Motorbike accidents in the media: part the V-8.

There have been many V8 motorcycles, many of them made as cruisers with a car V8 with bits attached, no gearbox, neutral created by locking the clutch open and a disconcerting tendency to flip over backwards if you're not paying attention. But the one to care about is Moto Guzzi's abortive racer, a difficult and mechanically complex (duh) bike which they campaigned for two years before retiring from racing altogether, ending a successful career just as MV Agusta came on song to begin the most impressive era of dominance of any company, ever.

What a swan-song.

Anyway...

Finally, we have some interesting stories this time.

I'll lead with the shortest:

Lord Mayor stable after accident, from ABC News from April 20.

Three paragraphs - came off motorcycle after a road accident, in hospital, back injury but stable.

Ummm, yes? The only reason this story is newsworthy at all is that a major public figure was involved. No carnage, no serious injury or death, and absolutely no details about the accident. So not even a very major public figure, despite the fact he's been Lord Mayor of Hobart since Christ played fullback for Jerusalem, or the journalist probably would have rung the police for details.

Where are the details?

Moving right along, we have Motorcyclist dies after car crash (Courier Mail, May 23).

Which is a slightly odd title. You mean the motorcyclist was in a car when it crashed?

The rest of the article, however, is rather better, and has the added bonus of getting "airborne" in the lead paragraph.

The writing is a little sloppy, with unnecessary repetition, including the typical police-ese quotes, ruining tightness and precision.

But as to the facts - this is, if you ask any motorcyclist, pretty much a typical accident: Car turns across bike, who dies.

I'd like to know which way they were traveling - I assume in opposite directions before the car violated right-of-way and turned across the intersection. As well, Old North Road is a major road, and Stanley St isn't. The Google Maps view shows street lights, so I'm guessing they were both on Old North Road and the car was travelling north and turned right onto Stanley St.

I won't speculate on what the rider may or may not have done differently to give him more wiggle-room or minimise or avoid the accident.

And you don't even need to be going too fast to sail over the top of a car - I did it when going less than 40km/h on a mountain bike, and I didn't even touch the car myself - cleared it completely and landed by the opposite curb.

Which leads me to wonder what sort of injuries the rider sustained if he cleared the car - I was wearing a cycling helmet and a backpack, lots of bare skin, and only ended up with a bruised knee, but you could quite easily land on your head or collide with a kerb or part of the car.

It's a slightly sloppy article, but at least it has a police report in it.

Then, the ABC gives us Motorcyclist killed during police chase from May 8.

Well, that's interesting, isn't it?

Two motorcyclists, one pulled over by police and one sped off. The one pulled over was charged with drink driving as well as speeding and driving dangerously.

Now, at this point I have to say that I have little sympathy for anyone who tries to escape the police. Beyond being dangerous, it puts you beyond debatedly selfish into the realms of actually illegal. If you're caught fairly - deal with it.

But, moving on, the rider was killed when he struck a ute which turned onto the highway, presumably in front of him.

Three immediate possibilities: The driver of the ute didn't look, or the bike came over a crest doing something on the other side of 200 and couldn't react in time or do anything effective in time, or, just possibly, the speed of the bike really did completely confuse the driver. At this point, it's pretty much academic.

Plus, it was 6:00am, so we have light conditions to take into account as well.

My biggest problem with this story is that the writing is neither tight, nor smooth, nor particularly effective. It's a bit disorganised and clumsy, and could have done with a judicious rewrite and edit. But it's such a straight reporting of facts that it's hard to criticise anything beyond the time the journalist spent on it.

From the Courier Mail, from May 24, comes Biker doing wheelstand with no helmet crashes but saved by quick-thinking paramedics at Bray Park.

What the hell is with a 16-word headline? "Helmetless wheelstanding biker crashes, saved by paramedic" says just as much and is still too long.

In fact, having read the headline, do you really need to read the article?

But, we must.

The astonishing thing about this article is that it mentions "his late-model Honda CB1000". I have no idea why, unless "Honda" is a recognisable brand to the car-driving masses, and "1000" sounds scary/impressive. That, or we've finally got a journalist who knows anything about bikes.

It's a story written by someone who wants to write script treatments or advertising, I suspect - slightly dramatic and florid, and with too many words in it.

"Police said it was concerning any motorcyclist would attempt to ride on the road without a helmet. "

What? "Concerning" that anybody would ride without a helmet, one of the most reliably proven accident-mitigation measures available, but they burst veins in apoplexy when someone goes 10 over the limit?

