Earlier this month L’Oreal came under fire for their anti-wrinkle cream ad featuring English actress Rachel Weisz looking wrinkle-free and glowing. Too glowing, as it turns out, as the actress had been heavily photoshopped. Following the ruling, an ASA spokesman released a statement explaining that the “image had been altered in a way that substantially changed her complexion to make it appear smoother and more even. We therefore concluded that the image in the ad … misleadingly exaggerated the performance of the product in relation to the claims ‘skin looks smoother’ and ‘complexion looks more even.’”

Of course the Advertising Standards Agency’s job is to investigate complaints about the accuracy of ads, but do these standards go too far? Yes, the forty-something Rachel Weisz appeared with a face so smoothed back that she looked like she was accelerating at 200 kilometres an hour, but the ad was not in any way a lie. The vague promises of smoother skin and even complexion are true. They are actually true of any moisturiser, regardless of cost. All moisturisers serve the same function and there is little to no evidence that those specifically promoted as anti-aging have any extra effect. But the ad didn’t claim that it was better than other moisturisers, just that it was good. Often these ads back this up with a survey showing that eighty per cent of the women they gave some free face cream to thought it was great. It’s meaningless, but not false.

The majority of advertisements are either bland statements of fact or suggestive promises pasted over aspirational imagery. Perfume ads are the best example of the trend. Not one perfume ad mentions what the product is supposed to smell like. Instead they are a montage of aspiration and wish fulfilment. Men’s ads feature aloof, handsome, mysteriously shirtless men with just the right amount of stubble finding stunning women throwing themselves at their feet. Women’s ads show models draped in silk with said aloof shirtless men in an agony of love, lust, angst and whatever other sexy emotions the Twilight series have popularised, and you could have this life too if only you gave Calvin Klein your money. Could this sort of advertising be banned by the ASA? The imagery is definitely misleading. All a purely factual ad can promise is that if you buy this bottle of smell, you will smell like this smell.

But don’t we know all this? We have been exposed to advertising since we were infants being raised by our square luminous parent, television. We live in the real world; we know that these things aren’t true. There are too many years of eventually buying the toy you so desperately yearned for and finding out that it doesn’t really fly. Drinking a bottle of coke and discovering that instead of teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, all it does is make you need a wee. Realising that Frosties being “Gr-r-reat!” is more of an opinion than a fact. While advertising makes us spend money on underwhelming products, it also teaches us a valuable lesson: scepticism.

By the time you are an adult you should know that what advertisements promise are impossibilities. They don’t just promise a smell or food or an item of clothing; they promise to make you the person you want to be. They are selling ‘cool’. We want the lifestyle of the ad, not the product. The reason they don’t attempt to explain what the perfume smells like is that it doesn’t matter. No cologne is going to turn you into Matthew McConaughey, and no moisturiser is going to make you look like Rachel Weisz. Even Rachel Weisz doesn’t look like Rachel Weisz, so you have no chance. And if you’ve reached the stage of needing anti-aging cream without realising this, then you deserve to lose your money on pointless products. Consider it a tax on the gullible.

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You started out writing for kids, and now you’re writing kids and adult shows. Is it a big difference writing for the two age groups?

In all honesty, no, I’ve never even thought about it, I really really don’t, I don’t have to think about it which possibly says something about my immaturity. I don’t know, Sherlock is really loved by kids as well actually, I’m not absolutely certain that the doctor who audience and the Sherlock audience are as different as people might like to imagine. I was a little bit alarmed when they moved back the last episode to nine o’clock because that’s slightly too late for kids to watch it, and while we don’t make it for, it obviously more about an adult, more adult than Doctor Who, at the same time I’m always careful not to include anything, you know, you can push the envelope a bit but you don’t make it unwatchable by kids, there’s nothing my kids wouldn’t watch in it.

At the same time, it’s quite different from something like Coupling which is very much in the adult camp, I would say.

