could manage. It was a minimum of an hour’s tube ride on a good day and if the wind was in the east. Plus, I’d work late. So I’d regularly get home from work around nine or ten o’clock and that red and yellow sign would be reflected in the window of my flat and those red and yellow pizza smells would be waving at me.

“Hi, Harry!” she’d say.

“Hello, Whatsherface II,” I wouldn’t reply.

She’d take my order and I’d wait. She’d chat away about things and I’d nod, wondering if there were any possible way I could tell her that yes, my name was Harry, but I spelt it William. And then she’d hand me my pizza and thank me for being such a good listener and I’d leave to clog up my arteries with cheese.

Prince Toffee-Caramel looked out across the kingdom. It was a beautiful sight and he’d never really looked before – and he’d certainly never looked from way up here in a beanstalk.

The beanstalk swayed a bit.

The beautiful Princess Hard-Centre had boasted that she could throw the spinning wheel higher than anyone and she was right. But it had stuck in the beanstalk and Prince Toffee had leapt up to climb up it and get her back the spinning wheel.

He got stuck too. It was very high and he’d just eaten and it wasn’t fair. He gripped the beanstalk. He couldn’t look down. Far, far below, he could just make out the lovely, lyrical song of the princess as she sang “I don’t have all day, you know”.

And as he looked out across the white clouds and the blue sky, he thought he heard birds laughing.

Okay, he thought.

Nothing else came to mind. Just “Okay”.

He tried saying “Right!” but it came out a bit weedy.

“RIGHT!” he said. And as he said it, the gusto in his voice seemed to unlock his mind and he suddenly thought, just a minute, use what’s around you. Maybe not the laughing birds.

There was the beanstalk. It could bend and it could really sway but he wasn’t sure what else it could do. He wondered about breaking bits off but the beanstalk had grown from a seed to seven-mile high weed in thirty hours and you don’t do that with bits that can break off.

“Use the spinning wheel,” cooed the Princess. The wind snatched her words away: he wasn’t sure, did she say “darling” or “dumbass”? He decided it must be darling and, filled with vigour, verve and the kind of overwhelming love that everyone but him would recognise was just a bit of lust, he had the answer.

I’m going to use the spinning wheel, he decided. And he mentally slapped himself on the back for having such a brilliant idea. He tried actually slapping himself on the back but the beanstalk bent and the ground lurched and he thought twice about it.

Gripping onto the beanstalk until it steadied, Prince Toffee managed to look up to where the spinning wheel was just, just, just out of his reach.

He strained as hard as he could and his fingertip just, just, just made contact. It was the most he could do.

But unbalanced and straining, he again made the beanstalk lurch – seriously, how rubbish was this beanstalk? – and that tipped the wheel just a fraction and started it turning just a fraction and suddenly a line of the most beautiful golden thread was unfurling toward the Prince.

He held a strand and marvelled at its shimmering beauty and above-average tensile strength. When he had just enough to loop around his waist, the spinning wheel’s momentum stopped.

The prince gave a gentle tug and more strands appeared.

He looked at the thread.

He looked at the ground.

He looked out across the kingdom.

He nodded at a pigeon. How-do, he said. S’alright, said the pigeon.

And the Prince jumped.

Prince Toffee leapt away from the beanstalk and out, out, out across they sky, twisting his body to build on centrifugal force and pull out as much of the thread as was on the wheel.

Whump, he went through the air. Whump. Faster. Faster. Whump.

Whump, he went.

Whump-splat went the prince and pigeon. “Sorry!” said the Prince.

He reached his greatest possible acceleration and, judging that the thread was running out, he turned his body, angled his arms, set up a windflow over himself so that now he was turning downwards and his stored-up energy was turning into a dive. He was a prince, but he read a lot.

So now he dove for the ground like a bungee jumper.

The wind tore past him.

The ground waited.

The birds got out of the way. The rest of the birds, anyway.

The wheel span faster than it had ever spun before.

Until.

The thread reached its end, reached the lock on crunched end-stop and sent a snap of a wave down the line to the Prince.

For one crisp instant, Prince Toffee-Caramel was suspended above Princess Hard-Centre. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him for the perfect, pure moment that it was.

Then the end-stop broke, the wheel slipped an inch, the tension in the thread rang out like a harp string and the Prince was yanked back into the air.

He flew up, used his movement to turn his body and appeared to stand in mid-air before he sliced at the golden thread, cutting himself free and dropping to the ground like an athlete.

It was like an exquisite dismount from bars and as he stood up, straightening his knees and smiling his most rogueishly handsome smile, he knew he was greatest Prince in all the land. He knew he was in there.

“Truly, you are the greatest prince in all the land,” said Princess Hard-Centre. “And if I were looking for a husband who could earn us a living at a circus, you’d be in there.

“But it was actually my spinning wheel that I wanted. So could you sort that out? Is it too much to ask?”