Perspective, anyone?

And this:

"Of the 92 people killed on Queensland roads this year, 15 have been motorcyclists."

Aha! I've been waiting for that all year. Finally, a count. Halfway through the year, 92 isn't actually bad. 15 Motorbikes kind of is.

So, yes. Plenty of information in this, but well-written? Ah, no.

I think four stories is enough, for this time.

I am still waiting for the line "Details of how the accident happened have not been determine." to be added, de facto, to any story lacking them.

I may wait in vain.

Lies, damned lies, and headlines

(Updated, to add a headline. Oh, the irony).

This is, maybe, a story of how crap science reporting starts with the headline.

Actually, it hardly ever does: The story arrives, gets written by a journalist, and the headline is probably the last piece of the puzzle, going through sub-editors and final print editors before being set in stone (or, well, type. Or hypertext).

But how does the innocent reader arrive at a story? Via the headline.

Which makes it important.

The story is this:

A long-term (10 year retrospective) and large (nearly 13,000 users) study of mobile phone usage, investigating links with cancer (yes, another one), showed no definite results either way save for the top 10% of users, who had an up to 40% greater risk of developing a brain tumour, based upon self-reported usage patterns, which are methodologically one of the weakest ways of assessing actual usage and introduces problems the study authors are not shy to point out.

These are the headlines from four media outlets:

New Scientist: Don't hang up - cellphones don't cause brain tumours (probably)

ABC News (copy sourced from Reuters, headline by ABC): Mobile phone-cancer link study inconclusive

The Australian: Industry study shows brain tumour link to heavy mobile phone usage

Courier Mail (based upon the Australian story): Brain cancer link to mobile phones

Did you experience a sinking feeling as you read down? You should have.

The only dedicated science outlet uses a catchy, populist approach to combine the main finding (no real link) and the main problem (not reliable enough). The ABC goes for a direct and accurate but hardly exciting approach. The Australian pulls out the most news-worthy finding to focus upon and ignored 90% of users, and the Courier Mail just throws everything to the wind and goes with a misleading title for a report written to emphasise just one finding and foment debate.

It's depressing, it really is.

It also reminds me of the Daily Mail list of 'Things that give you cancer' (Facebook)

The media has an important, even central, frequently even solitary, part to play in informing the public and part of that is, some of us would like to believe, a responsibility to be accurate and not monger fear or incite hysteria.

I would also like to think that if we assume the public is intelligent enough to read an article saying "probably not, but there may be a risk if you do something a lot", we may be astonished to find out they are.

And then there's historical perspective.

The fifth paragraph in the Reuters/ABC copy is this:

Years of research have failed to establish a connection.

And do you really think people haven't tried, really hard? I've been using a mobile for ten years now and I remember the debate happening years before I started.

Basic Principle of Coping With Reality: It's complicated, it's not your only risk factor, and if it was really a problem we'd probably have found something by now.

We'd also have found a link to testicular and uterine cancer from all the phones carried on or about hips, I'm thinking.

Consider as well just how any radio waves saturate the air from TV, radio and other people's mobiles, as well as short-wave, long-wave and GPS radio signals. If you're going to worry about electromagnetic radiation, a mobile is the least of your problems.

As a bonus: Look up the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Motorbike accidents in the media: part the radial 7.

Hmmm... There is a lesson in the fact that my only blog posts have late have been ones I felt obliged to write, because I had promised to...

But: Yes! For better or worse, there has been at least one 7-cylinder motorbike.

Anyway, a small bag today, of small articles.

Story 1:

First up is four pars from the ABC back on Sunday May 2: "Biker dies after hitting gutter".

Police say it appears the 30-year-old man hit a gutter while riding his motorcycle yesterday afternoon in Templestowe.

He lost control, landed in a garden bed, died in hospital.

Once again, the article is okay - in fact this one reads a little more smoothly than some small, dashed-off news articles - but the unanswered questions are rather interesting - swerved to avoid another vehicle, or lost control, or just bad judgement? Something in his eye?

And was he conscious when the police arrived? Nothing else is quoted, so I'm assuming that nothing else newsworthy came out, such as him being run off the road. Or, police didn't believe him, but let's not go there.

The interesting part about this article, however, is that it goes from "motorbike" to "motorcycle" to "bike". I'm not sure if there's an ABC standard for "motorcycle" or "motorbike". I'll have to look into it.

