Wed 28.11.12:

I was supposed to be heading back to Uganda this morning at butt crack o’ clock, but it wasn’t to be. I just had way, way too much work to be getting on with. The last couple of nights had been spent in Aengus’s company compound, a collection of small self-contained apartments spread out around a central eating and drinking area. Bedecked with decent wi-fi, it proved a fantastic base camp for dealing with all the requests for interviews and stuff that Casey and I were receiving. I would have liked to have spent today hanging out with Josh, perhaps going down to the River Nile for a beer, but last night, just as theodysseyexpedition.com site was finally getting the kind of visitor figures I feel the old girl deserves, a concerted spam attack, courtesy of those dastardly Russians (who else?), shut down the site.

Cue frantic emails fired back and forth between webmaster Si and I. Damnit – I had just been featured as the first story on Yahoo.com’s front page. Not a time for my website to be down. The Yahoo piece got over 2,000 comments, and strangely enough, the overwhelming majority of them were supportive. And this is Yahoo News: troll paradise!! Although my favourite comment came courtesy of a reader of The Daily Mail site saying ‘I hope he’s not on benefits.’ Yes, I secretly flew home to Liverpool every two weeks to sign on. Quite.

There were sooooo many written interview questions to respond to from all over the world and I also had to write a 1,500 word piece for the Telegraph (I flat refuse to be ghostwritten) and while beavering away, wishing I was seeing a bit more of Juba, in came an email from Paradigm Talent Agency. As in THE Paradigm Talent Agency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_Talent_Agency. Wanting to talk representation.

Jaw. Hits. Ground.

You know when an evil genius comes up with an insanely convoluted plot to take over the world? Once in every blue moon, his nefarious scheme is just that insane that it actually works. The possibility of using The Odyssey as a stepping stone to Hollywood has been in the back of my mind since I started this, but I never thought it would seriously happen and then crikey-oh-blimey it just has.

So then, a new blog for the new year, after The Odyssey Expedition is over, timelocked & embalmed, all about my hilarious attempts to a) break into La-La-Land and b) convert Liverpool into Livvywood.

Then, just as I thought things couldn’t get any better, I get an invitation to give a TED Talk. A motherf—ing TEDTALK!!!

You can’t say I didn’t put the effort in.