It’s always important to dig a bit deeper than a headline, though, otherwise you end up with somebody being asked to take their shoes off, if they wouldn’t mind too much, as a new carpet’s just been put in, it’s quite pale you see, and before you know it the Daily Mail’s leading with “GOVERNMENT BAN SHOES, death penalty for non-compliance” and 400 people in the comment section are making the startling observation that it’s political correctness gone mad. The full report is available online, and I urge you to go and read it. Well, most of it, there are more footnotes than in the Wikipedia article on footnotes (not difficult, actually, the Wikipedia article only has six. At the time of writing, that is, I might go off and edit it into a hilarious piece of meta irony, where the body of the article is just: Footnote[1].) Have a quick scan through, at least. It generally seems pretty reasonable; at least they’ve played the games in question rather than just looking at the boxes, or, say, picking an example entirely at random, going on Fox News and denouncing a game on the basis of the vaguest of hearsay. The report is not saying “games are evil” or “ban this sick filth!”, on the first page it states “The goal is not to prohibit the games, to make them less violent or to turn them into IHL or IHRL training tools.” There’s often a knee-jerk reaction from the gaming community to a perceived attack, not entirely unjustified in the wake of Jack Thompson, Fox News on Mass Effect etc., that goes “Yeah? Well your mum ‘permits’ virtual war crimes.” Such immaturity is beneath us. Plus, they smell of wee.

The problem with the report isn’t the difficulty it has in contextualising the nature of conflicts portrayed in Army of Two and the resulting implications for the unclear legal frameworks governing private security companies, or even that any attempt at applying any sort of real-world logic to “Metal Gear Soldier[sic] 4″ surely flounders the moment it hits the sentence “The player is “Snake” and is fighting against “Liquid Ocelot””. The problem is back in the Aim of the Study:

We have chosen video and computer games as the object of our analysis because, unlike
literature, films and television, where the viewer has a passive role, in shooter games, the
player has an active role in performing the actions. Thus, the line between the virtual and real
experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real life situations on the
battlefield.

Problematic opener, that, the old blurring the lines between reality and simulation. It goes on to try and provide justification:

The link with reality is in fact so direct that nowadays several armies rely on video games
both as a recruiting and as a training tool. Military from some states put video games on their
websites to give the viewers a virtual experience of what being a soldier is like. Such games
allow them to virtually participate in trainings, be deployed on missions, fire weapons, take
decisions in unexpected battlefield situations, etc. Military also use video games, or
“simulations” more and more often as a training tool in addition to “on the field” training.
This demonstrates the impact of video games on the players and their behaviour in reality.

True, there’s military use of computer games; Marine Doom, America’s Army, etc etc., but you’d have to be Sir Bors to get from “the military use video games as a recruiting and training tool” to “all video games involving the military are recruiting or training tools”. There are military training manuals; these manuals are books; ergo all books are military training manuals.

Even considering that most of the game players will never become soldiers in reality, such
games clearly influence their view of what combat situations are like and what the role of the
military and of individual soldiers or law enforcement officials in such situations, is.

Here’s the nub of it; firstly, coming back to the starting paragraph, I’m not convinced games would influence someone’s view of combat situations any more than literature, films or television. Secondly, it very much depends on the game, lumping everything together as “such games” isn’t very useful. If a game makes a virtue of its realism, takes care to model things as accurately as possible, markets itself as a simulation, then yes, I believe it could influence somebody’s view of what it portrays (dependant on how well the game was implemented), in the same way that a documentary or non-fiction book could influence somebody’s view. The games they selected, though, are generally unabashed entertainment that gamers don’t see as realistic portrayals of warfare any more than the average viewer considers Bonekickers an accurate portrayal of archaeology. That’s where the whole exercise looks like a case of double standards, and a bit of a waste of time. You might as well sit a conscientious police officer down in front of Point Break and ask them what they made of it:

I won’t argue that it was a no-holds-barred adrenaline fuelled thrill-ride, but there’s no way that you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork.

(Thank you, Hot Fuzz. Except that’s a comedy film talking about an action film, and thus entirely irrelevant because the viewer only has a passive role. Twice.)

