For a start I think that he is very bright and arguably the Oscar Wilde of our times. He succeeds in expressing himself in English whatever the medium and knows a lot of stuff and I suspect/hope that he takes the trouble to find out about a subject before he utters forth.

He is very funny without the need to put others down or patronise to make a point. Probably capable of acerbic wit but does not need to display his erudition for all to admire. Mr Fry’s use of the language is humbling: I have yet to hear him use a word incorrectly although he isn’t shy to coin a newism if that is what is needed to make the point. My personal favourite is “earworm” lifted from the German “Ohrwurm” which is far more communicative than any previously existing English circumlocution.

I would like to meet him to confirm to myself that he really is as nice as his TV/radio personae suggest. I suspect that he is a friend in deed to those to whom he is close.

I share his interest in new technology; writing as a retired technologist, I assert that, with money no object, a predilection for Apple products is simple common sense. A computer is after all just a device for communication and part of the Steve Jobs legacy is the provision of global products that facilitate the process.

Hagiography aside, Mr Fry is a hero in the mental health business. I have watched “The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive” many times and thank him for his role helping to explode some of the myths around the subject of mental illness and its consequences for the sufferer and those around him or her. Successful and prosperous people do not need to reveal so much of themselves for personal gain. Maybe they achieve some sort of cathartic release but that does not matter. Far more significant is the fact that he articulates the condition to a broad audience and thus helps the cause of greater general awareness and understanding of all metal health illness.

Before he came out as a manic depressive (the term I prefer because it is more descriptive in everyday English then the term bipolar with its qualifying numbers which are doubtless helpful to the trade that must be seen to be scientific), Stephen Fry wrote some for me life-changing words about depression. I read them on the Samaritans website in 2001 and at last helped me begin to understand what had been wrong with me for so long. I would like to meet the man behind the words essentially to say thank you for his courage with the self-exposure that has brought succour to very many.
The principal reason for wanting to meet Stephen Fry is that I would love to meet someone with whom I could converse, with someone who does not think in one straight line. He is one of life’s raconteurs but he also knows hot to listen to people: Stephen Fry in America showed an expert listener in action where he met and conversed with many different people.

Apart from the wedding of the year/decade/lifetime there is little to report beyond a litany of trials with all sorts of anti-depressants. I was involved with the creation of a new charity called 5 Quid for Life http://5quidforlife.org.uk/ which aims to provide emergency funds for those mentalists hammered into the poverty trap with no food or heating, a source of help that will become ever more necessary as the full effects of the Government’s cuts is felt. Mental health services, despite a guarantee of ring-fencing, are once again the very poor relation of the NHS which is particularly cruel at a time when policies are increasing rather than generating demands for help. Housing is in a dreadful state and the New Year will bring more homelessness as the buy-to-let market becomes ever more greedy. Does anyone really believe the assertion that forcing down Housing Benefit and sentencing the young to bedsits will somehow make anything better. The new Peter Rahmans are already with us and will be lauded as entrepreneurs except perhaps any that are found to be of foreign and, dare I say it, Jewish origin. Anyone living in the Bournemouth area will be well aware of
Dave Wells, such an entrepreneur will surely be regard as the sort of business the government promotes as a solution to all social ills.

Apart from that I’ve done little apart from pratt around with elderly confusers and trial all sorts of operating systems The current favourite by a mile is something called Pear OS Linux Panther v3.0 from http://pear-os-linux.fr/ , the other light OS I’ve found is Lubuntu a cut down version of Ubuntu. The names don’t matter, I am not nerdily dogmatic about anything – I just want something that works without imposing itself between me and my life. Windows 7 Professional upwards (Windows anything Home is best avoided or upgraded) is perhaps the best Microsoft OS to date but it demands more hardware than I can afford.