Met Michael Palin today

Went to Hatchards bookshop at Piccadilly today to go to a signing by Michael Palin. Apparently he's been keeping a diary since the sixties, and is now going to rack in the cash by publishing them! There are going to be 3 books in total, the first one is 1969-1979, and it looks like quite a long read! I hadn't been to a signing at Hatchards before, and while it is a nice bookshop, it isn't really well equipped for a signing with large amounts of people turning up. I turned up about 10.30am for a 12.30pm signing (I usually allow 2 hours queuing for a big name i.e. movie star, 1 hour for a medium name i.e. big name comic star, and half an hour for a lesser name i.e. lesser known comic writer), but there was no queue! OK, I'll go away and come back, so I walked along Regent Street, looked at some shops, was astounded at how much of a rip off Virgin Records is for buying DVDs, came back at 11am and still no queue! Weird, so I went in bought my copy of the book and asked if I could start queuing and they said yes, that's fine, just stand anywhere! It was then that a few weirdoes (fellow weirdoes?) appeared from behind book stacks and scuttled along to form a queue. Even though I was there first, I was third in the queue, which was OK, as I had to get back to work, as I'd only taken the morning off work!
The guy first in line was a serial signer, one of those guys that buys multiple copies of books to get signed, sells them, and then goes to the next signing. He was very eager to discuss previous signings and signing etiquette to this poor Canadian tourist that was second in line. Fourth in line was a very quiet nerd who looked like he should have been at the train station spotting trains, and fifth in line was a rather large girl who had three copies of the book to sign! I just put my head down and started reading my book, Vicious Circle by Mike Carey, who had coincidentally signed it last week. I'm not a serial signer, really! I'm a fan! After an hour and a half, Mr Palin finally emerged, looking quite old now, and very polite too (the last of a dying breed of English gentlemen, now being replaced by chavs and equally dim D-list celebrities), but I think he was daunted by the amount of people that had now formed the queue, and just wanted to get as many books signed as possible. I was polite and said how I'd grown up watching Monty Python and that I liked the film Time Bandits (as I got him to sign the screenplay book - which coincidentally Terry Gilliam had signed a few weeks earlier), and then it was over, and I was thrust out into the downpour that had erupted on the London streets whilst I was nestled amongst the books and body odour of nerds.
P.S. Interesting thought, prompted by a letter from my mother and Mr Palin's diaries, is that if people like myself are now using emails instead of letters and blogs instead of diaries, how will future generations know what we (we the common people) got up to without access to hard copy diaries or letters? I seriously doubt this blog or my emails are going to be floating around the internet in 100 years time!