I was in the office at the weekend during the thunderstorm that almost turned Liverpool into a swimming pool and John Lennon Aiport into an aquarium. There was a huge flash of lightning and a crash of thuinder and all of a sudden the credit card machine nearby came to life all by itself, bleeped loudly and showed the error message that the card was invalid. We have no idea what it was that God was trying to order but he’s obviously having a bit of a problem with his plastic at the moment

Some curious things happen to the names of many of the artists whose prints or original work are featured on Artists UK

For instance, Brian Froud hangs up his brush and becomes the relative of a famous psychologist as Bryan Freud whilst rather more appropriately Peter Pracownik becomes Peter Peacenik. Patrick Woodroffe only has to suffer his name being unintelligently mis-spelled by the spellcheck as Patrick Woodruff. Whilst Rodney Matthews becomes the grand master Rod Ney Maîtres. Stuart Dilley finds himself with a problem as Stuart Dilemme and Ed Org perhaps has rather more fun as Ed Orges!

This is of course of no interest whatsoever to John Howe, Alan Lee, Jim Burns, Robert Gould and Roger Dean whose names are entirely unaffected. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. All the best from Kish Savary

The phone rang and a gentleman asked to be put through to one of the most famous artists we deal with ostensibly because he is trying to track down someone this artist knows in order to ensure they get the back-royalties they are owed. A noble venture we can only praise and support. However, the gentleman in question seemed unable to comprehend that the artists featured on our website are not in fact resident at Artists UK’s offices!

My mind was filled with the wonderful idea of all these artists from present and past living and working at Artists UK. Salvador Dali might be in the restaurant chatting with Bob Venosa (that’s no surprise since they did know each other) but what about Brian Froud, Alan Lee and a few others having lunch with Arthur Rackham? It would be lovely to see Josh Kirby back again and the corridors could be filled with his Voyage of the Ayeguy paintings! There’d be a group of old TSR artists and Magic would be Gathering in the bar. What would Picasso think of digital imaging? William Blake might be rather shocked by Todd Lockwood’s War of Angels. Sulamith Wulfing and Susan Seddon-Boulet in mutual admiration? Cicely Mary Barker and Beatrix Potter would probably be astounded at some of the modern fairy paintings and fantasy illustrations but perhaps feel that they were a bit too gaudy for their taste. Rodney Matthews and William Blake might have a fair bit in common … or possibly not. Who knows? Who would you like to see in the great art skyscraper?

We did of course forward the gentleman’s request to the artist concerned and hopefully a particular writer will get the royalties he’s due … and they all lived happily everafter

At Artists UK we recently received a handwritten letter from a prospective customer seeking information about a number of posters he was trying to get hold of. The letter was addressed to “Dear Sir or Madman”. Since then we have been trying to figure out which one of us is the Sir and which one is the Madman. The girls are out of the running for either title so it must be down to one of us guys to be Sir and another to be Madman. I quite like the idea of being Sir Keith (yes, that means you know who’s writing this one ) but the vote so far seems to be that I’m more likely to get the other title, although I’m sure that Madman Jim has a much better ring to it, but the consensus appears to be that he is more likely to be Sir Jim than I am to be Sir Keith. Oh well, Madman Keith it is then … at least until I can write a sentence with less than two “buts”in it