Virgilio Anderson fever is literally sweeping the world like some kind of even more ineffective swine flu, infecting dozens of people. With ludicrous haste (I am not sure if he actually ever does any other work) Nathan Jay came up with
this demo and there is also this less impressive, but equally valid attempt to spread Virgilio's infamy
here. Someone (not me) has even set up
huhtupuhDOTwuhwuhwuhdotvirgilioandersondotcom as a gathering place for all Virgilio information and news. Please do make sure we don't go too far with this. Virgilio is innocent until proven guilty and may have a good reason for having chosen my name as his domain name and he seems like a nice guy and loves listening to rain drops so please do not harass him personally.
Things you might like to do to help might be:
a) if you're at a major sporting event eg Wimbledon, then hold up a sign saying "Who is Virgilio Anderson?" and try and get on camera.
b) if you're at Glastonbury this weekend hold up a sign saying "Who is Virgilio Anderson?" and try and get on camera.
Those are my only two ideas so far, but they are good ones. The bigger the sign the better. If you get a Virgilio on TV or see one then please let me know.
Go Faster Stripe are also rushing to bring out the "Who is Virgilio Anderson?" T shirt so you can spread the word in torso form. We are being ambitious and are going to print up 20 T shirts and I will let you know when they are on sale. We can do more if the demand is there. But we're not doing this to make money and will almost certainly lose some. We are doing it to help the fame of Virg-An as all the kids are calling him, get to as many people as possible in the most inefficient ways known to man.
A few other sites have done their best to help with the mission.
The Doctor Who Restoration Team are doing their bit, as are more Doctor Who fans (probably the same one if we're being honest) at
Press Gang writer Steven Moffat's site.
But it's not just sci fi nerds we've got behind the campaign, music nerds are also there and one of the blokes out of Radiohead
has name-checked Sweet VA. This is snowballing. Though I suspect the showball is rolling down the side of an active volcano and will disappear quite quickly. Probably before the T shirts are ready. But if that happens we'll give the T-shirts to 20 Welsh tramps and so the message will bubble under in the underground for some time.
My question to you is what are you doing to spread the word about Virgilio Anderson? If it is nothing then please buck up your ideas. There are children in Africa who have never even heard of him. And also some children in the UK. At least use your facebook status or Twitter accounts to assist in this pointless exercise. But I bet you can think of something even better. Don't break any laws though. Or only if you're sure that you'll get away with it.
Tonight I went to a wine bar with my girlfriend. It was a small place and well lit and filled with middle aged, middle class patrons. I haven't been out very much recently, except to my own gigs, and it was noticeable that my moustache caused some consternation. I could see people shooting me uncomfortable looks and a woman said "Oh my God" and got her friend to look round at me when she thought I wasn't looking. I guess I've been getting a few double takes on the street and have been a little fearful that if my path crosses with the wrong person I might get into a bit of a fix over this, but I never expected to feel like that in a wine bar. Of course no one did or said anything, but they didn't need to. I had created an odd atmosphere, and only briefly stopped being the centre of attention when a possibly tipsy lady sat down missed her seat and smashed a couple of wine glasses - though impressively managed to keep the bottles of wine and water that she was holding in one hand upright and unharmed.
You'd think the patronage of such a place might assume that a man drinking sauvignon blanc and eating pitta bread and hummous (as I was) was probably not a Nazi, or maybe given the proximity to BBC TV Centre might be an actor. But it was strange and unsettling to provoke this hushed consternation. Of course in a year's time every right thinking liberal man will be sporting this moustache, but I am a pioneer and must take the flak. It's not the fashion now. It will be later, because I wear it.
