Science clips the angel's wings as supernerd and web guru Rob Sedgebeer informs me that "Most unix machines (which means most servers on the internet) keep track of time by counting the number of seconds from 1st jan 1970, so if you've got a mail with that date and time it means something has gone wrong and reset that server's counter back to 0.Mac's reset themselves to 1st jan 2001 when their clocks get reset, so it could be your battery is running down."
Yeah it could be that. Or it could be that sentient computers are about to send all human beings spiraling back in time. I think we all know who has got this one right.
I got more work done today, only slightly interrupted by a surprising email from my car insurance company. Last week I had renewed my insurance with them. Having noticed that my previous insurance did not properly cover me as a performer (I had my main occupation as a writer, which is what I do most of the time) I decided to let them know that I also sometimes used the car to get to gigs (though as with this tour often have a hire car). I expected my premium to go up a little bit, but it leapt up by over £1000. Apparently being a comedian is a risky profession. As David Baddiel used to joke, "Do they think I am going to drive in a funny way?"
I took it on the chin, paid up and had my insurance documents emailed to me, though I was busy so didn't check them. When an email arrived today I assumed it was a reminder to check the policy, but instead it was a letter from the insurance company telling me that I owed them another £350. I was a bit thrown by that. Surely they can't just charge me more money than they said they were going to. And to let me know in an email like this rather than phoning me to seemed a bit strange too. There was every chance I wouldn't have looked at this and then would I have still been covered?
I rang them up to query the payment and they said that in view of my profession the broker they dealt with had added this extra payment due to my profession. "Hold on," I exclaimed, "They already added an extra payment of a thousand pounds because of my profession. Surely they can't just add on more."
"Yes they can," I was told. I almost paid it just to avoid the inconvenience of having to sort all of this out. The new insurance kicks in tomorrow and I didn't want to be left uninsured. Surely they couldn't just lie to me about something like that.
But I said that what they were proposing was ridiculous and that I would take my custom elsewhere. I had the right to cancel the policy as I was still in the cooling off period and in any case they had now totally changed their quote.
It did seem a bit weird. I spoke to my wife who used to work in a call centre for insurance and asked around on Twitter and the consensus was that unless there was something in the terms and conditions this company couldn't just add on an extra charge if they had accepted payment and had sent me my policy through (which they had). So I rang back and asked the woman on the phone to direct me to the part of our contract which said they were allowed to do this. After a lengthy bit of hold musak she returned to say that it did indeed look odd and that she or a superior would ring me back.
A couple of hours later I got a call from a slightly nervous-sounding lady who apologised profusely and said that she'd listened to my original call and I had clearly stated my profession and that if the broker still refused to let the charge go then she would have it cleared from my account.
So it's lucky I didn't just accept the word of the first person I spoke to. I am sure enough people would do so to make this a worthwhile scam on behalf of the insurance company. Even if only one in ten people got freaked out by the idea of owing money just as their policy was about to kick in then they'd make enough to make it worth dealing with the nine people who complained. And I suspect that more than one in ten might pay. You sort of assume if something like this comes in then you are at fault. At the very least it shows the importance of challenging stuff. I am not saying that my insurance company were committing a fraud, but just that it would be easy for someone to do so. And I could easily have paid so they would have got my money under false pretenses. And I wonder if that explains the nervousness in the voice of the superior on the phone. Did she know that this might be something that could land her company in trouble?
But it'd be interesting to know if anyone else has received similar letters. Just to be sure there's nothing dodgy going on.
I recorded another Talking Cock podcast this evening. As things have been a bit busy I only had time to read out another chapter of the book, but it's an interesting chapter about the cultural history of the penis. Download from
the British Comedy Guide or iTunes.
We also released our taster-tape entry of RHLSTP that was successfully nominated for a Sony Award. It's a reminder that the show is starting again soon (I am doing one next weekend at the Machynlleth festival with Pappys - still a few tickets left) and a nice introduction to the podcast if you haven't heard it before (and a funny catch-up if you have.
Here it is. Thanks to producer Ben Walker for doing such a fine job. The Sony Awards are on May 13. It's costing us a lot to attend, so it'd be lovely if you could buy a ticket to the podcast (or pay for a video download). All details on that are in
my latest newsletter.
