Alan Douglas

Stephen, you have come good. I've often failed to recognise someone "out of context", including my own daughter-in-law just the other day. Alan Douglas

Bryan Appleyard

Stephen, I marvel at your patience in responding to this humourless nonsense.

Joshua

That just goes to show how naïve I am. I always imagined that Blackberry is Pollard's butler.

Guy Herbert

I'm astonished anyone should expect to be recognised. But then I find it very difficult to recognise anyone unless they are a very unusual shape, or I can get them from context and/or voice. (Not always, even then - I once asked a multi-Oscar-winner what he did at his own party. My only excuse is he was dressed as a parrot at the time.) If someone looks vaguely familiar (which is as good as it gets, most of the time) in the street, I smile hopefully, since this is good for friends , relations, and people off the telly. For some reason I usually manage Philip, though.

Joshua

"[Alistair Cooke] was a very funny man. When people came up to him and said 'are you who I think you are?' as they often did. His reply was always, 'yes, I'm Bob Hope'. A few years ago he was coming down the stairs of a hotel in San Francisco and an elderly woman was coming up the stairs and she said 'are you who I think you are?'Alistair replied: 'yes, I'm Bob Hope'. The woman said: 'isn't that a coincidence I'm Mrs Bob Hope!' " -- via the BBC's website.

Dave

If you type "#end" at the end of your message it should avoid posting any automatic signatures that are appended to your emails. That works on other mail-to-blog systems so I imagine it might work on yours.