The two words certainly make hash-tagging tricky in twitter - which one do you go for?

Story 2:

Even earlier, from April 29, the Courier Mail has "Motorcyclist hits kangaroo near Texas".

That's Texas, Queensland, folks.

Eight paragraphs, but three are of them are for a separate incident.

Thursday morning, no indication of how early, and injuries multiple, severe but apparently not life-threatening.

I sincerely hope his head's okay.

This highlights one of the big problems with Australia - our native animals tend to be large, heavy and extremely stupid. It's not such a big problem when something cat-sized wanders across the road, although even that can be difficult for a motorcyclist who's not paying attention, but when something fast-moving that weighs more than 100kg jumps in front of you, running off-road and crashing can sometimes be preferable.

The most interesting part of this article is that "the 37-year-old man's motorbike hit the roo". This is a trend in all road accident stories - the driver/rider collides, the vehicle hit. Did the vehicle exhibit sentience and self-determination? No, I don't think so. It's a lazy journalistic short-cut, is what that is.

Overall, fairly well written and with good quotes.

Story 3:

Now: Also from the Courier Mail, from May 11, comes "Chain of plastic garbage bags strung up across road brings down moped rider at Cleveland"

Forget for the moment that whoever wrote that headline needs to be slapped, feast your eyes in incredulity upon what it says.

If the idiot who strung up said bags is caught, do you think they'll be charged with attempted murder? Somehow, a quote like "mischievous behaviour" from the police doesn't really inspire confidence.

As commenters have pointed out, that could easily have been lethal, and a rope or fishing line could have been lethal much more easily.

I'm not sure if I'm less happy with the police response or the journalist for that one, but it really wasn't a great effort.

Story 4:

Finally, returning to the ABC: "Two die in single-vehicle crashes".

Seven paragraphs, the final four devoted to a man in his 20s crashing on the Maleny-Stanley River road.

Now, as I have previously remarked, this stretch of road, which links to the last one, is extraordinarily fun.

It is also potentially quite treacherous, with overhanging trees and suspect verges making gravel patches and wet leaves almost inevitable, particularly before dawn (4:30am) at that altitude and at this time of year, when dew can make a difference.

The forensic crash unit is investigating, apparently. Honestly, with the best will in the world, I can't suggest anything more complicated than that he ran out of talent. His brakes may have grabbed, something else may have failed, but someone on that road at that time is more than likely to have been enjoying themselves.

Sadly, he's not around to tell us and we may never know.

Motorbike accidents in the media, part the inline-6

Okay, it's been a while and there are some old stories (blame the fact that I had to do things I was a.) getting paid for or b.) getting marked on.)

So, I'm going to be dealing with several stories at once.

And, incidentally, one point before I start: If you make your websites auto-refresh through javascript every couple of minutes, you will go to hell where demons will boil your genitals in molten sugar. See the current twitter.com for how to do refreshing properly, unintrusively and data-cheaply.

Anyway.

Story 1:

Motocross bike rider killed (Courier Mail)

Three paragraphs, not including the headline.

Motocross accident, unconfirmed report that he was completing a jump at a Motocross track, the ambulance service was called and couldn't revive him.

I'm really only covering this story because I intended to do them all - it's short, pithy, completely inoffensive and really only got published because it's a local death.

Story 2:

Woman survives motorcycle crash at Toowong (Courier Mail)

Another three paragraphs, but slightly different.

Pulled from under car... Emergency services had to use airbags to lift the car... Apparently crashed into a parked car (WTF?)... taken to hospital with minor foot injuries.

First of all: "survives motorcycle crash" has connotations of something serious, not hitting a parked car and receiving minor foot injuries.

And then: Huh??? She hit a parked car and slid under a car? It doesn't say whether it was the same car, it doesn't say whether the car she ended up under was moving, and I'm scratching my head over how she ended up so thoroughly jammed under a car that airbags were needed to lift it.

I can only assume that the emergency services were exhibiting full care in making sure that they didn't tug someone who may have had a spinal injury.

This article is confusing and asks too many questions.

Story 3:

One dead, two injured in motorcycle crashes on Sunshine Coast (Courier Mail)

Ten very short paragraphs.

First of all - the headline is misleading. It suggests, to me, multiple crashes. Actually there was one incident with three bikes.

Three riders, all in their 50s, at 7:30am, on Peachester Rd.

