MEAGER PUDDLE OF LIMELIGHT AWARD FOR BEST BOOK TITLE: FINAL ROUND

Yikes! I've only just discovered that this year's Puddle Award voting is into its final round -- I've been so up to my eyes in the film noir book I must have missed the notification.

The Puddle is awarded in various categories, but this time around it's for Best Title, put forward by authors of their own finished or in-progress books. And one of the titles that's made it to the final is that of a project I'm working up at the moment.

I'm not going to tell you what that title is, should you choose to go and vote, but people who're acquainted with some of my recent books might be able to make a pretty astute guess . . .

Anyway, the polling page is here. Tell your friends!

for British readers

There's a facility on the IMDB site whereby you can search for all the movies that two people of your choice have worked on together: you can find the starting page here.

As you type each name into the box provided -- John Smith, perhaps -- the search engine chunters a bit, then offers you a list of individuals to make sure it'll be searching for the right John Smith.

This evening, helping a friend with a query, I used the facility to check which movies Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff had worked on together.

I typed in "Boris Karloff" and the list appeared. The first name on it was, unsurprisingly, Boris Karloff. But the second was . . .

. . .

     . . .

          . . .

                . . . Ann Widdecombe.

Huh? Ann Widdecombe? Yes, the string'em-up-but-for-gawd's-sake-don't-abort-'em socially conservative Conservative MP, a junior member of John Major's cabinet back in the days when John Major had a cabinet.

I mean, in a way it's quite fitting in that both could, in their heyday, have even hardened marines and stalwart professional wrestlers awakening from sleep with a scream, but it's hard to see the link otherwise.

Oh, Karloff and Nicholson appeared in two movies together, The Raven (1963) and The Terror (1963).