Patently obvious

Last year, IBM published one of my inventions and another where I was a co-inventor. I was quite pleased, even though they were published, not patented. Then I saw a churlish article in The Register about IBM’s patents — prompting this grumbly personal blog response.

In 2009, the US Patent and Trademarks Office granted IBM more patents than any other company in the world. This was the 17th straight year  that’s happened, though it didn’t stop The Register’s Gavin Clarke reporting this as “each year for nearly a decade”. (The IBM press release makes this obvious to most of… er… the press.)

Mind you, some of The Register’s other calculations were inaccurate too. And I think they missed a more interesting analysis of  the figures that they were handed on a plate by the various source documents.

For example, The Register claims that a company called Hon Hai Precision grew fastest on USPTO patent awards, but then refers to a table of data that shows Hon Hai was up 39% year-to-year whereas Microsoft was up 43%.

When Gavin’s article was first published earlier this week, it also asserted: “the number of patents granted to Microsoft  almost doubled, growing 43 per cent over 2008 to hit 2,903.” Wouldn’t “almost doubled” be “almost 100%”? And even doubling their impressive 2008 haul would still have kept Microsoft in second place to IBM in 2009. [Subsequently, this calculation gaffe has been quietly removed from the article.]

On trends, the article says: “if IBM and Microsoft continue at the same pace, Microsoft should slide into the number-two spot behind IBM. Then it’s just a matter of time and filings before Microsoft deposes IBM at the top.”  It fails to make a connection with another observation in the article that “the size of portfolio is the currency that you use to trade to another company”.

So how many years on current trends will it be before Microsoft amasses the same amount of total patent “currency” as IBM, Samsung, Canon, Sony or others? Especially as some new patents derive from that existing  intellectual property, and those other companies have been amassing thousands every year for many years… in IBM’s case, for decades. Maybe that’s why in 2003 Microsoft hired Marshall Phelps, the former IBMer who Newsweek said turned IBM’s patent portfolio into a $2 billion business.

In addition, Gavin snorts: “There you have it fanbois: Those who think IBM walks on water because of the patents and IP its generously given to Linux and open-source, the mask as finally slipped. Patents to IBM are a currency it uses to get what it wants.”

But why can’t companies — IBM or otherwise — do different things for different kinds of patents? And if the article’s questioning IBM’s accumulation of intellectual ”currency”, perhaps it could have admitted something else made plain in the press release: IBM also had nearly 4,000 additional technical inventions in 2009, but published them directly instead of seeking patent protection, thereby making the inventions freely available to others in a public database of prior art. Including mine. Fly, my pretties, fly!

Companies like IBM, Samsung, Canon, Sony and (increasingly) Microsoft have a big portfolio of existing patents on which they can develop new intellectual property; and IBM also freely publishes thousands of new technical inventions that others can build on.  There you have it, fanbois.

I suppose  journalists prefer to write a story about “the Beast of Redmond breathing down everyone’s necks” or “Big Blue’s mask finally slips after nearly a decade”. (Or is it 17 years? Let me check that press release again.)   And that’s easier to do if you get the basic maths wrong, selectively quote the data, and if you don’t bother with much real analysis of the underlying trends. That much is patently obvious.

Thanks PLR

David Bishop’s splendid blog prompted me to check my Public Lending Rights (PLR) account. (David’s blog is itself worth checking, too.)

Authors registered with PLR can get an estimate of how popular their books were in British libraries over the year. To compensate for lost sales, PLR pays about sixpence for each time a book was borrowed.

As the PLR Newsletter reveals, more than 37,000 authors have registered, and 62% of us will get some form of payment this year. To ensure  that people like J K Rowling don’t scoop the entire pot, there’s a maximum payment of £6,600, paid out this year to 250 authors (well below 1% of all registered authors).

