Fame at last, as I'm recognised in pub by a visitor

This week's column is heavily influenced by Holy Island and I'll tell you how.

- Peter Mortimer

I was in my local, The Rockliffe Arms in Whitley Bay on Saturday night, when I was approached by a woman at the bar.

"Aren't you that man who wrote the book about Holy Island?" she asked.

"That is I" I replied (a rare exception of a sentence in which 'I' is followed by 'I').

"I bet you get asked that all the time," she said.

"It happened only last January," I replied.

"I live in Oxfordshire," she said.

"I'm just visiting up here. I thought I recognised you from the book."

"I've lost more hair since then," I said. The book, One Hundred Days on Holy Island was published early in the new century, in 2002 to be exact, and had a couple of reprints, but as far as I know is now out of print. You can apparently still get it online.

Two days prior to this pub encounter, I had been to see the latest Danny Boyle film 28 Years Later which is also set on Holy Island and is the third in the franchise.