Anyone Getting A Signal?

Anyone?

"97% nationwide coverage and we find ourselves in that 3%"

Jeez, buddy, who'd have thunk it? Looks like you're on the menu tonight!

Most of these films are horrors (quite literally) with their common genre themes of isolation and loneliness highlighting the cell phone’s beepingly buzzingly annoyingly omnipresence in our everyday lives, to the point that filmmakers now feel almost forced to justify their exclusion [as working phones] and subsequently compete to come up with increasingly ridiculous excuses and stupid things to say.

As ridiculous as these clips look when bundled together, I am intrigued by what this string of edited excuses say about our technologically driven existence. We are now more than ever reliant on gadgets and gizmos to help make things easier and get us out of trouble. Cell phones morph into detailed street maps of wherever we alight and talking boxes in cars ensure we’ll never do battle with stupidly folding maps again. It’s now becoming increasingly common to read amazing stories like this: 

“Off the coast of Bali the boat had engine problems and they were stranded without any GPS or emergency radio. Rebecca sent a text message to her boyfriend in England, he called the Thames Coastguard, who called the Falmouth office, they called their counterparts in Australia, who contacted the Indonesian authorities via the embassy in Canberra and eventually an Indonesian Navy gunboat was dispatched from Lombok to look for the stricken tourists.” 

Following last month’s Sumatra earthquake, a victim texted friends to say he was buried under his house and could someone please come and dig him up. Thankfully they obliged. There’s also this mental story about how two surgeons carried out an operation by text and subsequently saved a young man’s life.

All amazing, fascinating stories… unless of course you’re a seasoned horror flick writer, left wringing your hands in despair as each new cell phone story rears its heroic head in the news. Let’s face genre facts: isolation builds tension, and the reliance on ticking clock psychology, with death as a threat, flags up the phone issue much more regularly than in most other genres, and if we’ve now got people texting from lost boats in the Indian Ocean, texting from underneath rubble in earthquake-ravaged Indonesia, and texting from the dense jungles of Western Africa, what hope does any horror screenwriter have in justifying why his endangered charges simply don’t send a quick text and avert the impending mass slaughter that’s about to fill our screens for the next 40 minutes.

Of course, everyone knows there are plenty of places where we can’t get a phone signal – I can’t get one at my place of work, a place ironically most likely to be the setting for an epic slasher biopic real soon – but the problem is that these publicised rescue stories, combined with the leap-off-the-screen awkwardness of many cell phone caveats, just don’t sit well with an audience brought up to unconsciously adhere to the Aristotelian wisdom that a believable untruth is much easier to accept than an unbelievable truth. The cell phone 'problem' and subsequent excuse in contemporary horror has become a bit of an elephant in the script.

“We gotta be in some kind of sun spot or something, there’s no signal getting out!”

Forget not having a signal. The majority of times I need my cell phone for any length of time, no matter where I’ve gone, it’s more or less guaranteed I’ll have hardly any battery left, especially the further from home I am. Fact. The lack of useable cell phones in those film clips, at least the ones where the phones suddenly choke and die, is without doubt the most realistic part of any of those movies from my point of view. My phone is always dying on me when I’m out. My friends, thankfully, are not. But just because it happens in real life, it doesn’t stop it threatening to be a big stomping elephant, trumping away whenever the phone issue is raised. What to do?

The repeated issue with many of these films is the lack of creativity; we see time and again phones dying or being dropped at the very moment they’re most needed. In most cases, the filmmakers should flag the issue before the audience identifies it; place the get-out clause before the conflict and give the audience an answer before the problem appears. Hence the "No phones allowed on this trip!" as if by acknowledging it beforehand they’re saying to the audience, "You can't accuse us when we were the ones that flagged it before you even thought it!" It’s always better to know there are no bullets left in a gun than to find out when the gun goes click... click... dull ... and we’re left feeling cheated. Bring it forward, foreshadow, and use subtle plants and payoffs to at least give yourself a fighting chance.

Or maybe even remove them altogether. Is the problem with half of these cell phone issues the fact that they are even mentioned in the first place? Is the fact that the filmmakers highlight an issue that's common knowledge, yet having highlighted it they do nothing new or convincing with it? Is the pain of a terrible excuse – “Jesus, you’d think what I paid for this thing I’d get more than one bar service!” - any worse than the potential for a question left hanging over why they didn't have a phone?

