"Finally there would be a thingamajig that would bring everyone together, even if it kept them apart spatially." -- Amy Archer, 'The Hudsucker Proxy'

Life Since you asked, I do remember the where I was when Princess Diana died. For some reason I’d woken up early that morning at about six o‘clock. Unable to get back to sleep, I reround and watched the Coen Brothers film, The Hudsucker Proxy which had been on Channel 4 overnight. At the end of the film, which would have been at about 8am my time, four’s night logo appeared and the duty announcer reported that she’d died. It sounded like a mistake, as though the channel’s rehearsals for such an occurrence had accidentally bled through to air.

But of course it wasn’t a rehearsal because it was her, not the Queen Mother as everyone expected and when I turned the tape off, footage of Paris was being shown on the BBC. I ran into my parent's room to wake them with the news, because it was the kind of thing which you simply can’t keep to yourself. When the local television news last night asked the question of when you heard about the death, that was their story, being woken by me. So I still have the moment when I heard that Diana died somewhere, at the end of a Capraesque film about hula hoops. Time to get the dvd, probably.