One encouraging thing about the whole business is that in the BBC piece they turn to gamers for a response, and not just some drooling loon in the midnight release day queue for Modern Duty 17 who mumbles “Uh, I, uh, like shooting, and, uh, stuff”. John Walker and Jim Rossignol of the inestimably splendid Rock, Paper, Shotgun chip in, and I could’ve really not bothered with most of this and just quoted:

Mr Rossignol said there was plenty of evidence that gaming violence is “fully processed” as fantasy by gamers. Studies of soldiers on the front line in Iraq showed that being a gamer did not desensitise them to what they witnessed.

He added: “Perhaps what this research demonstrates is that the researchers misunderstand what games are, and how they are treated, intellectually, by the people who play them.”

In this episode, we take a look back at the events of 2008, or “flip back through the blog and talk about a few posts”. It’s our first time, as it were, so it’s a little shaky, but we get into the swing of things.

Subjects covered include:

• Hellgate
• Subscription numbers
• The recurring cycles of MMOG blogging
• Lack of giant robot MMOGs
• Bonekickers!
• The reason Age of Conan and Warhammer haven’t done too well
• Guitar Heroism

Intro music: Galaforce for the BBC B microcomputer
Outro music: Galaforce remix by Heartcore

We’re not sure if it’ll become a regular thing, if nothing else watch (or indeed listen) out for a review of 2009 in a year or so!

Download Kiasacast Episode One

“how many times can you shapeshift into a cat (if your into those types of things)?”

Zoso: Seven. If you’re not into those types of things, eight hundred and six.

Melmoth: I can only assume that ‘shapeshift’ is someone’s very strange attempt at a euphemism. In which case, generally the cat will shred your testicles when it’s had enough.

“phoenix gate what do you do with the flag”

Melmoth: Run with it! You run, and you run, and run and run and run and run, and you keeping running and running until you get to Mourkain Temple. Then you drop the flag and get on with playing a decent scenario.

“warhammer online magus floating disc removal”

Melmoth: Sorry, you can’t remove it, you’re stuck with it. Negotiating latrines is left as an exercise for the reader.

Zoso: So, Mr Magus, you’d removed all your clothes in order to secure these “achievements”, and then you just happened to “slip” and “fall” on your disc? No, no, we’re not here to judge, the doctor will be down shortly.

“are we individuals?”

Melmoth: Yes! We are all individuals! I’m an individual and so is my wife.

Zoso: A: We are Devo!

“male female warhammer bug”

Melmoth: Mythic have confirmed that there will be male and female sexes when they release the new insect race, but nobody will be able to tell which is which, not even the bugs themselves.

“smiling how long can we do it.”

Melmoth: Four hundred years! Or two days. Or ten weeks! Or an hour. The Guinness World record for continuous smiling is seventeen days, eleven hours and twenty three minutes, and was only halted when the challenger’s face fell off.

“updated wii from dvd on accident”

Melmoth: I probably couldn’t help you even if I knew what the hell you’d managed to do.

“you must be this high “world of warcraft”"

Melmoth: There are no known height restrictions for playing World of Warcraft. However, there is as yet no conclusive study as to how much crack cocaine needs to be consumed before a person can stomach the incessant end-game grind.

“asses are made to bear and so are you (what does it mean?)”

Melmoth: It means that I like pretentious post titles.

“disguise tips”

Melmoth: I always veer towards a Brian Blessed beard, glasses, deerstalker and an over-sized trench coat with a pillow stuffed down the front.

Zoso: I shapeshift into a cat (if I’m into that type of thing).

“i break things by accident”

Melmoth: Congratulations, you are clumsy! Had you instead told us that you break things on purpose, you would be a vandal. Thank you for taking the ‘Am I A Vandal Or Simply Clumsy?’ online personality test.

“i love her”

Melmoth: That’s… that’s not so much a search term, but a statement of fact. If you’re hoping Google will confirm that for you, well, maybe you need to search for “I need expert medical help” next.

Zoso: Google understands. Google says “there, there”, and would put a comforting arm around your shoulder, only Google is afraid it has no arms.

Melmoth: Also, Google knows that you don’t like friends to touch you.

“wii fit waste of money”

Melmoth: Again, are you asking or telling? Because Google really doesn’t give a flying frogspawn what you think. You do know this, yes?

Zoso: Google disagrees, Google rather enjoyed it. Google reduced its BMI by 2.47 through rigorous yoga.

“guild banks are rubbish in world of warcraft”

Zoso: Google thanks you for the information. Google will avoid using them, then.