In order of popularity, my most read titles were:

1. Torchwood: Another Life

2. Torchwood: Pack Animals

3. Doctor Who: The Ancestor Cell

4. Doctor Who: Kursaal

5. Doctor Who: Frontier Worlds

My Torchwood books are more recent, and so it’s no surprise that they were borrowed much more than my older and out-of-print Doctor Who titles. I have to share my loot with Steve Cole for “The Ancestor Cell”; people still seem to be reading and, indeed, reviewing it. Steve himself lives in a world where dinosaurs fly spaceships and cows use a time machine. Try not to judge him too harshly.

Meanwhile, hurrah for the PLR. And thank you to the thousands of people who have borrowed my books from UK libraries.

EDF WTF?

If you add together the number of different UK tariffs for gas, electric, and mobile phones, you get a number greater than the atoms in the known universe. It took a while for me just to decode one of them, based on a letter from EDF describing changes to my “dual fuel deal”. Their explanatory leaflet is called “Everything you need to know about the changes to our discount structure”. What it gains from clear English it loses with incomplete detail.

Looks to me that the changes benefit EDF’s larger consumers at the expense of their smaller consumers.

The explanatory leaflet provides a couple of optimistic examples, and describes the changes in general terms based on “a typical customer”. But what does it really mean for their consumers? Well, let’s use the figures that EDF define as “a typical customer”. (There is some maths involved, but don’t panic, I won’t be setting a test this semester.)

At first glance, it looks like EDF hoiked their prices by an eye-watering 32%. Before VAT, the gas charge increases from 14.18p per kWh to 18.67p. Electricity increases from 5.3p per kWh to 7.0p.

Then you notice they have one rate for the first lot of gas/electric you use each quarter, and a different rate (about half) for anything after that. So they’ve raised the former by nearly a third, but left the latter unchanged. And to add to the confusion, they have also changed two other discounts:

• Instead of a flat monthly discount for direct debit payments, they give a 6% discount on your quarterly bill
• They have slashed the “duel fuel” discount by two thirds

The figures that EDF define as a typical customer are “3,300kWh of electricity and 20,500kWh of gas a year”. And the tariff rates before VAT are:

ELECTRICITY:

• First 225kWhs per quarter = 18.67p (was 14.18p in 2009)
• All other kWhs = 10.50p (unchanged)

GAS:

• First 670kWhs per quarter = 7.000p (was 5.300p in 2009)
• All other kWhs = 3.056p (unchanged)

DIRECT DEBIT

• Discount 6% of the total bill (was a flat saving of £24 per year in 2009)

DUAL FUEL

• Discount £8 a year (was £24 per year in 2009)

Here’s how it works out for a standard user. I’ve made the reasonable assumption that in every quarter the average consumer uses at least 225kWhs electricity (3,300/4) and at least 670kWhs gas (20.500/4), even in summer; and that total usage remains the same year-to-year, for the purpose of comparison.

The effect on the average consumer of the changes to EDF’s discount structure is an increase of 5.58% (well above UK inflation).

But someone using half the average sees their bill increase by a whopping 16.18%:

Whereas someone using half as much again as the average sees their bill increase by only 1.84%:

In fact, if you used twice the average, your annual bill would be slightly lower in 2010 than it was in 2009!

Obviously, if customers reduce their use of gas and electricity year-to-year, they will reduce the actual amount they have to pay during 2010. But the rewards for doing that are not equal across their customer base. And with such a cold winter, I think most people will be using more fuel this year anyway.

In short:

• EDF’s changes appear to penalise their smaller (or more prudent) customers more than their larger (or more profligate) customers, whether customers try to reduce consumption or not
• Most customers are unlikely to work this out from the information provided by EDF.
• If it’s as complex and confusing as this for changes to just one tariff for just one supplier, how effective is market competition really?