I juggled with CPD (cell phone dilemma) in a thriller script that involved a situation in a jungle where medical assistance was needed. I opted to not even mention or involve cell phones and instead had characters head to a village they knew had a radio transmitter. It suited the plot, felt natural and I don't think the piece suffered because of it. Not one person who read it flagged it as an issue and my feeling is that if I had opted to write in some dramatic disclaimer as to why these guys couldn’t use their phones then I’m sure those same readers would probably have raised a knowing eyebrow at that point. 

Cell phones are now such a part of everyday life that they increasingly put pressure on writers to explain them away, especially when their working presence, or lack of, is highlighted by an endangered or terrified character’s inability to reach out to those better placed to save them. How you overcome or address that problem in your own work is a combination of creativity, calculated risk and pot luck, but my fascination with this being an issue nowadays is that for all the serial killers and cannibals out there living in teen-friendly no-signal zones, the real monster highlighted in these film clips is the technology itself. The threat of everyday technology failing us, deserting us, leaving us stranded to the ravages of nature. That’s where the real horror lies... what happens when everything stops working?

Then again, what if all movies had cell phones? Bonjour?

Censorship

Welcome to the BBC: where the Thought Police are alive and kicking

The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain recently issued a press release following the BBC’s rejection of Caryl Churchill’s 'Seven Jewish Children', a play criticising Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Radio 4’s Commissioning Editor for Drama, Jeremy Howe, said that although he thought the play was a “brilliant piece”, the BBC could not broadcast the play “on the grounds of impartiality”. Howe went onto to say, “It would be nearly impossible to run a drama that counters Caryl Churchill’s view.”

Somebody should have told Jeremy to break the pills in two. It’s utter lunacy that a commissioning editor for drama would read a piece of drama that he considers a “brilliant piece” and subsequently reject it on the grounds that he would need to find another piece of drama to offer a counter argument to justify the commission? Huh? Exactly what planet do I send my license fee to? How rare must it be for a drama commissioning editor to discover a piece of drama they actually deem to be brilliant? And to then not commission it? It’s a decision that makes no artistic sense whatsoever. Exactly what kind of play is Radio 4 looking for, if not brilliant?

One year ago, Jeffery himself answered that: "At its best Radio 4 is challenging, curious and mischievous. And is content rich. [Radio 4 are looking for] a good story told in a fresh and original way. It is that simple. Good dialogue is pretty crucial. Because it is a single it has to stand out, it has to grab us.” Right. So there’s your BBC submitting guidelines: aim for all the above but just make sure it’s not brilliant. Oh, and also don’t make it controversial and also not anything likely to upset the government, please.

As worrying as this blatant censorship is, unfortunately it comes as no surprise when you consider the BBC’s shocking refusal, in January 2009, to broadcast a charity plea for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee on similar grounds. The decision on its own was abhorrent, but for them to cite impartiality as a motive is ridiculous. Impartiality to what, exactly? The charity DEC cited that “at least 412 Children have been killed and 1,855 injured” and wanted to broadcast an urgent plea in a desperate attempt to slow, and ultimately halt, the continuing deaths of more children in Gaza. Unfortunately that route of publicity was denied them by decision makers whose motives are founded on the importance of upholding an institution over the less important lives of children.

Is this the same due diligence to impartiality that, following our government’s brutal and illegal assault on Iraq in 2003, saw the BBC’s then Political Editor, Andrew Marr, on the steps of number 10 Downing Street, gleefully telling BBC viewers that Tony Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” That’s the height of BBC impartiality, is it? With Amnesty and UNICEF having publicly estimated over half a million Iraqis dead, children dying from chronic malnutrition and diarrhoea (one in eight dying before their fifth birthday), a contaminated water supply and crippled energy grid, over four million refugees, and whole regions practically glowing with the promise of cancer as a result of non-stop Allied bombardment with depleted uranium. Yep. Let’s all hear it for BBC impartiality.