It is very much in the adult camp but compared to my children’s shows, so much more immature! The characters in Press Gang, my kids show years ago, were far more grown up than the ones in Coupling. That’s not to criticise Coupling, I love Coupling, you’ve got more licence I suppose when you’re talking to adults, but if I had my time again I think I would have made Coupling more mainstream, because there’s a lot of very funny shows in there that kids can’t watch. The Man with Two Legs was a very funny show, my son would love it I’m sure, but its just a bit too naughty. But with just a little bit more inventiveness and a little bit of cover phrasing you could make that show for a mainstream audience as opposed to a niche audience. What is the point of addressing a smaller section of the audience, and god knows kids love telly, so actually stopping them watching is stupid.

It seems more and more cartoons and films try to have things adults would like.

Oh absolutely, I think it’s the new growth area, you have to realise that the remote control probably isn’t controlled by the adult male in the household, it’s probably controlled by the woman or the children, and so, and god knows Sherlock is; probably the first time that the Sherlock Holmes demographic has been female skewed but it’s remarkable. I mean, generally speaking it hasn’t been something that appealed to women greatly, Sherlock Holmes, but it does seem to be now.

Possibly Benedict Cumberbatch is influential there…

Yeah but he’s not the first handsome man to play Sherlock Holmes oddly enough. He could be one of the younger ones. It’s odd. It wasn’t like, in all fairness, anyone was salivating over Benedict before he was Sherlock Holmes, its a meeting of part and actor I think that makes geeky sexy.

And people always seem to be in love with whoever plays Doctor Who no matter who they are, what age they are or what they look like.

That’s right, how could you not be in love with that lovely man? The Doctor might be weird looking but they’re generally also quite good looking.

Do you find there’s a difference in writing comedy to drama?

I don’t think there is really. I don’t think there’s any excuse really, unless you’re making people cry then you should be making them laugh. I wrote comedy before I officially wrote comedy because press gang was always funny. I honestly don’t change the approach very much at all, the difference is when you’re doing a sitcom is you’re actually thinking ‘they’ve got to be laughing on this page and this page and this page’.

You’re more counting the punchlines

Yeah, but you know I, this year because I made the other two much darker than scandal Scandal [in Belgravia]; there are a lot of laughs in Scandal, the first half an hour particularly is very funny. Not as funny as a comedy, it practically is a comedy after the first , well probably the first half I think is funny, before it darkens slightly.

Part of the reason I think Doctor Who and Sherlock are so funny is because it seems like a serious programme and then the jokes come. So it’s not like you sit down thinking ‘right, I expect this many laughs’, there’s a back and forth, there’s tension and then there’s a joke

Yeah that does help, I think comedy sits better in a drama, the way its sits in life, really, but then successful comedies come often from dramatic elements. The line can be blurred because comedy is an artificial distinction unless you’re actually talking about a comedian, if you’re talking about narrative comedy then it is just story telling.

Do you find it easier when the pressure is off to be funny?

I just write whatever I want to write, I mean, comedy is very very hard indeed but then I think I’m quite good at it! I’m always joking, I think it’s probably my default.

Do you draw on personal experiences at all when writing Doctor Who or Sherlock?

There’s not very much personal experience involved in Sherlock! The only aspect of my personal experience is I’ve always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan and a huge Doctor Who fan so it feels like these are artefacts from my own past. Which I’m now bizarrely enough taking control of, hurrah. Not a lot of personal experience in that.

When writing, where do you start? Do you start with the characters or storyline?

Well, both. It’s very different for each show. With Doctor Who I’m thinking of how I can get people to be scared I suppose: what’s the monster this week, what’s the adventure, what’s the fastest way we can start the story, how soon can I get Matt Smith running is probably the focus there. With Sherlock it’s different because Mark and I sit around wondering which one are we going to do this year, which bits of the original haven’t been touched. There’s quite a lot of Sherlock Holmes that hasn’t been touched. We’ve had very considerable success just by mining the bits people don’t usually do, and pointing out the bits… I mean we got such credit for having the first time we see Benedict as Sherlock Holmes he’s flogging a corpse, and people said how amazing and clever we were but the truth is the first time Sherlock Holmes is mentioned in the first Sherlock Holmes story that’s exactly what he’s doing. We just nicked it from the original.