Go to google maps and have a look via this direct link. It's a fun-looking rd, isn't it?

And it is. It's one of my all-time favourites, in fact, although I prefer the other way, towards Maleny. It's a road I ride whenever I get the opportunity, but I have a healthy respect for it - dappled light and shade making visibility difficult, the risks of leaves and gravel on the road, blind corners and steep drops, and then of course there's the traffic. And it's the first road I really went hard on, and felt confident doing so.

What really gets me in this story is that all three riders crashed, which leads me to one very sad possibility - they were pushing each other, and ran out of talent/luck pretty much together.

Oil on road? Gravel? Another vehicle on the wrong side of the road? Or they were pushing over the centre line and the other vehicle was unfortunate but blameless? All possibilities.

May I repeat, please:

Ride to your own limits.

Ride to your own limts, not someone else's.

Know what those limits are.

Don't be an idiot.

Oh, one last thing:

I'm going to quibble at "No further detail is known at this time."

"No more detail is" or "No further details are," please.

But, well done for pointing that out, and not leaving us to assume that you've just been lazy.

Story 3:

Motorcyclist killed in Springfield (Queensland Times - QT)

Single vehicle accident... Near an intersection... Head injuries and dead at the scene.

So: No details of cause, but near an intersection. 3.30pm, so traffic heavy.

I'm going to suggest that the likelihood of stupidity and evasive-action-gone-wrong are roughly equal.

There should have been witnesses. I would be interested in knowing what the police concluded.

Story 4:

Motorcyclist killed in crash at Forest Lake (Courier Mail - CM)

Hey, it's... Hang on...

It's the same story!

Yes, Stories 3 and 4 are clearly the same. Despite the different suburbs mentioned in the title, a quick look at a map will reveal that the particular intersection under mention is much closer to Forest Lake than it is to Springfield Lakes.

Unfortunately, in this instance, the QT, where I spent two productive and useful weeks as an intern, is looking pretty poor.

The CM article has only two extra paragraphs, but much more detail, including traffic delays, age of the rider, and more (but not many) details of what he was doing.

Frustratingly, anything which would confirm or deny options for how the poor bastard died is once again denied to us. "Lost control" is all very well, but poor judgment, idiocy and having to swerve to avoid any other idiot are all still perfectly valid options.

Frustrating, but a better article here.

Story 5:

Okay, this is a, um, strange one and not really the same...

Man hit by spear while riding scooter (Cairns.com.au)

What. The. Fuck?

Believed to have been hit by a spear... Leg wound... 12.45am... Victim said he saw men running away from the scene.

Okay, I'm going to go with: There are some dangerous idiots out there, who need to be locked up for their own protection before they accidentally annoy someone who makes them pay for it.

Moving on, please.

Story 6:

Motorcyclist trapped under truck dies after crash at Willawong (Courier Mail)

Okay, the headline is a bit weird - it almost sounds as though the motorcyclist became trapped under the truck, which kept on going, and then the truck crashed and the motorcyclist died.

Which, frankly, is possible.

Motorcyclist collided with truck... Emergency services found him trapped under track...

And then the rest of the article is about the Queensland road toll, and mentions other accidents. And a little note that fewer people have died than at the same time last year.

Not even "died on scene."

Oh, now, come on, were you really making an effort? "He hit truck. He was found under truck. In other news..."

Piss off.

Story 7:

Vehicle accidents claim seven lives in southern Qld (ABC News Online)

Incidentally, it has to be "ABC News Online" because "ABC" is the American one, because we're on the Internet. Which is American. Despite having been essentially created by a brit.

Okay, we have a composite wrap-up stype article.

The relevant bit is in paragraphs two to five out of 10.

Motorcyclist hit truck, Friday morning. Location. Died. Truck driver was not injured.

Now, first of all: Tell me something I don't know. A bike hit a truck, and the truck driver wasn't hurt? That's pretty much equivalent to saying a Chinese demonstrator punched a tank and the tank driver wasn't hurt.

But, moving on, it appears to be the same accident as Story 6 above.

I haven't been telling you dates, but trust me, it's the same date, road, and time.

So, did the ABC reporter do any better? Sadly, not really.

She wrote "collided with the truck", but didn't say whether this was the official police line, or an eyewitness account, or shorthand for "They hit. This uses fewer words than "the motorcyclist and a truck collided".

All but useless.

