He still has the common touch, you know!

So, I was reading Martin Samuel's latest column on the use of video technology in football following the latest saga (as of last week) involving Man Utd, and I thought he'd expressed himself so well I should send him an e-mail saying how much I appreciate his writing. I pointed out that I really missed his non-sport commentaries which cheered me up no end on a Friday morning on the bus or train to work. I should say that at this point I don't usually send people e-mails like this. I always think they would treat such contact as potential stalkers in waiting, and would ignore if at all possible. But then there's the other part of me that thinks of people slaving away wondering why since they've published their e-mail address, no-one ever contacts them apart from to try and sell viagra and dodgy Russian porn, which is the usual result of publishing your e-mail address on the internet...

Anyhoo, the end result is that I got a slightly cagey response from the great man thanking me for the kind words while implicitly not inviting me to be his new best friend, and (more importantly) pointing out that he still does publish the non-sport stuff, just not as a regular comment page, but under his own byline in the Times weekend review, as well as occasional pieces for the Thunderer column, which I was previously unaware of. So, happy days! I just need to figure how to link to his non-sport output and we are officially laughing as he is a very funny man, with a similar liking of Bill Hicks to myself, as well as possessing a particularly cutting insight.

So, that is my contact with the stars for now. Next time, I'll recount my contact with Jon Ronson, the author fawned over in the post below, and how it didn't end up with his taking out a court injunction, which is nice...