With a such a frame to hang it on, is it easier to start Sherlock than other things?

It’s never easy to start, it just never is. And they’re both quite intensively, um… plotted I suppose, because things have to happen in them, you don’t really have a lot of chat, you have to get on with it. At the same time people are in love with that relationship between Holmes and Watson so you need that. It’s very enjoyable, I love both these shows but they’re tough to do.

With each episode at 90 minutes, the length of a film, it must be very difficult to balance all the different elements

I quite like the longer length, I’m not absolutely sure the longer length is harder to do. I think the longer length in some ways is a blessing because, I mean, I think I spend most of my life trying to get Doctor Who episodes down to 45 minutes and that can be really really tough. Whereas, you know, when I was doing Scandal this year it was deliberately set over a year so you got a big chunk of their lives. Things like the Christmas day scene would never make it into a normal length episode because its just a bit of indulgence, no doubt could be called self indulgent! But the 90 minutes allows you that degree of character, in effect. And character is very important in that show.

After Jekyll and Sherlock, what’s your next Victorian adaptation?

Its honestly not the plan, I never intended to do this. Jekyll was actually someone else’s idea that I took on, Jeffrey Taylor’s, but honestly I…generally speaking I’ve always turned down adaptations but I suppose its sort of cumulative isn’t it? Doctor Who and Sherlock were the two big ones for me, and I did love Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as a kid but I doubt there’s another one. The next thing I do will be original. God knows when that will be, the amount of work I’ve got to do but you know, it’ll be something else.

Was it difficult getting the complexities of the different characters from the original books? A lot of adaptations turn Watson into a fat bumbling idiot, completely different to his personality in the books

I have to say, that’s Nigel Bruce and I have to say that fat bumbling idiot he was but by god he was a brilliant fat bumbling idiot! He was so funny.

With Watson the problem is when you remove the narrator function from him. Because he’s really just the ideal audience for Sherlock Homes in the book, you actually have to do something more with him. Our Dr Watson is very sardonic and sarky and funny, but if you actually look at the original Dr Watson he isn’t; he’s endless credulous, constantly amazed, not quite Nigel Bruce but nonetheless has an epic ability to be wrong about everything.

He’s not as thick as he can sometimes be presented but he is comically astonished by Sherlock Holmes’ deductions for the entire thirty years of their friendship, you think at a certain point he might know Sherlock Holmes has probably got this one. Not saying ‘You cant possibly know that Holmes!’, not three decades in!

We’ve got an actor like Martin Freeman and I think the thing that’s important for Dr Watson is that he’s definitely hugely competent; he’s not any kind of genius but he’s a very competent military man, and a good doctor with a stout heart and the best friend you could want and the first man a genius would trust which is a huge complement; a genius chooses him. A genius who understands everything about everybody chooses John to be the man he trusts. So that’s about as big a complement as you can get really.

Sherlock makes great use of modern technology, how hard was that to write in when adapting the show?

Well to be honest, it’s not very hard. We just decided we were going to update him properly, he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology, he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits story telling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.

I suppose you see the lack of technology more in horror, making excuses for why the characters don’t just call the police.

The eternal problem is ‘Why don’t they just phone the police?’, that’s going to haunt every drama because the explanation will always be dull. But I’m sure we’ll fall foul of that some day.

I can’t imagine Sherlock Holmes calling the police

He wouldn’t, just on a point of principle! At the same time I cant help thinking that we’ll probably use that as the big twist, why didn’t he just call the police, he also has no intention of dying so…

Who is the lonelier character, the Doctor or Sherlock?

I think the Doctor, because the Doctor actually does crave company, I don’t think Sherlock really does. I think people get under his skin and I think possibly without him even realising so John and Mrs Hudson definitely, he’s very fond of her, and he’s actually terribly fond of Lestrade. He doesn’t know it yet but he is. I think he got to him in a way he hadn’t been got to before. It just sort of happened. And it happened in the stories too.