Conclusion:

Short news stories are really, really annoying because the journalist isn't given the time, space or care factor to investigate. But there really should have been more comments along the lines of "Police are investigating..." "Further details are not available at this time..."

Overall, I'm a little disappointed.

At the very least, have a pro-forma that makes this easier!

Motorbike accidents in the media: Part the V-five

What's that you ask?

Of course motorbikes have used V-5 engines. Honda has been very fond of them in GP racing for ages.

Anyway.

Here's another example of an incident which seems unbelievable to anyone who hasn't become tediously familiar with its sort through long and bitter experience:

Harley rider breaks legs, pelvis after smashing into car reversing from driveway at Capalaba West (Courier Mail Online)

First things first: Harley. Right there, first word in the headline. About the only brand that people who know nothing about motorbikes, know about. Apart from Honda and Suzuki, who make cars as well. Do you think you'll ever see the headline "MV Agusta rider breaks legs..."?

No. Neither do I.

Still, it gives ammunition to those of us who say that Harley's aren't actually bikes, but some lesser form of barely-living fossil.

Anway, let's look at the article itself.

The direction of the headline suggests the rider was at fault. Let's look at the article:

A MOTORCYCLIST has been left with two broken legs and pelvis after a car pulled out of a driveway in front of him at Capalaba West on Brisbane's southside this morning.

Now, if you're going to go with a tediously long headline, you may as well have used that.

Police said the male rider was travelling along Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road about 5.30am, when an elderly driver pulled out and the Harley Davidson motorcycle ``T-boned'' the driver's door.

Um... How? If it was reversing out of its driveway, the driver's door would have been on the side away from oncoming traffic. Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road is not in two halves with houses in the middle.

Also, looking at a map suggests that, as one commenter said, all the houses are on nice big blocks with plenty of room for turning around, making reversing completely unnecessary along with (as commenters here and on other stories have pointed out) illegal-but-unenforced.

Moving on.

5:30am is still dark, so it's possible the driver was half-asleep or simply didn't expect that anybody else would be about. Both of them unacceptable excuses.

There is also the fact that the bike's headlight would have been highly visible due to contrast with the darkness, and if it was any sort of regular Harley, the pipes would have announced its presence from some way away.

It's entirely possible that the bike was speeding, and/or not paying attention.

It's also entirely possible that the rider, whose age we don't know, was middle-aged, new to motorcycling and riding his midlife crisis with inadequate training in riding skills and defensive attitudes.

All of which fails to be relevant to the fact that, under law and any reasonable argument, the driver was at fault.

This is another article which is factual, concise, and unsatisfying. Even in a purely news-report article such as this, surely there's time to ask the police if they're considering laying charges, or to think for a second and wonder how the driver's door got involved.

Motorbike accidents in the media - Part the flat four

The last piece I commented on, from the Courier Mail, came with a list of "related stories", pulled not just from their own website, but from News Ltd sites around Australia.

So, I'm going to do a quick analysis of motorbike accident reports from those sites.

First up:

The Herald Sun (Melbourne) gives us Motorcyclist killed in head-on collision with car on the Maroondah Hwy in Mansfield. What is with these clunky headlines?

Anyway, this is a five-paragraph story, saying that a motorcyclist in his 60s had a head-on north-east of Melbourne, on a major highway, 8am (plus four minutes). Forensics are investing, police will prepare a report for the coroner.

Also, interestingly: The female driver was airlifted to hospital with major injuries, which just goes to show: Sitting inside your metal cage, you are behind several sheets of potentially dangerous glass, through which large, heavy, high-speed objects may come.

Question: How do you have a head-on collision on "a major highway"? Isn't there a dividing line?

A clue may lie in the "in Mansfield" bit in the headline, but don't assume that headlines are word-perfect-exact.

Overall, the article is extremely puzzling in its unanswered questions, but is otherwise well and cleanly written.

Next up:

Perth Now (urgh) gives us Motorcyclist injured in collision with van. Ah, a nice, short, pithy headline.

This article is a more chatty, casual style, but still useful. The interesting part is this:

South East Metropolitan Police Sergeant Mark Ryan said it “appeared one of the vehicles hadn’t given way”.

Well, there aren't many other ways for an accident to happen, are there?

Let's examine this:

The driver of a white van, also in his twenties, was turning right from Church St onto Albany Hwy citybound, and collided with the motorcyclist heading southbound along the highway just before midnight.

