... is, I can reveal, fucking brilliant in every way.

Good. Not that I had any doubts. I ordered it from Amazon a couple of days ago. Hopefully it will show up tomorrow.

Yes, I've got it on order from Amazon too.

I didn't know this was out in paperback. Ordered now.

Was it out in hardback previously? I have had it on my wish list forabout four years.

Which reminds me, you just HAVE to watch the video at the end of this piece on Ben's blog. It's astonishing.

http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/bill-nelson-wins-the-internet/#more-753

Brilliant.

That is quite remarkable.

Why are there people in strip joints/hitting each other with spades in the background? Is that how he used to roll under the malign influence of BigPharma, before "Naturopathy" led him to grow demented hair and walk in the middle of the road with a woman he's clearly paid for her time?

More to the point, why was he stroking that horse's testicles?

Because he's a nutter?

That was probably some quantum stuff, TPC.

I just scrolled through the comments, and it gets much, much better. It seems that Bill's also Hungary's answer to Wayne/Jayne Country on the quiet.

Don't give up early on that clip - it gets really special around the three-minute mark. Although I've had an upsetting "dancing on the dashboard of my caarrrrrrr!" earworm since watching it.

And if that wasn't Boosh enough, "Electro medicine" is one of the areas of expertise he lists on his CV.

I'll get round to buying and reading this eventually (after I finish Rip It Up and Start Again) but why does it not have an index? Are the publishers trying to save money?

Yeah, I noticed that; a bit crap. It's the main reason I haven't answered Hof's question about what Goldacre says about Bob Winston; it's just not easily look-up-able.

There was an article in the NYRB within the last year about how publishers are increasingly refusing to pay for "real" indicies/indexes.

In order to save the few thousand professional indexers would charge, they either go without one completely or use a computer-generated index (which are often crap). I wonder if they offered Goldacre the "word search" version and he vetoed it.

That's awful news Ursus. All non-fiction books should have indexes. I was actually thinking of doing an indexing course, it sounds like a satisfyingly arcane and anal profession.

Am I right in thinking that until recently, leaving out the index was more common in US publications?

Almost certainly true, but one could see how it is the kind of bad idea that would have appeal to corporate publishers no matter where they are operating.