h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I too have seen him twice- at the King's Dock in Liverpool in summer of 2002 and the Manchester Arena December just gone..

I think my opinion of his career progression can be summed up thus:

Bat Out Of Hell: cracking album, not a duff song on it
Dead Ringer: not as good as Bat, but still high quality
Midnight at the Lost and Found- half good, half not os good
Bad Attitude: could have been worse
Blind BEfore I stop: the nadir. Production values which could have been bettered by a tortoise with Parkinsons. Dreadful stuff

Bat 2: Possibly better than Bat 1

Welcome to the Neighbourhood: I liked four of the songs, the rest of it seemed to be going through the motions

Couldn't Have Said It better: Although not in the class of the Steinman writen albums, it was better than most of the otehrs, and I'd call it a return to form. he needs to work witH Steinman again though.

Live, i though he was fan-flippin'# tastic. real showman.

In Sheffield, did Kasim Sulton play a set first? I like his warm up sets so much, I bought his CD in Manchester

For buying stuff on ebay, I have a strategy that works most of the time. First, don't bid at all until the last second. Keep refreshing your browser window until there is about 30 seconds left in the bidding. Have another window open with your bid in it. Then enter your bid. It should be the maximum you want to pay. With only 30 seconds left (or a little longer if you are faint of heart), you bid should trump whatever reserve is left in the currently winning bid, and that person won't have time to outbid you. They may get one more bid in, but they won't know how high to go to beat yours.

For example, say the current bid is at 2 pounds, but the bidder had bid 3 pounds and it only needed 2 pounds to outbid the previous first place bidder. So, with 30 seconds left, you bid 8 pounds - the most you want to pay for the item. The new bid price is then 3.5 pounds (assuming the bid increment is 0.5 pounds). The other bidder goes yikes and manages to get one more bid in - he guesses 5 pounds, thinking that is way above 3.5 pounds. But, in the end you win for 5.5 pounds.

Thirty seconds to go? Sorry, but some of the auctions I bid on you'd be shot to pieces bidding that early

My particular area of interest is Smiths (as in Morrissey) rarities. Whenever a particularly good piece is up for auction you get to see no action at all (save for the amateurs bidding a just few quid) until literally the last few seconds. I was a winning bidder one time when I went in with 10 seconds to go, yet I got outbid twice by other snipers who'd held their nerve just that little bit longer

You do know about the automatic eBay sniping programmes, don't you? It's not strictly playing the game, and I've never bought anything off eBay myself, but apparently a google search for eBay and sniping can work wonders for your purchasing power...

The morality of using such things is, of course, down to the individual concerned

Just picked up my "stoney and Meatloaf" Lp from the Sunderland Royal Mail Depot. Very well packaged.