ELECTRICITY

10.64%

Audio therapy

The “Alpha Mummy” blog in The Times today made me smile. The author’s daughter was bereft at losing David Tennant in the recent Doctor Who finale, and even reading Doctor Who Magazine was insufficient consolation. So the clever father “downloaded a Doctor Who audiobook, read out by Tennant”. And by 11:30 p.m. their daughter was fast asleep.

I like to imagine that “at least one more David Tennant adventure”  means it was an audio original, and specifically Pest Control. Have I mentioned that audio on this blog?  It’s still available for download in the UK and the US and from other fine retailers around the world. Please don’t download an illegal torrent of it, because the author doesn’t get any royalties for those, and that’s how I’m paid for writing it, and not getting royalties makes me weep like a bereft girl.

Well, I like to imagine that the parents downloaded my audio. But perhaps it was Simon Messingham’s Day of the Troll instead. Find that here, if you must.

And for those of you as excited as I am about the forthcoming Eleventh Doctor, check out the preview on the BBC website here (UK only, I’m afraid).

Update: my wife asks, “Was the girl in a coma? After listening to your audio, I mean?”

Mail Fail

Two suspiciously-similar articles appeared in the press this week, both grumbling that David Tennant was in too many BBC programmes at Christmas. One was in the Telegraph, and the other in the Mail. Both asserted that he appeared in 75 programmes.

To get to 75 appearances, they had to count over a period of three weeks. Now, I know Christmas starts earlier every year, but that seems a bit extravagant even by the Mail’s standards. Well over half of these appearances were Doctor Who (including the cartoon series) or other repeats; two of them were among the biggest-rated shows of the season (the two-part Doctor Who finale); and several others were news or documentary appearances as publicity for the finale. On that basis, the press will presumably be getting in a tizzy about the number of appearances by people in soap operas or the next time Britain’s Got Talent has its run.

The Mail article contained well below 500 words, plus a programme listing that could have been copied straight from the Radio Times. It took three journalists to write that. It contains several errors, which are helpfully explained to the Mail journalists in the many reader comments. They quoted two people from the many on their own comment boards to support the complaint about “overexposure”. Unfortunately, they selectively quoted one of those from a comment that was actually saying the complete opposite, and the original author had to correct them in the comments and reveal why she “really, really resented” their “pathetic” article. The Mail hasn’t apologised or corrected the published article.

This didn’t stop Conservative MP Nigel Evans complaining that this was evidence that the BBC was “freezing out young acting talent”, that the BBC should “name their big earners”, and that “200 channels of David Tennant doesn’t seem to be much choice.” He doesn’t explain how 75 appearances could make 200 channels, but fortunately he sat on the Culture Media and Sport select committee, and not one like the Treasury Select Committee that might require numeracy. Being a former committee member means he probably ought to recognise a non-sequitur, though. Note that he doesn’t sit on the committee any more — one of the errors that none of the three authors spotted in their article, possibly because they think retyping something is easier than checking the facts.

Speaking of which, moon-faced miserablist and Mail regular Jan Moir subsequently regurgitated the whole story in the paper, using the information in the article but conveniently ignoring all the corrections helpfully provided by readers of the previous article. She probably doesn’t think much of readers’ comments, after there was a record-breaking number of complaints to the UK Press Complaints Commission about her nasty article about the death of Stephen Gateley. Charlie Brooker described that fiasco rather better than I could, however – read his response here.

Other recent articles by the same Mail authors include:

