I think I ought to clarify something, just in case anyone was wondering. I was at a film fest meeting last night, and gavin asked me about it when I showed him my blog entry about meeting danny Boyle. He saw the line under my blog title, and asked who Clippity Clops was.

That is a reference to a ruler my brother had when he was at school. It memory serves, it came out of an old cereal packet and was decorated with all the characters associated with Coco Pops, one of whom was Clippity Clops. Mark and his school mates thus called the ruler Clippity Clops.

The story goes that, on one occasion, the joke starting to wear on a bit, one of mark’s classmates asked to borrow the ruler, using it’s nickname. Mark was rather fed up of people asking for it and replied with sarcasm ”Clippity Clops says Fuck off!” When M told me this story, it got me creased up with laughter immediately: the way he said it was filled with venom and sarcasm, and it tickled me so much that I chose to use the line on my blog, which we were just setting up at the time. That’s why you sometimes see that line on entries here. It’s an old, old joke and maybe I should change it. Then again, I still find it rather funny, and it reminds me of my brothers, so perhaps I’ll let it be.