Much excitement at Dennis Towers yesterday, as a power cut left the building dark and eerily silent. Seriously, air conditioning is a spectacularly noisy thing, and when the power died, there was a few seconds of utter quiet as reams of journalists and associated folks stared dumbly at blank screens trying to comprehend the enormity of the event. But while we were all chucked out onto the pavement while the problem was investigated, I was delighted to notice that one of my esteemed colleagues didn't allow the relocation to stop him working. With a PDA glued to his ear and ThinkPad on his lap, the wonderful Timothy had a Duracell moment and just kept on going. Class.


Later in the evening, we decamped to Wax bar for the Dennis Christmas party. The theme was 'movie stars' – at which I pulled off my by now semi-traditional Dr Evil by painting on a scar using liquid latex – and there were predictably a very few good costumes. Some random chap did do a spectacular Child Catcher, but for my money, one of the best cozzies was created by the lovely chaps at PC Pro:


The only problem was that few people at the party had actually seen Being John Malkovich, and so they spent a remarkably large proportion of the evening explaining their costumes to other revellers. Their response – "Malkovich, malkovich, malkovich. Malkovich!" – did nothing to clarify the situation to the bemused party-goers.