The BBC produces an internal newspaper run by its own staff for its own staff. In the edition published after the blocked Gaza appeal, the letters page was titled “In blocking Gaza appeal we are taking sides” and each letter voiced strong opinion against the decision not to broadcast the charity appeal. BBC producer, Jonathon Renouf, said: “There is a smell of fear about this decision. Fear of controversy, fear of criticism, fear of repercussions. Perhaps this is the true fallout from the Hutton Report, Queengate and Jonathon Ross; an organization so mired in fear that it finds itself able to sacrifice aid to the victims of war for a principle that nobody (outside the BBC higher echelons) seems to believe was at stake.”

If that is the case, which it increasingly looks to be, it would suggest some tough times ahead for those writers hoping to push boundaries and inspire change. Not quite so tough, though, as the future of those children denied a chance by a public service broadcaster whose primary motivation is a commitment to a hypocrisy that assumes God-like precedence over a child’s suffering and survival.

Reading The Future

Have you often fantasized about reading a book but were put off by their bookiness? Have you always yearned for that intimate reading experience but just couldn’t get over the booky hurdle of bookiness that most books exude? Well Amazon has come up with just the solution for YOU.

“At half the thickness of Amazon's first e-book reader, the Amazon Kindle 2 ($359) is pretty inviting. It's a, sleek, curved tablet that you can easily hold in your hands.”

My God! This revolutionary invention is so book-like that you can actually easily hold it in your hands! Like a book!

“The first-generation Kindle weighed 10.3 ounces and offered a paperlike E-Ink display that keeps eyestrain at bay.”

And it has a paper-like quality! Wow! Just like books!

“The first Kindle was readable in sunlight…”

Hallelujah! Like books!

“… it also had long battery life…”

Brilliant! Who doesn’t hate it when you get to a good bit and your book stops working?

“… and allows you to highlight passages at will.”

What, like a pen, on paper? AT WILL? It’s a miracle I tell you!

“The Kindle 2 retains all of those capabilities, in a slimmer form. In my tests with the device, it felt easier to hold, especially one-handed.”

My God AGAIN! This new not-book is SO book-like it’s even like one those books you can hold in one hand. Is that like a paperback? A paperback BOOK? If so, that's brilliant!

“And the slim form made it easier to pack alongside my ultraportable laptop and other devices in my gear bag.”

It IS like a paperback book! Brilliant. It’s SO paperback book-like you can put it in bags! Genius! And the pièce de résistance of this God-like-genius invention? Drum roll… PERLEEZE!

“The Kindle 2 turns pages 20 percent faster than the original Kindle does. The faster refresh allows you to navigate the screen in real time, at least.”

It… turns… pages… as… fast… as… a… REAL BOOK! I had a quick scan of the Amazon reviews but couldn’t get past the first amazed customer's review:

“I've had the Kindle 2 in my hands for almost a day and have carried it on one commute.”

Cat Straw™

So, why is it that cats can’t pour water down their throats? Other than not possessing opposable thumbs and having access to small cups, surely if they just lowered their heads into a bowl of water far enough so their bottom jaw is fully immersed in the water, then all they’d then need to do is open their mouth and suck and they’d quench their thirst a lot quicker than THE HALF A FUCKING HOUR IT TAKES MY CAT AT SIX O’CLOCK EVERY MORNING TO NOISILY SLURP WHAT MUST AMOUNT TO NO MORE THAN A THIMBLE FULL.

I don’t see it being that intellectually challenging. It’s how my tortoise drinks, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, he just lowers his little head into the bird bath and sucks away, yet my tortoise can’t operate the cat flap or open the bathroom door or stealthily stalk squirrels and he certainly doesn’t come bounding down the garden having recognized that I’ve just called out his name (not for want of trying on my part), so what is it that’s stopping my more-intelligent-than-a-tortoise cat from taking a few silent gulps of water in the morning just like my tortoise does?

Is it simply that cats don’t like getting their chins wet? I know most domestic cats generally don’t like getting wet, so maybe that’s all it is; they’d rather spend half an hour dipping their tongue in and out and in and out and in and out of a bowl of water than risk the horror of getting a damp chin. But I wonder. Can cats suck? Is it because cats can’t suck that they don’t suck, or is it because cats are so blissfully unaware that sucking even exists that they have no concept of the suck? They don’t smoke, they don’t drink milkshakes, and they’ve certainly never needed to siphon petrol, so maybe it’s just that they’ve never had to evolve an intricate sucking system (neither have tortoises, I hear you cry, but tortoises do smoke. Constantly. Why do you think they’re so slow?) So it could be that sucking might be the answer to the cat drinking problem. I appreciate cats might not think they’ve got much of a problem with drinking, but, hey, our ancestors used to think drinking warm beer was normal. Progress. Things change.

