I'm genuinely touched and delighted to see The Gin Lane Gazette is 15% funded at this early stage of proceedings, and especially since you all have the encroaching stresses and financial strains of Christmas to think about.

I popped down to an alehouse in the purlieus of the now notorious Chipping Norton, yesterday, and received a hearty slap on the back from QI and Unbound founding father John Mitchinson. They have very kindly plastered the pub walls with posters about the Gazette, and have doubtless garnered me a bunch of supporters as a consequence, for which I am much obliged.

The hostelry in question, The Falkland Arms, is where QI was born, and mine host will furnish you with a damned fine beef and ale pie, if you ask him nicely. Messrs Lloyd and Mitchinson talked QI into existence there one long, boozy afternoon in the early noughties. It was also the place where John first nudged me into coming up with an idea for an illustrated history book, and the rest is, errr...history. All of this validates my long-held belief that the best ideas are born in pubs. The second-best are born in sheds, and I thank you warmly for spending a little time in mine.