• Ross: “Jonathan Ross angers BBC bosses after slamming television schedule”, another in the Mail’s continuing attacks on Ross, in which no BBC bosses are actually quoted  (either on or off-record), the entire piece being based on a single tweet by Ross’s revealing his uncontroversial opinion that “BBC has shite on occasionally” compared with even worse on ITV.
• Pope: “Pope has a pointy hat”, a piece about Vatican dress code that speculates whether the papal headgear is an attempt to distance the Pope from his Nazi past, and featuring the comment “puts the Rat into Ratzinger” and a photo of an infallible condom featuring the Pontiff’s smiling face
• Rage: “’We want to wipe the smug grin from Simon Cowell’s face”, an article whose true Mail agenda is revealed by the website URL “BBC-backing-Rage-Against-The-Machine-sour-grapes-X-Factor-beating-Strictly-says-Simon-Cowell.html”
• Fat: “Dawn French uses a floral walking stick”, containing the breathless assessment “It is not known whether her injury was linked to her weight, however it is well-known that heavier people tend to have more problems with mobility”, and a series of quotes from a “Harley Street diet expert” lambasting the injured woman.
• Pug: “Kelly Brooks’ dog has a pink body warmer”, a feature piece containing photos of her, the dog and her rugby-player boyfriend, plus the words “amazing pert boobs”.

I made up one of those five stories — only four were written by those journalists. If you feel like doing a quick web search to work out which is the one I invented, then you’ll have worked harder on ascertaining the facts than the Mail journalists did on some of the facts in their David Tennant article.

PS: For the full effect, you need to imagine that I hand-wrote this blog post in full capitals on lined paper with green ink.

PPS: The Telegraph journalist has previously reported on MPs’ expenses, the war in Afghanistan, and the Jersey child abuse investigation. Must have been a slow news day for him, eh?

Keynote slides

My keynote to the TCUK Conference (first discussed here) went well in 2009. In response to those who asked me to share the slides, here they are. They were designed to be illustrative during my talk, so you won’t get the whole story just from these slides. You literally had to be there.

The keynote was referenced in:

• The ISTC newsletter.
• The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Technical Communication, Southern Communicator.
• Mike Unwalla’s TechScribe blog
• Roger Hart’s blog at Simple-Talk.

Top Tennant

News just in… well, it was news to me, thanks to David Darlington, who sent me the December newsletter from the Audiobook Publishing Association.

The announcement actually happened two months ago at the Chiswick Book Festival. The competition was announced in July, as I may have mentioned. And there was also an article in The Independent about the nominations here.

Anyway, thanks to participating members of the public, Pest Control was voted in the Top Ten. Thank you voters! Fellow nominees who didn’t make the Top Ten were Cormack McCarthy, Julian Fellowes, Duncan Bannatyne, the late E M Forster, Barack Obama, and Paddington Bear.

There were three categories – fiction, non-fiction, and children’s. About four and a half thousand members of the public voted on a list of twenty titles that had been selected from over one hundred titles entered by audio publishers. The panel’s selections were based on excellence in several criteria: quality of literary content, abridgement, reading, production value and sound quality.

The winner of the fiction category was Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Adjoa Andoh (published by Hachette). Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (Bloomsbury) topped the children’s chart. And the overall winner was Dear Fatty, the audiobook of Dawn French’s autobiography, read by Liza Tarbuck and published by Random House.

Full results:

• Dear Fatty by Dawn French read by Liza Tarbuck (Random House) – Overall Winner
• The Graveyard Book written and read by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury) – Children’s Winner
• Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith read by Adjoa Andoh (Hachette Digital) – Fiction Winner
• Doctor Who : Pest Control by Peter Anghelides read by David Tennant (BBC Audio)
• Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks read by Jeremy Northam (Penguin)
• A Room with a View by E M Forster read by Juliet Stevenson (CSA Word)
• Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup read by Kerry Shale (Harper Collins)
• The Last Fighting Tommy by Harry Patch read by Alan Howard (Hachette Digital)
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga read by Kerry Shale (Orion)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy read by Rupert Degas (Naxos)

Before I get too excited, I should note that this inaugural award was initiated by Agile Marketing, and featured “the very best in audio publishing from January 2008 – March 2009″. But it’s always lovely to have recognition for something I’ve written, and I’m grateful therefore to my publishers for nominating me, the judging panel for shortlisting me, and the public for voting.