He wants to be a calculating machine but he really isn’t. He really absolutely properly isn’t. He’s a quite a moody, difficult, emotional man is the truth, even in the original, and its really fascinating to read the real Doyle and you realise if he thinks a man has wronged a women he’s dragging a riding crop off the wall to beat him up ’cause he’s so angry. He’s actually not at all cold and aloof, he just wants to be and presents that way, but he isn’t, he isn’t at all. But he would like to be.

Is there anything linking the two show, for instance both the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes faking their own deaths?

Well I hadn’t really thought I’d done that because it all happened the other way round but we always knew we were going to have to do Reichenbach [Falls], and yes indeed I did do the doctor faking his death though by slightly more elaborate means!

The problem is I’m in charge of both shows and the what I cant ever do is not do something in one show because I did it in the other. Ninety-nine per cent of the audience haven’t a clue who I am or know that I work on both of them so you just ignore things like that. They are two swashbuckling geniuses, there’s always going to be doing similar things

I suppose if you couldn’t ever use something that had been in Doctor Who, after fifty years that would be pretty limiting.

Absolutely, god yeah. And you know in the very early days of Doctor Who they actually used Sherlock homes as a base when working out the character. I think it was Sydney Newman who said ‘make the old guy more like Sherlock Holmes’. There is a sort of link between the two. The world is very different, Sherlock is more or less inserted into the real world and is the exceptional inhabitant of it whereas the Doctor is bizarre but is inserted into an even more bizarre world.

Was it strange to write doctor who, having been a fan as a child?

It was but that is becoming a long time ago, because I wrote for Russell [T. Davies]‘s first season. It’s starting to get hard to remember that Doctor Who used to be show I wasn’t involved with as opposed to a couple of words I’m having stapled into the middle of my name. Its really hard to remember I just used to be in the audience, and will be again some day. That’s become odd. But yes, it was. But very exciting, very very exciting.

Back in 2004, when we were approaching that first series and various groups were writing for Russell it felt like, it felt sort of magical and strange that doctor who was coming back, it felt impossible that we were actually doing it and could go to the set and see the police box. It hadn’t been on for 15 years, it was so incredibly exciting! And I remember sitting down for the first time and thinking ‘bloody hell, I’m actually writing doctor who’. That never completely wears off to be honest, I’m always very excited about writing Doctor Who but its now harder for me to recapture the feeling of it being entirely a novelty.

How do you come up with the monsters? Of all the different episodes of Doctor Who it seems to always be yours that have the most terrifying monsters

Gareth Roberts, one of my fellow writers on Doctor Who, had a theory that you write the Doctor Who you remember – he tended to remember the funny ones, so he writes funny Doctor Who and I remember just being terrified of it so I tend to write the scary Doctor Who. Neither memory is more accurate, its all kind of nonsense but I do like the fact, the sort of weird sense of transgression of it being slightly wrong to have a television show whose mission statement is to petrify kids. Try and pitch that and get it made today! ‘We are going to scare the crap out of very young children.’

Do you think you have a thing for not killing characters, or bringing characters back?

I’m not very good at killing people. I don’t like it! I didn’t even know that about myself until Russell pointed out that I’d written six episodes of Doctor Who for him and I hadn’t killed anybody. Literally hadn’t killed anybody. No one dies in The Empty Child, no one dies in Girl in the Fireplace except the person who was dead already. I have killed a few but… I haven’t killed any main characters, I don’t think the doctors companions should die, I think that spoils the fairytale a bit. But that doesn’t mean that I wont of course!

How much are series and story arcs planned out in advance?

We’ve got the shape for Sherlock very clearly because its been done before to say the least, and the arc in this particular series that’s just gone has been very carefully plotted in advance, very carefully. In part because I had to write it in reverse order because we did Scandal last. So you know, the whole ending, how we were going to do it, I mean that was the first thing we were talking about: how did he pull it off, and the idea of Moriarty killing himself and all that stuff, that’s been in place for a very very long time.

But other stuff, Doctor Who had a big arc this year which is unusual for it and we’re going to play with that a little bit, I’m pulling back from that slightly just because, for variety more than anything else, it tends to be a bit ‘Movie of the Week’, Doctor Who.