So, can cats suck? And if so, what about straws, can cats use straws? Has anyone even thought to ask them? The straw would certainly be the natural solution to any damp chin concerns, plus a lot of resources and money go into researching cat foods and if we establish cats can suck then there’s a whole other industry out there. Isotonic cat drinks for the active moggy; diet drinks for the less active. It all comes down to the straw and whether cats can use them. Even rabbits can use straws and they’re hardly rocket scientists; they understand the principle behind the ‘suck a straw-sized tube and get a drink’ scenario; they suck on those upside down water bottles that look like small versions of cyclists’ water bottles, or even small cyclists’ water bottles, and quench their thirst. My dear old rabbit, Miffy, would always have a glug on his water bottle to wash his carrots down. No problem for him; he understood the concept of suck. So why not my cat?

This could be the start of something big. Or at least something long, thin and straw-like. 

The Cat Straw™. In shops now! 

"When your cat wants more...

... use The Cat Straw™"

On With The New

And off with the old... Adios Tom!

WORKING AT THE BBC – Part 2

POWER MAN

It’s pointless me charting a path to what you’re about to read because you already pretty much know how I arrived at this point. If in any doubt, just substitute the previous bureaucratic madness about trying to get someone to come and make a phone work, with something similarly ridiculous about how to get someone to come and get a desk powered up, and then simply apply the same RIDICULOUS timeframe, chuck in half a dozen disinterested people who each think anyone but themselves should be sorting this out and then add magic mushrooms.

Allow me to make the introductions.

POWER MAN (40s) smart new boiler suit, a confident swagger to his walk, saunters through the open-plan office. He stops at a desk, puts his surprisingly clean and very shiny toolbox down on the floor, straightens up and winks at me.

POWER MAN
Alright. Got a couple of desks need powering up?

(It still really bothers me that I failed to initially note two massively glaring pieces of characterization: the smart boiler suit - it even had ironed creases - and a shiny clean toolbox.)

Anyway, I pointed out that indeed these were the two desks that needed powering up.

POWER MAN
Let’s see what we can do for you.

(The royal plural, eh? Pluralis maiestatis. Unless he actually means a hoard of them are about to turn up similarly dressed in brand new boiler suits? Maybe enacting a synchronized saunter across the office to musical accompaniment. “MEN AT WORK - The Musical: it’s men working, but with songs!”)

He drops to his knees (mind those creases) and crawls under my desk.

I back away a little whilst trying to determine what should be a respectful distance in this kind of scenario, somewhere between not too far away that it seems I’m not interested in the work he is doing on my behalf, but also not too close for him to think I’m somehow checking up on his work. The result, I think, must have been maybe a little too close; because when he reappeared from under my desk I stupidly pretended to be surprised that he had just appeared from under my desk. His head popped out, my eyebrows shot up and I gave a little “Oh! Hello!” and consequently felt a right twat.

Why did I do that?

Anyway…

POWER MAN
Yeah. The problem is your desk isn’t plugged in. You’ve got no power to your desk.

(If only this genius had thought to study the great diseases of our time or famine prevention instead of desk plugs, then the world as we know it might be a different place. I stress might.)

ME
I know. That’s why I called you.

POWER MAN
There’s nothing powering it up. It needs connecting to the mains.

ME
Right.

POWER MAN
You see, what you’ve got, you got the power block attached to your desk, that’s those plugs you see under there. See? That line of plugs?

I make a point of looking under the desk to look at the plugs. I nod my head.

POWER MAN
Well they’re your plugs. But they’re not plugged in themselves. What you need is a lead to plug into your power block, that block there, that also plugs into the mains via that floor box.

I continue to stare at my powerless plugs and sagely nod my head as if I’m finally being allowed in to the inner sanctum of plug knowledge.

POWER MAN
That’s how you power it.

ME
Right.

POWER MAN
Basically you’re gonna need a lead. A lead and a plug.

ME
Right. A lead and a plug.

POWER MAN
Yeah. You’ll need a lead and plug.

ME
Right.