So the van was turning right, and the motorcyclist was going straight. Ergo, the van failed to give way. Unless the motorcyclist ran a Stop or Give Way sign, and we know that didn't happen because the bike was on the highway and the van wasn't.

A quick trip to Google Maps confirms that Church St is north of Albany, south of Perth. The writing suggests that "citybound" means Perth, opposite to South. In other words, the van was turning across the path of the motorbike. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the photo accompanying the story, along the fact that the driver was taken to hospital and the passenger wasn't, suggests a pretty serious collision on the driver's side door which would, in this case, have been facing north, directly at the bike.

So: The van comes out of a street, across a highway, and gets hit by a bike who may have had moderate/little/no warning, and hits it.

No conclusion can be drawn about the speed or actions of the bike.

Now: at or about midnight means the bike had headlights on and the "high visibility vests" so beloved of clueless non-riders would have been useless.

Ergo: Although I do not in any way wish to jump ahead of the Major Crash Investigation unit, or the coroner: The van driver didn't give way, and needs to be charged with whatever can be thrown at him.

One final point: As an editor, I would not have let that story hit the Internet in that state. But, that's just me, my colleagues and my employer's professionalism.

Third one is: Rider dies after bike, car crash from Adelaide Now (does a comma really save so much space over "and" that it's worth while? Come on, now).

Basically, an 18yo rider collided with a car driven by a 22yo driver, and the rider died, the driver sustained minor injuries. Please try not to judge based upon age!

A lot of the story, considering its length, is taken up with mentioning that South Australia has a worse road toll than the same time last year. Ignore that, it's irrelevant.

The crash happened on a certain road, after dark, last year, on what works out to be a Tuesday night.

The only interesting, or particularly informative, part of this story is the fact that the four commenters clearly knew the rider.

Come on: There is not enough information here to be satisfying. No circumstances? No "who was going where"?

This is probably the most frustrating story I have covered so far. So little information, for a death. So sad.

The final story linked off the original Courier Mail article is a little different, and will be the subject of a separate post.

Please sir, Godot asked if you could wait a little longer

Excuse me while I waffle for a moment.

Samuel Beckett was a genius.

No, I won't hear anything else.

There was a period many years ago - it was while I was still living in Tasmania, so at least 7 years ago - when Sam had an anniversary, or something, and a project was begun to film all of his plays, using Irish actors. I saw as many of those as I could, and may even have some of them on tape lying about.

He was a genius. I didn't know any of the actors, I had never seen any of the plays before, although I had read some of Waiting for Godot in a drama class, as an exercise.

But I sat, spellbound at times, as two or three or even one actors, in minimalist sets with nothing happening except perhaps the weather, transformed dialogue or monologue about nothing into the most potent, powerful drama I had ever seen.

Krapp's last tape confused me, but I simply didn't care. All I could see was that old man, bitter, listening to diary tapes he had recorded years ago, eating bananas while rain hammered on the roof, swearing at his younger, smoother voice and abusing his older self. It was a master-stroke of writing and, in that moment, a master-stroke of acting - one actor, alone, with no special effects, nobody else on set, just him and the camera, maintained some of the finest characterisation I had ever seen.

Endgame remains, of all those I saw, the one I would most like to see live. Four characters - a blind master, his servant, and his parents living in rubbish bins in the corner - created all the world that necessary.

I sat and I listened to blind Hamm abuse and berate and proclaim, and I thought it the most compelling monologue I had ever heard. At the time, as I was still doing some theatre myself, I decided that I would track down one piece of his monologue and use it for auditions. I still think it would be a powerful piece to use.

Hamm's roar of "You're on Earth, there's no cure for that!" remains with me still.

And then there is the one piece that people who know not of Becket may have yet heard of - Waiting for Godot.

Only his second play, it has famously been described as being "about nothing" but has also been voted the most important English-language play of the 20th Century.

I had considerable doubts going into it but, also, I was spellbound throughout it. I thought then, and I only think more so now, that Beckett wrote plays which not only made enormous demands of the actor, but which provided enormous opportunities, as well.

A truly great actor, in Godot or any other Beckett piece, would turn in a performance not to be exceeded. And an actor who could not manage those demands, well - we know the truth now, don't we?

So: Ian McKellen, Matthew Kelly and Roger Rees are touring in a production of Waiting for Godot, and will be in Melbourne for two weeks in May. We know people in Melbourne we need to catch up with.

To say we are excited about this would be a colossal understatement.

If I don't see any other live theatre this year, I may not care provided I get to see that.