So will the episodes in the next series be a bit more contained?

Yes but there’ll always be and always are things that run through it, but I suppose it will be slightly less big than it was last year. Last year was the most we’ll ever do, I think. It got a lot of attention and caused a lot of controversy, and it got a much bigger American audience because it kind of gave them a reason to keep watching. But I think we have to keep changing doctor who or else it feels rather stale.

Is it true that the current companions, Amy and Rory, are leaving the series?

That’s right, yeah.

Are they just going to be gone when the next series opens or…?

No no no, I’m writing that right now, the big Rory and Amy heartbreaking finale, they’ll be gone forever, I’m doing that right now.

How heartbreaking?

It will be quite heartbreaking, definitely… I think you’ll be in trouble watching it.

Aw, why can’t there ever be a happy exiting story?

Heartbreaking doesn’t mean unhappy. Wait and see. I mean, it’s parting. It’s parting from someone and that’s always very hard.

When does the new series start?

I don’t know, they’re being incredibly evasive so I actually don’t know so autumn-ish… With Doctor Who the scheduling can change at the last minute, I didn’t even know when Sherlock was until seven days before it went out. We just had our first official day commencing pre-production on Doctor Who so knowing when its actually going to be shown is a little bit optimistic! But we’ll definitely show it, and I’m pretty sure it will be the autumn. Pretty certain.

We are in the golden age of the geek. After decades of being the butt of high school movie jokes – laughing at their interest in games and lack of interest in matching attire – suddenly the geek is king. Games and technology have gone mainstream, and giant glasses and Pokémon references are not the preserve of the socially awkward, but rather the socially pretentious. Our TV heroes have also gone the way of the geek; the tough, gruff “solve the problem with punching” protagonists have made way for the TV genius: someone who unravels the riddle and saves the world with intellectual might. Two of the highest rated shows in the UK feature such geek idols, and the geek behind the geeks is writer Steven Moffat, head writer of Doctor Who and co-creator of Sherlock, the recent TV adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle series.

Doctor Who, for the uninitiated, is a show featuring an “eleven-hundred-and-three-year-old” alien who travels through space and time in a police box (called the TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimension in Space), fighting monsters and finding friends to take along with him, only ninety per cent of which have been very attractive women. Having run from 1963 to 1989, the show had been on a seemingly permanent hiatus until a reboot headed by Russell T. Davis aired in 2005. A fan since childhood, Moffat jumped at the chance to write his childhood hero. “Back in 2004, when we were approaching that first series … it felt sort of magical and strange that Doctor Who was coming back. It felt impossible that we were actually doing it and could go to the set and see the police box. It hadn’t been on for fifteen years; it was so incredibly exciting, and I remember sitting down for the first time and thinking ‘Bloody hell, I’m actually writing Doctor Who’. That never completely wears off, to be honest, I’m always very excited about writing Doctor Who, but it’s now harder for me to recapture the feeling of it being entirely a novelty.

“It’s hard to remember Doctor Who as a show I wasn’t involved with, as opposed to a couple of words I’m having stapled into the middle of my name. It’s really hard to remember I just used to be watching, and will be again someday. That’s become odd. But very exciting, very, very exciting.”

One cliché of Doctor Who, and both a point of ridicule by non-fans and fond nostalgia by those who watched as children, is the cheesy special effects and alien antagonists. The new series has a more impressive budget and use of CGI than the original, but the writers are keen to stick to their memory of the show. Unlike most British series, which have few episodes and a single writer, each episode of the Doctor Who has a different writer, with Moffat writing key episodes and overseeing the story lines. This can lead to very different tones, from humorous to chilling. “Gareth Roberts, one of my fellow writers on Doctor Who, had a theory that you write the Doctor Who you remember.” Moffat explains. “He tended to remember the funny ones, so he writes funny Doctor Who, and I remember just being terrified over it, so I tend to write the scaryDoctor Who. Neither memory is more accurate, it’s all kind of nonsense, but I do like the sort of weird sense of transgression of it being slightly wrong to have a television show whose mission statement is to petrify kids. Try pitching that and getting it made today!”

