The Adventures of the Dork Knight (or more likely the Fanboy Wonder)

The other week I told you all about our Pandora; she who spouts her insightful nuggets of wisdom via Facebook, getting all of us here in the office thinking about the philosophical implications of her musings and even the price of taramasalata.

However, it is a little known fact that the office tea and coffee machine (known to residual friends and allies as Gareth) has his own little nuggets of inspiration too; albeit they’re more cardboard box than Pandora’s.

Y’see dear reader, our Gaz is a tad keen on his movies. Actually, scrap that. To say ‘Gareth enjoys his films’ would be like saying that ‘Chelsea scored a few goals against Wigan the other weekend’.

Gareth’s ‘McNuggets’ often come in the form of quotes lifted directly from the silver screen that, for some reason or other, he insists on sharing with the rest of us, apparently at random. Usually, these eruptions are met with a chorus of resigned groans from somewhere behind the pot plants in the general direction of The Boss and a ‘Keep it to yourself’ for good measure. On the odd occasion an office stapler has been seen heading in his general direction.

It was just the other day in fact when, given the task of writing up a case study from R-Y’s illegibly scrawled notes, Gareth graced us with this gem:

‘You can’t be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?’ *

Greeted with a sea of blank faces and a flying hole-punch, our very own James King quietly went back to deciphering R-Y’s hieroglyphics.

The Dork Knight’s obsession doesn’t start and end with his ‘topical’ quotes… unfortunately. Given half a chance he’ll bend the ear of anyone within shouting distance with snippets of trivia about films he’s seen recently. He is of the misguided opinion that these bon mots make him look like the all-knowing tree of movie knowledge, rather than just a know-it-all.

Our hero’s latest visit to the IMAX cinema (in Manchester’s ‘Printworks’) last week provided him with a double-barrel of movie trivia firepower with which to pepper us first thing on Tuesday morning. We’re not sure if it was the coffee or just his wide-eyed enthusiasm, but, in the space of ten minutes, he managed to reel off a whole seminar on the subject, in his words, of ‘How Awesome IMAX Is’, (Ed – felt like 2 hours though!)

Due to Gareth being our resident Junior Copywriter here in Bowers Towers, and given his enthusiasm for the 70 mm world, it’s doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to deduce that, during his free time, you’d be likely to catch him hunched over his laptop, fingers a la Dervish on the keyboard drumming up a rhythm with the kind of hypnotic precision that would make Dave Grohl blush, all the while creating his next critical review ready for posting on any one of a plethora of film websites. We’re pretty confident that if things don’t work out in the world of copywriting for our Gareth, ‘enthusiastic film critic wannabe’ would be right at the top of his jobseeker’s allowance form.

Come to think about it, hasn’t a Jonathan Ross shaped hole opened up at the BBC recently? One of these days. We’ll be able to say ‘we knew him when he had nowt, tha knows.’

*If you’re really interested, Gareth later told me the quote was from the film ‘Quills’. I know, I’ve never heard of it either but apparently it stars Kate Winslet and quite a few ‘interesting’ costumes – Ed