It’s a CiN 2009

Back in 2001, Justin Richards and I wrote a sketch for the  GallifreyOne Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles. As it’s Children in Need this week, I thought I’d share it via the blog. If you like it, why not make a donation to the BBC charity event. And if you don’t like it… er… make a donation anyway, you humourless oik.

So here is… the Insurance Sketch. (Non Doctor Who fans may look away.)

DRAX:       Good morning Mr Glitz.

GLITZ:     Good morning Mr Drax. (fx: phone rings) Hang on a second, I’ve just got to take this phone call.   

DRAX:       Where is that dizzy ginger receptionist when you need her?

GLITZ:     Never mind, I’ve got it.  (picks up phone) Hello, Glitz and Drax Intergalactic Insurance Company – we make it right for only five grotzits a day – can I help you? (covers phone). It’s Decider Dexeter from Planet Alzarius.

DRAX:       Here’s the Jurassic Era file. (passes it over)

GLITZ:     Yes, Decider Dexeter. We’ve investigated your claim throroughly. I’m afraid we have to reject your claim for the death of your boy Adric. (listens)  It was contributory negligence I’m afraid, on three counts.  (a) Driving a space vessel without insurance. (b) Driving while underage. And (c) Driving while wearing pyjamas. (listens)  Yes, pyjamas Decider Dexeter. The lad was clearly half asleep after just getting out of bed. No, I don’t care if Adric was half asleep most of the time anyway.

DRAX:       Give him to me. (takes phone). Hello, Decider Dexeter? It’s Mr Drax here. I think you should know that there’s a counter claim against you from a Mr Scaroth. Yes, he’s the last of the Jagaroth, apparently. (listens) The last, yes, and that seems to be the problem. Apparently your boy Adric crashed his ship and wiped out the whole Jagaroth race on primeval Earth. (listens) Yes, I know Mr Scaroth has an ocular disability. But he claims that your lad scattered Mr Scaroth across the entirety of history.  He’s in multiple fragments across Earth’s timeline.

GLITZ:     We’ve had 12 phone calls from him already today. 

DRAX:       And Mr Scaroth is going to call again yesterday, Decider Dexter. (listens) Yes, I know that Adric had a star for mathematical excellence, but that’s not an alibi, Decider. Well, perhaps you feel you’ve come to the end of the road with that claim You can always resubmit it. Goodbye. (hangs up)

GLITZ:     What did you tell him? 

DRAX:       I told Dexeter we’ve come full circle. If he calls again, tell him that British Airways also want to counterclaim against the loss of two Speedbird Concorde aircraft which were trashed in the late Jurassic period.

GLITZ:     Well don’t worry, because Richard Branson says he can still fly them at a profit.

DRAX:       Any other calls today?

GLITZ:     There’s a Mr Omega waiting for you in reception.

DRAX:       Is he alone?

GLITZ:     Well, he’s brought no body with him. 

DRAX:       Tell him I can’t see him today. He’s only trying it on, you know. He wanted to sue the Time Lords for unreasonably holding back his career.

GLITZ:     Oh yes, “I should have been a God”. And what about that skin condition he claimed for last time?

DRAX:       Turned out he’d just glued Rice Krispies on his face.

GLITZ:     Oh, that other Time Lord called, too. Mr Morbius. I asked him why he wanted to insure the lungs of a birostrop, and he got a bit angry. I could hear him knocking things over in his laboratory.

DRAX:       Did you tell him he’d need some new clause on his contract?

GLITZ:     Yes, but he thought I’d said he needed a new claw.

DRAX:       I’ve got a good mind to cancel Mr Morbius’s policy.

GLITZ:     Don’t talk to Mr Morbius about having a good mind, please. Besides, he rang off when I told him we’d already canceled Dr Solon’s medical cover.

DRAX:       (checks notes) Did President Borusa get back to you, by the way?

GLITZ:     Yes, turns out that he decided against taking out life insurance.