“im stuck on act 1 at 27% in far cry 2″

Zoso: Google is sorry to hear that. Google suggests you Google for a walkthrough.

“great adventures i’ve had”

Melmoth: I certainly wish you good luck in finding the website that tells you all the great adventures that you had, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere.

Zoso: Previous searches possibly included “who am I?”, “where am I?” and “have you seen my trousers?”

“grats thanks”

Melmoth: You’re welcome.

“i love to accept my reward”

Melmoth: As the winner of Best Kiasa Search Term 2008, I award you the prestigious Frightened Rabid Skunk with Diarrhoea.

Zoso: “Learn”, I think you’ll find. Unless it isn’t a mondegreen, in which case Google agrees, Google loves to accept its reward too.

“killed over guitar hero”

Melmoth: I’m pretty sure we didn’t make a post about our last Guitar Hero get together, did we? That Google search engine is really very clever.

“who leaves strictly come dancing 29th november 2008″

Melmoth: My money is on Clement Attlee.

“to make a flaming torch”

Melmoth: Take one torch; here’s one I made earlier. Now – and this is the tricky part – set fire to it.

“survivors bonekickers”

Melmoth: Are both utterly rubbish and an embarrassment to the nation. I suggest trying Dead Set or IT Crowd to correct the balance.

Zoso: Survivors isn’t that bad. Apart from the writers inexplicable failure to kill Abby Grant despite so many opportunities.

“space chimps review kermode”

Zoso: They said “he gives all bitter, middle-aged film critics a bad name”. But they quite liked his stuff with The Dodge Brothers.

Melmoth: Space chimps would make the best reviewers, not least because anything they didn’t like could be vaporised by their orbital review station.

“low level bright wizard cape”

Melmoth: The year’s must have fashion item for the discerning Black Orc was indeed a noob Bright Wizard dangling down their back.

“melmoth”

Melmoth: Wait! This is the Best Kiasa Search Term 2008, give me back that Frightened Rabid Skunk with Diarrhoea, you.

Well, a quarter of it, in the form of Julie Graham, is in Survivors, which kicked off on Sunday for a bit of light-hearted post-apocalyptic fun. I’m not sure if it’s just the taint of Bonekickers, but I don’t think it’s a good sign if you’re willing the focal character of the first episode to die of the plague and being terribly disappointed when she doesn’t. Graham was clearly channelling Bonekickers at one point as, pulling up to a hospital and finding the automatic doors at the entrance jammed and unpowered, she used her archaeological imagination to figure out that rather than going to find another door (hospitals are notorious for only having one entrance, aren’t they?), the best course of action would be to ram through the automatic doors in her car.

Still, on the whole it wasn’t too bad, 99.9% of the population died off over the course of the episode, and our titular survivors conveniently all met up in about ten minutes at the end. We didn’t get to see as much of the others, so have fairly broad-brush introductions so far (doctor, sociopath, playboy etc.), with any luck they’ll come to the fore from tonight on and we can banish the spirit of Bonekickers into some ancient crypt for a couple of thousand year. Then set fire to it.

It reminded me of a couple of other recent posts about “gaming archaeology” for Origin Systems and MUD; like the BBC, some things may have been lost over time, but others are being preserved for the future. So long as the Bonekickers team don’t turn up and set fire to everything.

I’d been trying to go cold turkey from MMOs for a bit, after a minor breakdown when I stopped seeing blonde, brunette, redhead, bandit leader, and just saw the ones and zeroes. It was generally going fairly well, occasional WAR-lapse aside, but after a while, with my immune system at its weakest, a virulent bout of City of Heroes resubscription swept through Twitter, against which I was helpless (scientists found traces of yellow spandex at the site of the outbreak). My main account is on the US servers, and the League of Evil are on the EU servers, so, reluctant to shell out on another parallel subscription, a bit of digging around turned up some trial codes which looked ideal. Ten days would nearly last until the Warhammer open beta, after all, so I now have four City of Heroes accounts: my original US account (still running), an EU trial account (expired, from Van Hemlock’s Operation Cheapseats last year), a second US account (trial only, created using a code I thought might be for an EU trial, but it wasn’t) and a second EU account (finally, success with an EU trial code!)

