What's inside a giant's head?

Answer: not very much.

Shown here, backstage at Watford Palace Theatre, is a completely wonderful prop from our show, The BFG. Centre piece of ActII, this giant puppet is now a stately 18 years old, and still proving a wow with chidlers up and down the country. Given that he spends years at a time in a dark, draughty, warehouse with no other giants for company, I think he does pretty well. It falls to your correspondent keep to him in fettle.

Fortunately he's very low-tech, as you can see, and needs only the occasional tweak to keep him in shape. A major innovation for this tour is the inclusion of two 99p rubber balls to provide some suspension for his giant shoulders (inspired by production saloon-car racing techniques, no less) and swapping a few nuts and bolts for meatier items better suited to the rigours of ten shows a week.

He is operated by his human counterpart, who climbs up inside him during the second half of the show, straps himself in, and proceeds to walk away with a scene set in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. The puppet's head, arms, legs and even his opening mouth, are all operated directly by the actor. As you may imagine, mucking about with stuff like this on a daily basis, for a living, with a bunch of exceptionally talented actors and technicians for company, is brilliant fun.

Hummous Du Jour

Earlier this year; working in Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, London, England, one of the most expensive places on earth. Here we see vats of mayonnaise, hummous, falafel, tabouleh and Lord knows what else being delivered to the very popular 'Maroush' all-night Lebanese restaurant. Like me in the Fibonacci-mobile, the lad shifting all these Tupperware numbers is involved in a day-long battle of wits with parking attendants and their machine gun ticket dispensers. A minute over your time? Ticket. A foot over the bay? Ticket. Shirt not tucked in? Ticket. Whistling a jaunty tune whilst unloading your vehicle? Ticket. Soon after this job finished I moved on to my new life, which is really my old life re-made, all shiny and new for 2009. It involves far less contact with traffic wardens and is brilliant fun. More later, and thanks very much for checking in.

Evidence

Just before the tree comes down, and the cards are binned, and 2009 is given a good hard stare, we see what Santa left under our tree. This is a Fly Classic Ford GT40 (Bucknum/Whitmore) slot racer, found on e-bay, arrived Christmas Eve. Fibonacci Minor assumed immediate control of this car, and quickly got its measure. It goes like stink. We have other cars in our collection, many of them. I think I'm supposed to keep them mint, boxed and un-raced but for what? Cars are meant to be driven, toys to be played with, and Fib Jnr and I raced good and hard throughout Christmas, the track taking up the entire living room floor. Few things are as painful under bare foot than a sharp, plastic, track support piece. Few things are as much fun as a 1/32nd battle fought and lost with your 11 year old son.