I haven't closed my eyes in five years

“With Doctor Who, I’m thinking of how I can get people to be scared, I suppose; what’s the monster this week, what’s the adventure, what’s the fastest way we can start the story, how soon can I get Matt Smith [the actor behind the current Doctor] running is probably the focus there.”

“Sherlock is different, because Mark [Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock] and I sit around wondering which one are we going to do this year, which bits of the original haven’t been touched, and there’s quite a lot of Sherlock Holmes that hasn’t been touched. We’ve had considerable success just by mining the bits people don’t usually do … I mean, we got such credit for having the first time we see Sherlock Holmes he’s flogging a corpse, and people said how amazing and clever we were but the truth is the first time Sherlock Holmes is mentioned in the first Sherlock Holmes story that’s exactly what he’s doing. We just nicked it from the original.”

Though he started his writing career making children’s television shows withPress Gang, a series based around a school newspaper, Steven Moffat has plenty of experience writing things aimed more at the adult market. He followed up the success of Press Gang with Joking Apart and Coupling, sitcoms about divorce, relationships and sex. However, he doesn’t feel there to be much difference in writing for different age groups. “I’ve never even thought about it. I really, really don’t, I don’t have to think about it, which possibly says something about my immaturity!”

“I think Sherlock is really loved by kids as well actually. I’m not absolutely certain that the Doctor Who audience and the Sherlock audience are as different as people might like to imagine. I was alarmed when they moved back the last episode to nine o’clock, because that’s slightly too late for kids to watch it, and, while we don’t make it for them, it’s obviously more adult than Doctor Who, at the same time I’m always careful not to include anything, you know, you can push the envelope a bit, but you don’t make it unwatchable by kids. There’s nothing my kids wouldn’t watch in it.”

Coupling is an exception to this rule. Featuring the classic sitcom lineup of three guys, three girls and a heap of misunderstandings, it is very much of the bawdy side of the genre. “The kids in Press Gang, my show years ago, were far more grown up than the ones in Coupling. It is very much in the adult camp, but compared to my children’s shows, so much more immature.

“I love Coupling, but you’ve got more licence, I suppose, when you’re talking to adults, but if I had my time again, I think I would have made Coupling more mainstream, because there’s a lot of episodes that kids can’t watch. ‘The Man with Two Legs’ was a very funny episode, my son would love it, I’m sure, but it’s just a bit too naughty. With just a little bit more inventiveness and a little bit of cover phrasing you could make that show for a mainstream audience as opposed to a niche audience”

The lines are also often blurred between comedy and drama, a feature of Moffat’s writing being the move between tense, emotional drama and tension-breaking jokes several times within an episode. “I honestly don’t change the approach very much at all; the difference is, when you’re doing a sitcom, you’re actually thinking ‘they’ve got to be laughing on this page and this page and this page’. I don’t think there’s any excuse really, unless you’re making people cry then you should be making them laugh. I wrote comedy before I officially wrote comedy, because Press Gang was always funny.”

The dramatic elements can also increase the humour. Comedy often comes from the subversion of expectation and the breaking of tension, allowing the two sides to play off against each other. “Comedy sits better in a drama, the way its sits in life really, but then successful comedies can come from dramatic elements. The line can be blurred, because comedy is an artificial distinction unless you’re actually talking about a comedian. If you’re talking about narrative comedy then it is just story telling.”

Steven Moffat’s latest hit has been Sherlock, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, whose second series recently aired to great acclaim. Sherlock sets itself apart from most adaptations with its setting in modern-day London. The show fully incorporates modern attitudes and technology, which Moffat feels is a natural progression for the original character of Holmes. “We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.”

Many people have commented on the similarities between the characters of the Doctor and Sherlock, down to their respective series finales, in which both characters faked their deaths. “We always knew we were going to have to do Reichenbach, and yes, indeed, I did have the Doctor faking his own death – though by slightly more elaborate means! The problem is, I’m in charge of both shows, and what I can’t ever do is not do something in one show because I did it in the other. Ninety-nine per cent of the audience haven’t a clue who I am or know that I work on both of them, so you just ignore things like that. They are two swashbuckling geniuses; they’re always going to be doing similar things.”

