I had an odd dream last night where I was staying in an upper story apartment with slycat and some other people I can't remember.

We decided we were in the mood for some comedy and couldn't decide exactly what. I remembered that I had a tape of Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound in my car, which I'd taped off Radio 4 ages ago, and ran downstairs to get it. Had to rummage about a lot before I found it, and I woke up before I got back up to Slycat with it.

Then I woke up, and went to the Radio 4 website to listen to The Now Show, and hang me if they aren't having a series of plays and interviews to celebrate Tom Stoppard's 70th birthday. I know how I'm going to be spending some of my weekend.

Tom Stoppard is easily my favourite modern playwright, and if you're not familiar with him I urge you to remedy this. (Though you may well be familiar with him without knowing it -- as well as plays like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, he did the screenplay for the film Shakespeare in Love.

I do indeed have that tape of The Real Inspector Hound, though I haven't had a car with a cassette player in it since Boxing Day 2005. Funny how long it takes my subconscious to catch up with reality sometimes.

As if the Stoppard festival weren't enough, Radio 4 is also doing a programme by Michael Flanders' daughter (he of Flanders and Swann fame, the closest England got to an answer to Tom Lehrer) about her father. If you're not familiar with Flanders and Swann, I urge you.... oh, you know what I'm going to say, don't you?