Peter Munz died yesterday. What little I knew of him came mainly from a few cryptic lines in a biography of Karl Popper, but they were sufficiently interesting lines that I am preparing to write a play based on them. I had planned to send him an email this week, asking to interview him about his life, but I was unsure how best to introduce myself to somebody I wish to convert into a fictional character. Now I’m unsure how to feel about the death of somebody I didn’t know, but wanted to get to know.

It seems someone is making a documentary about New Zealand comics. The signs of this are varied and subtle, but it seems the most likely explanation for the new people who came to the Funtime Workshop on Saturday and held cameras and boom mikes up to us while we endeavoured awkwardly to maintain the normal standard of drawing table banter. We were better at this when they took the camera downstairs to conduct individual interviews, which was unfortunate as it forced them to come back up and call for hush.

I learnt quickly to judge which bits of any given panel would be easiest, and to save them for close-up shots of my drawing hand. They did also seem to be particularly interested in my thesis ideas, which involve comics in a highly peripheral capacity. I hope my supervisors don’t feel I am trying to pre-emptively over-ride their opinions on my ideas by appealing to mass public opinion.