"What do points mean?"

Mes Amis

You're probably wondering what I was lying about a few weeks ago thanks to the machinations of that rapscallion Jay Stringer who got me into the whole meme business in the first place.

Let me say I had some fabby emails and cool comments. But, amazingly enough, despite those tens of entries, only one person guessed right.

Those of you who have met my dad foolishly believed he had indeed rear-ended Steven Speilberg while on holiday in the US. This is not true. But we did overtake him on the freeway (once my dad got used to the automatic drive).

Nobody believed, despite my track record for vomitting on authors and editors*, that I vomitted in the queue to see James Ellroy. But it is true I had to wait around a decade to see him after he cancelled an appearance at the Edinburgh lit festival.

I'm so sorry for McDroll, who insisted I have a fear of porcelain. I'm afraid I do not. But Guybrush Threepwood does, and like him I would love to be a mighty pirate someday.

The lovely Canadian Karin easily believed that I was an extra in Braveheart, despite my recorded antipathy towards the antipodean Gibson. Again, this was a lie, and I was betting many people would believe that the entire population of my fair land wound up as extras in that one. A friend of mine, however, was once an extra in Dr Finlay's Casebook. Which did not star Mel Gibson, but did feature Annette Crosbie who would have been a far more convincing Parker despite being a woman of advanced years. And Scottish.

Others still believed that I had only four toes on one foot (I have never lost a body part due to my idiocy, but I have broken things) and bizarrely no one believed I had won an award for erotic fiction. This last bit was my predicted future in the Bell Baxter High School Yearbook.

No, only Gallagher027 saw the truth. He knew that a man like me must have come from strange stock and that my mother almost called me Shaun until she thought that other children in the playgrounds would chant, "Shaun, Shaun, the Leprechaun." Yes, the minds of my family do work in mysterious ways.

So if Gallagher027 would like to send me his details to crimescenescotland_at_yahoo.co.uk (or by good ol' Twitter) I'll pop out a copy of the hardbacked GOOD SON.

Au revoir

Russel

*For the last time, it was related to my mushroom allergy!