I’d seen a bit of a chat on the official forums about trial account restrictions that had been put in place since the last Cheapseats freebie, but hadn’t paid an awful lot of attention. Actually getting into the game, though, crikey; you can only talk in Local, Help and Team. It’s like going from mobile phones to cocoa tins connected with bits of string. Only somebody cut the string. About the only way of getting in touch with somebody was to add them as a Global Friend (as they get a confirmation option for that), then hope they figure out your silence indicates you’re on a trial account (no whispers or tells allowed, even as replies) and they invite you to a team. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with existing global friends, remove and add them again maybe… I believe the restrictions were put in place to stop players being bombarded with spam, but they seem a touch harsh; if trial accounts could at least reply to whispers it would be something, but I guess the chat system doesn’t work like that. Another possible explanation is that creating alts is so much fun in CoH that, without those restrictions, some players could quite happily bounce from trial to trial to trial, creating a new alt every ten days. Anyway, it took all of two minutes to decide that really wouldn’t work for socialising with people (plus I’d created an Assault Rifle Corruptor, but forgot to pick a different gun instead of the stupid default super-soaker, so had to re-roll in any case), so after all that I went back and upgraded the original EU trail account to the full game. What the hell, it’s only money… Just to really drive home the problems with separation in MMOs, the existing character from that account was useless as it was a hero, and everyone else was playing villains, *and* it was on the other UK server. It’s a good job creating characters and running the low level content is fun, and thank heavens for the sidekick system, if not for those the whole exercise would’ve been entirely futile, but once non-trial-account-ed and supergrouped up it’s been great to run around the Rogue Islands with new people, and smash up bus stops and parking meters.

As if that wasn’t quite enough of a case study of The Annoying Thing About Continental And Server Splits In Games, the CoH resubscription virus was followed through Twitter by a dose of WAR-fever, only this time I’ve got the EU Collector’s Edition pre-ordered (and am somewhat reticent about playing on US servers again, for the very reason demonstrated with the CoH business), and others are buying the US version of the game to hook up with GAX peoples. You have to laugh, really; the only thing needed to complete the “Whoops, vicar, there go my trousers!”-like farce would be for one of us to be a vicar. And for somebody’s trousers to go missing. Still, every cloud has a silver lining and all that, and some poking around the Warhammer Alliance forums and other blogs turned up Insult to Injury, a casual, older, Order guild for WAR who seem like a really fantastic bunch, so I think I’m all set for launch now. Just need to try a couple of classes during the open beta to finalise that decision.

As a counterexample to the difficulties of getting together theme, I finally had a free Tuesday evening yesterday (there’d been much vital real-life stuff happening on Tuesdays previously, like Bonekickers) so I hopped on to Guild Wars so say “hi” to the Tuesday N00b Club. I’d just planned to say hello, perhaps get an invite to hang around the guild chat, then wander off and set fire to some monsters in a continuing bid to (a) get to level 20, and (a) figure out what I’m doing in the game. No resubscription, no finding out what continent’s servers I need to be on, pow! In a couple of clicks, I was wandering around the rather plush guild hall. It turned out to be PvP night:
“Have you done much PvP?”
“Have you got a free slot for a PvP character?”
“No (the sum total of my PvP experience up to that point being a couple of years back in the tutorial mission from the original campaign, where you get dumped into a 2v2 encounter whether you like it or not), and maybe” said I. In for a penny, in for a pound, and all that; when I posted last week that levels aren’t vitally important in Guild Wars, I’d entirely forgotten that when you create a character it’s either at level 1 (a “Roleplaying” character, for running around PvE content) or level 20 (a PvP character). Off I toddled, and was soon back with a level 20 Elementalist, ready to do battle. Well, not quite ready to do battle, someone had to explain about creating PvP items, and I hadn’t even looked at the skill bar, so while the rest of the N00bs headed off for a skirmish I got myself set. My usual Elementalist tactics (up to the mighty level 7 I’d achieved as such) were to set fire to stuff, then set fire to stuff some more until it stopped moving, but the default PvP build had most of the stat points put into Air Magic and a few lightning-based skills on the bar as a starter, so I figured I’d stick with that. Looking for something to pad out the rest of the bar, I noticed a few skills mentioned “knock down”, so hoping that was as annoying in GW as in every other game, I stuck ‘em in. The actual skirmishes after that are a bit of a blur, I genuinely had no idea what was going on (something to do with flags and towers, it seemed) but following the basic tenets of (i) follow somebody (anybody) on my team, and (ii) USE ABILITIES TO DO DAMAGE, I think I managed to get a few shots in. It was rather fun, and certainly piqued my interest for RvR in WAR, and future Guild War-ing, though I’ll really need to do a bit more reading for the latter so that the titular N00bishness of the Club is slightly more ironic than literally true in my case.