Power Man gathers together his shiny toolbox. I take note of this worrying action but remain rooted to the spot unsure of what to do or what say to him. The gormless concern obviously etched across my face prompts him to reiterate by way of reassurance --

POWER MAN
You need a lead and a plug. You’ll need to put in a request for a lead and a plug.

ME
Sorry?

POWER MAN
You’ll need to put in a request for a lead and a plug.

I stare at Power Man. I look around at the surrounding desks, all inhabited by silent strangers beavering away at whatever it is they do. I can’t find one person to make eye contact with in the hope of exchanging a knowing smile, or maybe even a Valium or two. I look across to the window, half expecting to see Jeremy Beadle grinning back at me. Except he’s dead now. Although I’m not convinced seeing him standing there would make any less sense.

It turns out that there are four different departments involved in the installation of my desk. Of course there is. Firstly, naturally, there is the actual desk department who deliver and build my desk and kindly throw in a wonky chair for good measure but not good posture; then there’s the floor box department who install holes in the floors under desks for plugging things into; then there’s the guys who wire up the holes in the floors and make them work; then there’s the department who supply power leads and plugs. They are four separate departments, each owned by separate independent contractors, who each bill the BBC for each job they carry out. They do not appear to communicate with each other or have a good word to say about each other. I should also point out that Phone Man is not employed by any of the above departments as the phones are also a separate outsourced service. Fun, eh?

In summary: Power Man informs me our desks are without specific leads and plugs required for power. I point out that we had already worked out that bombshell, hence the request for someone to come and power us up. He then points out that the actual supplying of leads and plugs are not his area of responsibility; his area of responsibility is simply to ensure that there is actual power available but stops at making that power accessible through the unusual and outdated practice of supplying an actual power cord and an actual plug. Or as he succinctly put it:

POWER MAN
Look. I can confirm your desks have the ability to get power. That’s not a problem. But as to whether you can actually access that power, well that’s not my area of responsibility. You need to speak to the building facilities department to get a plug and a lead. They can supply you with the route to the power but not the power itself; that’s my department.

So…

… having known for six months that I was due to start here on a specific date and would need a desk on arrival, it still took one month after I arrived to actually get a desk, and having got that desk it then took a further two weeks to get a working phone and power to that desk. Brilliant.

Once this Millennium Dome of desks was finally complete, with all the different departments having contributed their bit to the jigsaw, the first item I plugged in, of course, didn’t work. No power. Nothing. Which, it turns out, wasn’t such a bad thing as it meant I avoided electrocution when I repeatedly smashed my skull into my monitor screen. Eventually they/someone/not sure who at this point, returned, in my absence, and diagnosed the fuses in my desk plugs needed replacing. Yet it wasn’t because I was told about the fuses that I knew they had been changed. Oh no. Nothing that obvious. It was simply because when I returned to my desk, planted my arse and moved my mouse, the resulting sharp pain and subsequent smear of blood across my desk was revealed to be caused by smashed fuse glass imbedded in my palm. I discovered more small pieces of glass generously scattered across my desk, as if a mouse juggling act had gone terribly wrong in my absence.

A kind soul from a neighboring desk advised me where the first aid box was kept. I thanked him for his concern, and then apologized to his colleagues for screaming the word “FUCK!” at the top of my voice. I'm sure they heard my apology from under their desks.

My hand wrapped in tissue paper, I trotted off to the kitchenette area, as instructed.

What a marvelous sight to behold…



I found this Telegraph article written in 2002: Suffering Succotash! which has since left me with with one eye on the ceiling and the other browsing Ebay for secondhand Miner's hats.

It looks like I picked a bad year to give up glue.

WORKING AT THE BBC - Part 1

(a tragicomedy in two acts)

So, after patiently ‘hot-desking’ for one whole month (one of those annoying sugar-coated expressions that attempts to pointlessly garner excitement from a miserably dull reality, in this case the supremely uninspiring practice of sharing desks with everyone and their empty coffee cups) my buddy and I, working together on our latest broadcasting caper, finally manage to get our very own desks. Hurrah! Two empty desks. All ours. Not anyone else’s desks. No seats left uncomfortably warm by unknown bums. No mysterious coats over chairs. No dirty mugs beside keyboards smothered with buttery breakfasty fingerprints. Nope. Two fresh, clean, empty desks devoid of any suggestion of previous habitation and intended for the sole use of us both. Time to plant a flag and claim these babies as ours: one twelfth of a year later and we finally got them. And considering the insane bureaucracy we’ve been privy to during this time maybe we should consider one month as being quite an achievement.