DRAX:       Was that because you asked him what happened to his previous body? He seems to have run through quite a few in quick succession.

GLITZ:     No, he was harping on about how he wouldn’t need life cover any more. He’s got some deal with Rassilon Insurance.

DRAX:       Call on line one for you. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart? (picks up phone and hands it over)

GLITZ:     (Fake sincerity) Alistair! (he obviously gets an earful) Ah, yes, hello Brigadier. Mmm. Bad news for you on your  Devil’s End claim, I’m afraid. Yes, the jeep and the helicopter. Well, as far as superheated domes of air are concerned, we have to treat that as…

DRAX:       An Act of God.

GLITZ:     An Act of God, yes. Particularly with it being so close to the church. Mm. Yes, I’m aware that the church was razed to the ground. But Mr Magister is in custody, as I understand it, and will be unable to submit his claim form within the legal timeframe. Anything else I can help you with Brigadier? Oh yes… third party fire and theft for a car. What make of car? (listens) I’m afraid you’ll need to be a bit more specific. (listens, then sighs) All right then, that’s a “sprightly yellow roadster”…

DRAX:       Is it customized?

GLITZ:     Any modifications to the vehicle? Hmm. Yes, well I’m afraid I don’t have inertial dampeners on my database here, Brigadier. Sorry, goodbye. (hangs up)

DRAX:       Next time, tell him that he can’t get extended work insurance for his whole platoon. I mean, how many other serving British officers have lost seven men to the Daleks, four men to blobs of jelly from another dimension, and three to a tyrannosaurus rex? Not to mention blowing up the entire earth?

GLITZ:     Be fair, that was a parallel reality.

DRAX:       Yeah, and that’s what I said when I turned down his claim.

(they giggle)

GLITZ:     And bear in mind that the Brigadier never seems to have more than twelve men in his platoon.

DRAX:       With that kind of fatality rate, are you surprised?

GLITZ:     Hang on, we’ve had a couple of claims come in on the fax here, Mr Drax. There’s that teacher in London whose car was stolen. (studies fax) Does that look like “Chesterfield” to you?

DRAX:       No, it’s, Mr Chesterton. Does it say say how long his vehicle had been left parked in Totter’s Lane?

GLITZ:     Four years.

DRAX:       Tell him to forget it. And there’s also this medical claim from a Miss Nyssa, for an outbreak of Lazzar’s disease.

GLITZ:     Did she explain the medical basis for the claim?

DRAX:       Yeah, but I was able to confuse her with technobabble. Turns out she knows very little about telebiogenesis. Now, what’s this note on the file for Mr Sutekh?

GLITZ:     He was looking for travel insurance for his long-awaited journey to Mars. And we wanted to know how long he’d been at his current address.

DRAX:       And…?

GLITZ:     Seven thousand years, apparently.

DRAX:       Sounds like a safe enough risk. What’s this one?

GLITZ:     Life insurance claim. Interesting, it’s a guy who’s missing presumed dead.

DRAX:       Oh, yes. Mrs Earthling – she called earlier about her husand, called…. (checks list) Mr Earthling. She last saw him catching a bus to Zolpha Thura. You know, on the phone she sounded quite spikey.

GLITZ:     No, turn it down, he’ll probably be back in time for tea.

DRAX:       What if she tries to renegotiate the terms of the insurance?

GLITZ:     Tell her that would be the ultimate impossibility.  Now, what did you tell this one?

DRAX:       King Midas? I pointed out that this was at least the third time that he’d claimed for the complete and utter destruction of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis. He got one of his guys to call in yesterday.

GLITZ:     That would be Professor Zaroff?

DRAX:       Yes, he thought that nuzzink in ze vurld could stop them claiming now. Oops, call coming in  on line seven (picks up phone and listens) It’s the Master. Hello Mister Master. Yes, I’ve got some rotten news for you about the Castrovalva claim. Well, you have no claim. (listens) Yes, I know, you have no Castrovalva either. (listens) Yes, I’m aware that the entire place was obliterated when it was reduced to a singularity, don’t you hate it when that happens? But as the place never really existed in the first place… We will refund the premium, of course. No…  Yes?   Mmm. Yes?