So on to the finale, and we discover, sure enough, that the Special Sword oh-so-subtly crammed into each of the preceding episodes is, of course, Excalibur, forged from a meteorite in (mumble) BC, passing down through history, but only into the hands of people involved in previous episodes of Bonekickers. Handy, that. There’s also Staggering Revelation II, from the end of episode five, that Magwilde and Viv are sisters, that the audience cares about less than going “ooh, look, it’s that one from Press Gang” when Dexter Fletcher turns up. Then we get a bunch of tedious waffle on Tennyson, Magwilde’s mothers notes, some secret society called The Disciples of Good Use whose primary purpose appears to be to stand around wearing white masks for no good reason and definitely *not* being the Masons or the Illuminati or anyone else who might sue (or send white masked assassins) and a general chase around sub-3-2-1 riddles to find Excalibur, which of course is in a lake. The episode finally picks up pace for the inevitable confrontation between Our Heroes and The Pointless Society, the absolute highlight of the entire series being ‘Dolly’ Parton advancing on knife-wielding cultists shouting a bunch of dates at them (this may seem like a really stupid idea, but it is of course a well-established technique from Fisher’s Guide To Non-Physical Violence) before yelling “don’t mess with me, I’m an archaeologist!” and hitting someone with a torch. Excalibur is plucked from the depths, seized by Chief Bad Guy, and, like every other historical artefact the team have come within a three mile radius of, destroyed when he swings at the team and misses. With the sword shattered, he promptly hops into the lake, and it’s home for tea and biscuits again.

The problems with Bonekickers really start with the main characters, the right team can carry off daft plots, but Magwilde in particular must be one of the least sympathetic lead characters of recent history, with emotions ranging from Quite Cross to A Bit Crotchety. Still, underneath that gruff, angry shell there was a heart of… angry gruffness. Were we really supposed to be rooting for her, or just hoping each week for some catastrophic misfortune? Viv and Ben barely got anything to do past being The Naive One Asking Questions and The Sensible One, the attempt at sexual tension between Ben and Magwilde was laughable, the amazing revelation of Viv being Madwilde’s sister was dull and pointless, only ‘Dolly’ Parton showed a few glimpses of character. Plot-wise… well, the less said the better, really, and that’s before trying to tie Excalibur into everything as a series arc. Still, the utter absurdity kept me watching, if only to find out quite how bad it could get. If it does make it back for a second series, I really hope they scale things back, focus on (some new and watchable) characters more, and less on finding (and setting fire to) AMAZING HISTORY and being pursued by a SECRET CULT for it on a weekly basis. Either that, or just abandon any pretence at even a nodding relation to reality and go with Boudica and Joan of Arc having a lightsabre fight in a lost nuclear submarine in Atlantis.

On holiday for next week’s episode, but seeing as it involves a tank I feel compelled to Sky+ it. And then having made it through five weeks, it’ll be mandatory to see how they tie together the recurring plot themes in what, on current form, promises to be the most ludicrous denouement in the history of ever. Oh boy…

Based on last night, yes. Back to Roman times, and the insan-o-meter is off the scale. Earthquake uncovers New Old Stuff at the local swimming pool, and poor old Baby Archaeologist (Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Viv) follows in the footsteps of on-screen sister Martha as Doctor Who Assistant, helpfully piping up with “What’s going on?” whenever we need a chunk of exposition, “Who are you talking about?” when the rest of the team are being irritatingly smug over some smugly irritating bet, and calls Boudica “Boadicea” just to wedge in the change in pronunciation, in case viewers thought this week was all about a different Iceni warrior queen. Inexplicably she failed to be dragged off by Daleks or Silurians while shouting “Doctor, Doctor, I’ve been captured!”, maybe next week. Exciting Illegal Archaeology follows, as our team cock a snook at some busybody from the council who wants to keep people away under the feeble pretence that the area is terribly unsafe. What could possibly go wrong? If you said (a), “nothing”, EH EH! If you said (b), “the tunnels collapse and kill our protagonists”, EH EH!, no such mercies. If you said (c), “half the team toddle off to the labs while the other half stick around, get trapped by a cave-in and end up in a desperate race against time”, BING BING BING BING, we have a winner!

