In the news

Ben Pridmore, the goalie for Desborough FC, apparently pulled off a very impressive double save to earn his side a goalless draw with Daventry Town on Thursday night. His fans by now are probably used to the annoyance of finding articles about me when they search Google news, but it's nice to know that the Daventry Express match report has sneaked into the little gaggle of articles reiterating the press releases about the UK Championship. You could also find, if you really wanted to, an article in the Sunday Telegraph which manages to wildly misquote everyone who spoke to the reporter - I'm quite happy to be described as someone whose "spectacular triumphs have yet to deliver him from a bachelor existence in a tiny Nottingham bedsit", but to be portrayed as someone who says memory competitions are not fun, but involve nothing but hours of hard work and practice? For shame. And I didn't forget to tie my shoelaces, I deliberately chose not to buy new ones when they broke, and have for at least six months been walking around with stubs of laces protruding from my only pair of shoes. That's a much more respectable thing to do, isn't it?

The BBC, meanwhile, repeat the rather groovy film of me from a while ago for your viewing pleasure. And there'll be an article in the Derby Evening Telegraph, too - they lived up to their name by calling me this evening, just as I got back from London (I skipped the prizegiving ceremony in order to get back home at a reasonable time and get to work tomorrow - I feel a little guilty about this, but I did already thank the organisers for all their hard work in creating a really great event, and pretty much everybody else had already left anyway, seeing as there was a four-hour gap between the end of the championship and the prizes). Neither newspaper lived up to the 'Telegraph' part of their name, though. They should probably change that.

The prizes, I should point out, were awesome - they always do really stylish trophies at the UK Championship, much better than the boring tin cups you generally get. This year's are irregular-shaped big glass paperweights resembling mountains and glaciers. I really must make an effort to get some trophies for Cambridge next year - a couple of spectators are already wanting to know the details about it, which is forward planning of a kind I don't specialise in.

Finally, for the benefit of the anonymous poster who's been asking the question here and on Florian's blogs of memory events - the World Championship will almost certainly be taking place in a very big conference room in the Strand Palace Hotel, big enough to comfortably fit the seventy-plus competitors they're optimistically expecting. So there's no need to worry about that.