GLITZ:     What’s he saying?

DRAX:       He’s saying “I am the Master, and you will obey me… you WILL obey ME…”

GLITZ:     That old trick, eh?

DRAX:       Thank you, Mr Master. Yes, the cheque’s in the vortex. Goodbye.  (hangs up) Now look here, Mr Glitz, a pile of small claims from San Francisco in 1999. 

GLITZ:     Ah yes … an ambulance… some sort of cardiovascular intra-arterial device stolen from the hospital… broken fire hose at the local scientific institute…. And a chip taken from a beryllium clock.

DRAX:       This one’s from the Cyberleader. He wants to make a claim for the validium-based destruction of his entire war fleet.

GLITZ:     Yeah, tell him we’ll pay it directly into his credit account…  (together) So long as it’s on his gold card!

DRAX:       (together) So long as it’s on his gold card!  (alone) Nice one, Mr Glitz. Now, what about this application from Eldrad of Kastria?

GLITZ:     Show me the application form. What’s this, male or female?

DRAX:       Er… both.

GLITZ:     O…kay. Any phobias? Afraid of heights. Family history of illness: all wiped out millennia ago. It’s not looking good for him is it? For her, I mean.

DRAX:       Well, we could insure just the hand I suppose.

GLITZ:     That would do it. Ooh, call coming in on line four hundred. It’s the future President of Gallifrey. (hands over phone)

DRAX:       President Romanadvoratrelundar, lovely to hear from you. I understand you’ve spent a couple of decades away in E-space, was that a pleasant break? (listens) There’s a problem with your insurance, President Romanadvoratrelundar. (pause) Well, we can’t fit your full name into the little boxes on the application form. We wondered if we could just put you down as President Romana. (pause) OK, how about President Fred? (pause) President Romana it is, then. (listens)  Yes, I can do you a discount for multiple Gallifreys. Yes. Yes. And specific buildings insurance?  Well, how many sides does this Panopticon building have? Four, I see. Didn’t it have six when we spoke about it last week? OK. And you’re aware of the exclusion that applies in the event of War?  Hello?  Hello? Hmm, the line’s gone dead. (hangs up)

GLITZ:     Oh bloody hell! Look at this from the Doctor, again. The guy’s a pharmacologist’s nightmare.

DRAX:       What, has he got fatal poisoning again?

GLITZ:     Yeah. Claim number was for death by blue crystal poisoning. Number five was spectrox toxaemia. And number six was a severe allergic reaction to carrot juice.

DRAX:       Carrot juice?

GLITZ:     Carrot juice!

DRAX:       What was it last week? Number seven: shot by hoodlums in Vancouver? Number four: had a bit of a fall? He’s taking the piss. He’ll be saying that he just got a bit dizzy next. Why can’t he just die of old age any more?

GLITZ:     His latest claim says that he’s feeling a bit flat after turning  back into a mirror-licking psychotic.

DRAX:       Is there any evidence he actually regenerated?

GLITZ:     No.

DRAX:       Well tell him to sod off then.

GLITZ:    (shrieks) Oh noooooo! Here’s one we really can’t get out of, Mr Drax. The Monitor of Logopolis just wrote to us (holds up big sheet of paper full of holes). Policy 4242, with the Block Transfer Computation loophole. Seems like they had a few loopholes of their own, and now I’m afraid they can claim for the destruction of the planet Traken.

DRAX:       The planet Traken? Hang on… (checks) My database doesn’t show it any more! I can’t even see Metulla Orionsis. Oh, you idiot, Mr Glitz!

GLITZ:     We are beyond recriminations, Mr Drax. Beyond… everything.