Yeah right.

We got no phones. Well, we got phones, two of them, one on each desk, but neither of them actually in working order. A condition compounded by the fact we’re also in an area that has no mobile phone coverage; we’re basically on the dark side of the moon. Except on Earth. And the desks have no power. Like the phone situation, there are plug sockets in attendance, several of them smiling away under the desk, but they don’t work. Nothing works. Nothing actually works.

So we mention that neither of our desk phones work and that our desks have no power. We mention this to several people. Repeatedly. A lot. We repeatedly mention this a lot. To a lot of people. And finally… it gets “elevated to a higher level” and we’re told that we need to put in a proper request to the relevant people.

So let’s start with getting these phones working…

ME
Okay. How do I do that?

BLOKE
Phone them. Here…
(writes number down)
… here’s their number.

I stare at him as he holds out the post-it note with the number on it. He smiles, nods, and holds the number towards me. Embarrassed for him, I take it.

ME
You want me to phone them?

BLOKE
Yeah. Just mention my name as a reference if there’s any problem.

ME
Right. Thanks. You want me to phone someone to report my phone isn’t working?

(I’m thinking to myself as I’m looking at him, well, I’m no psychic, but I can already predict there being one massive problem with that suggestion. But I’m looking at him and he just isn’t getting it. I should point out that this is also the same bloke who one month ago suggested I email the IS department to tell them that I wasn’t able to log onto my computer.)

BLOKE
Yeah. Seriously, if you get any hassle just put them onto me.

ME
I won’t be able to phone them. My phone doesn’t work. I can’t phone them.

I follow his lead and stare at the defunct phone on my new desk, both of us willing it to do something to get us out of this mess…

… finally…

BLOKE
Leave it to me. I’ll phone them.

It was a further TWO weeks before the smiling phone man appeared and my phone was networked to the BBC system and finally up and running. But only my phone, not my fellow workmate’s. Once the phone man had finished pressing my buttons and explained some phone functions that I can’t imagine anyone ever needing, ever, I then pointed him towards our other phone that needed doing, a phone less than three feet away on a desk opposite and attached to mine.

PHONE MAN
You’ll need to put in a request for that one.

ME
We did.

PHONE MAN
For that phone. You’ll need a request for that phone.

ME
We did. That’s why you’re here. We already put it in.

PHONE MAN
No. I only got a job request for one phone. This phone.

ME
But we got these desks at the same time. Two weeks ago. And neither phone was working. That’s when we put in the request. Two weeks ago.

PHONE MAN
I only got a job request for one phone. You’ll need to put in another request for that phone.

ME
I’m sorry if it wasn’t made clear. It was BLOKE who put in the request for us, obviously we couldn’t because we didn’t have a phone, and I’m sure he would have put in a request for both phones because he knew we needed both --

PHONE MAN
I only got one job request for one phone.

ME
-- so maybe he got it wrong or didn’t explain himself properly, and if that’s the case I do apologise, but --

PHONE MAN
You’ll need to put in another request for that phone.

ME
Okay.
(one… two… three… four…)
Can I put in a request now, then? To you? Whilst you’re here? The phone’s right there. Please? We would be really grateful. Really. It only took a couple of minutes to do this one.

We look at each other…

… he looks towards the other phone…

… looks back to me…

(Jesus, the suspense is killing me!)

ME
Please?

PHONE MAN
Sorry. I only got one job request for one phone. You need to phone a request in for that phone.

An internal primal scream threatens to blow my eyeballs out of their sockets. Thankfully, years of regimented study in several Japanese martial disciplines has taught me well; I take a deep breath and instantly calm my inner psycho. It’s only a phone. A phone. It’s not as if it’s anything actually important. Yeah. I'm cool.

PHONE MAN
Do you need the number?

I decide right there and then to kill him.

Tune in soon to WORKING AT THE BBC - Part 2 where you’ll find out all about POWER MAN: the man in charge of powering up my new desk. He’s a real hoot, that one, a right barrel of laughs.