The half of the team anyone might possibly care about, Baby and Posh (Hugh Bonneville at least hams it up something rotten as dirty old man “Dolly” Parton, and lecherously points out that at least the audience can use their archaeological imagination when Viv’s around) head off for some Strontium Dog dating, which I think involves phoning up Johnny Alpha and asking if he bumped into Boudica at all during his time travelling escapades, leaving Scary and The Other One to get inevitably trapped. At this point, if we’re following the formula, the Bad Guys should turn up, mortal peril in the present trying to cover up or co-opt the past. Who will it be this week? Perhaps an ultra-nationalist political party, who use Boudica as their figurehead and can’t stand the thought of her having had a fling with some filthy eyetie? The deadly assassins of the Watling Street Chamber of Commerce, who stand to lose £1.34 in ice cream revenue from tourists hunting for Boudica’s true place of burial? No, we’re bravely breaking the formula this week, which is a bit of a relief, and the biggest present-day danger to the team is the head of department wanting someone to give a bit of a speech to some VIPs, AIEEE, THE PERIL! Well, that and an elaborate series of Roman traps involving fuel-air explosive based incendiary anti-personnel mines and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, I think, I was slightly confused after we’d cruised gently past the straits of Historical Liberties and into the choppy waters of What The Fuck?

Still, being trapped underground at least gave our protagonists a chance to talk about their relationship. This seemed to entirely be based around the angle of a Christmas tree, most specifically it having been at “40 degrees”. If you didn’t see the episode and are thinking “that makes bugger all sense”, don’t worry, context really didn’t help. I think it was some attempt at capturing the essence of the slightly up-tight, in control, strait-laced chap versus the crazy maverick woman (surely the first such couple in on-screen history) who’s so out there her Christmas tree was at 40 degrees. Yes, 40 degrees. In case you didn’t catch it the first time, they keep banging on about 40 degrees, sounding like an advert for Ariel washing powder (it shifts stubborn stains, even at 40 degrees!) By the time they’re onto the gaping chasm of musical differences (one liked George Michael, the other one liked Queen; my god, I’m surprised they hadn’t killed each other with guns long before) I was desperately hoping we’d return to the previous formula, and the Bath chapter of a Roman re-enactment society would turn up, terrified the team are uncovering proof that their reproduction armour is ever so slightly anachronistic and ready to KILL to protect their secret. But no. There’s GAS! and EXPLOSIONS! and THE PETRIFIED CORPSE OF BOUDICA only MORE EXPLOSIONS AND STUFF SO IT ALL BLOWS UP and GAS, and Baby and Posh sprinting back from the labs armed with some Latin gibberish from a camgirl that sounded suspiciously like a Ted Rogers riddle from 3-2-1, only it didn’t lead to Dusty Bin but to a secret entrance to a shrine from whence the other two emerge, having managed to set fire to the most amazing archaeological find in history for the second time in three weeks, and it’s home in time for perhaps the most toe-curlingly awful speech of the whole episode, banging on about 40 BLOODY DEGREES again. Oy vey.

I fear there’s a limit to how far you can stretch stories about Amazing World-Changing Discoveries Contradicting All Previously Accepted Historical Fact. As a one-off, in a film, you can just about get away with it, but on a weekly basis? Next time out, Napoleon didn’t die on St Helena, he returned from exile AGAIN! and led a successful invasion of Britain, making it as far as Bath before being defeated by a coalition of forces led by Trotsky, Churchill and the Ogrons! So on Time Team they find a few fragments of stuff and vague traces of a couple of walls, and an artist comes up with a bit of a sketch of how the villa/manor house/village might have looked with varying degrees of artistic license; at least he doesn’t go “yes, and that bloke I’ve drawn there was called Geoff, and his favourite colour was green, and he owned three chickens called Neville, Cedric and Brian, and by the way he’s actually KING ARTHUR working UNDERCOVER with ROBIN HOOD to take down the SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM who was really VLAD THE IMPALER on HOLIDAY!”

Speaking of King Arthur, I’m not even *thinking* about the Mysterious Sword turning up in every episode of Bonekickers. If it’s anything less than Excalibur, which one of the team then wields in a battle against Darth Vader in the finale, I’ll be terribly disappointed.