DRAX:       We’re beyond our credit limit, Mr Glitz. That’s for sure. Let’s scarper before the SSS catch up with us. That Sara Kingdom’s had it in for us ever since we turned down that life insurance claim on her brother Bret Vyon.

GLITZ:     After you, Mr Drax.

DRAX:       That’s right, after me, Mr Glitz!

(They flee the stage)

Pest in show?

I was very flattered to learn recently that Doctor Who: Pest Control is one of the nominations for the Best Audiobook of the Year. If you liked it, you can vote here. Or if you prefer something else, you can vote for that instead.

The site also links to snippets from each audio. For mine, it’s an exciting action sequence narrated by David Tennant.

There’s also an article in The Independent about the nominations here. Even better, it shows the cover of my audiobook on the front page.

Fellow “best audio” names include Sebastian Faulks, Neil Gaiman, Alexander McCall Smith, Cormack McCarthy, Julian Fellowes, Duncan Bannatyne, Harry Patch, Dawn French, the late E M Forster, Barack Obama, and Paddington Bear.

Flag day

The fragrantly lovely James Moran has launched a competition via his Twitter feed. Caption this: http://twitpic.com/8as4d You need to tweet your caption by July 1st, using the #jmcap hashtag. The prize is to have a character named after you in the next thing that he gets made or published, and a signed copy of the DVD or book or magazine or whatever.

It’s most unlikely that anyone would namecheck me in anything, because my surname is a bit unusual. I accidentally namechecked someone in my own Torchwood novel Another Life, an Antipodean author who blogged about it when one of her friends drew her attention to it. My novel character was a secretary who met a grisly end. The author sent me a very charming e-mail. Her friend had suggested the namecheck was karmic comeback for a critical review she’d written. Posters on her blog saw a deeper revenge motive. Alas, it was just that I hadn’t checked for such a coincidence. And as I wrote the novel before the first series of Torchwood aired, my book was finished well ahead of any TV reviews, so any revenge would have been prescient at best.

We are careful about names in the novels. I picked some fairly innocent surnames (Bee, Wildman) from boys I was at at school with, though there was no other resemblance. My thoroughly professional editor Steve Tribe did note that one Welsh name I’d used was also the name of an unfortunate child victim in the Aberfan disaster, a 1966 catastrophe so dreadful that it makes me tearful just to think about it. So obviously, we changed that.

The photo that the flagrantly bubbly James Moran invites us to caption shows him standing on the paving flagstone lift inside the Torchwood Hub. This is a classy one up on most of us, who have our photos taken on the equivalent flag outside the Cardiff Millennium Centre in Roald Dahl Plass.

Andy Lane, Dan Abnett and I had our photos taken standing on that flag (the outside one), allegedly as a publicity shot for the trade press. We did it when we visited Cardiff as part of our research for the first set of Torchwood novels. I also took a “flag” photo of Joe Lidster on the slab. Joe was contracted to do the audio adaptations of the three novels, so obviously Andy and Dan and I didn’t get him in our group shot — I mean, we had to have certain standards. (I wonder whatever happened to Joe? Nothing good, I’ll bet.)

Series one of Torchwood hadn’t yet been transmitted, at the time of our photo, so for us it was a private joke. The success of the TV show has now made that slab a bit of a pilgrimage site for fans, and hurrah for that. We three novelists were granted a privileged insight of the whole first series — scripts, a studio tour, and an early viewing, all with appropriate nondisclosure agreements. When I wrote my second Torchwood novel, Pack Animals, I got to see scripts for the second series as preparation. It was very exciting.

The third series of Torchwood is broadcast over five nights on BBC1, starting July 6th. I’ve not seen any advance information about it, and I am even more excited about it — desperately avoiding spoilers, and eagerly anticipating five nights of thrills and shocks and laughs and surprises. The florally jungly James Moran is one of the writers. It’s going to be fantastic. So I thought I should flag this.