So what next for the man with the golden pen? Following the climatic end of ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, the final episode of the latest series of Sherlock, it was revealed to much delight that a third series has been commissioned. There is also a seventh series of Doctor Who currently in production, so it seems there will be no rest for Moffat in the near future. “We just had our official day commencing pre-production on Doctor Who, so as for knowing when it’s actually going to be shown is a little bit optimistic. But we’ll definitely show it, and I’m pretty sure it will be the autumn.”

Details of the upcoming series are vague, but it seems that the Doctor’s companions of the last two series, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, played by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, will be leaving the show. “I’m writing that right now, the big Rory and Amy heartbreaking finale. It will be quite heartbreaking” Moffat teases, “I think you’ll be in trouble watching it.”

10. Sam Spade – The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The original hard-boiled detective, and the Bogartiest of all Humphrey Bogart’s roles. If he was any more hard-boiled he’d be a peppermint humbug

9. Nick Charles – The Thin Man (1934)

It’s half detective film, half slapstick comedy, but all drinking binge. Although Nick and his wife do manage to solve a murder, it’s merely a distraction from all the cocktails.

8. Clarice Starling – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

FBI academy student Clarice is in a race against time to find a serial killer, so she enlists the help of a serial killer. So outside the box, this film created a new box in which it is firmly placed twenty-one years later. This movie ruined Chianti, fava beans, and the name Clarice.

7. Will Dormer – Insomnia (2002)

This hard-bitten detective travels to Alaska to solve a murder and battle his conscious while suffering insomnia caused by the twenty-four hour sunlight. Jeez Will, just close the curtains.

6. Inspector Thomson and Constable Dexter – Gosford Park (2001)

A better breed of bumbling detective. The comic relief duo in this murder mystery accidentally but systematically destroy most of the evidence at the scene and fail to solve anything.

5. Roger Murtaugh – Lethal Weapon (1987)

This is the archetype of the buddy-cop movie and Roger Murtaugh is too old for this shit. He does it anyway. The movie is twenty-four years old, so think how badass this guy must be now.

4. Eddie Valiant – Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

This dark film noir washed-up alcoholic detective has to prove the innocence of a cartoon rabbit. It is exactly as awesome as you imagine.

3. Inspector Clouseau – The Pink Panther (1963)

A return to the bumbling side of things with Peter Seller’s French police detective. His attempt to foil the theft of the titular Pink Panther diamond ends with him in prison for the crime. The original and the best.

2. Doctor Watson – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first film in decades to avoid ‘Stupid Watson’. While Dr. Watson was an intelligent and insightful man in the books, second only to Holmes’ genius deductions, most adaptations skewed him into a bumbling idiot who couldn’t figure out a murder if the victim had written the killer’s name is five-foot letters in blood in Watson’s own kitchen, thus allowing Holmes to provide endless smug extrapolation. The latest reboot restored him to his rightful intelligence.

1. Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first true detective, he can figure out your life from the ketchup stain on your tie when everyone else just figures out that you’re sloppy.

My instructions were to give up technology but I decided I needed clearer rules that that. What counts as technology? Was I allowed have the lights on? Is the printing press considered too high tech? Inspired by the New Year’s release of cabinet papers, like any good time traveller I settled on a cut off point of thirty years. Were they even that technology-free in 1982? They had televisions, phones and even video games, limited as they were to shooting circles with a triangle. When it comes to practicality though, I was in a much worse situation than my eighties counterpart. People in the eighties had landlines, but I don’t; mobile phones are so ubiquitous that landlords don’t bother to install them anymore. Then again, a student in the 1980s wouldn’t have had a phone either so it’s just as well. Similarly with Ataris, VCRs, walkmans or other eighties technological breakthroughs; while they existed at the time, few people had them and I certainly don’t. I don’t even own a radio. My attempt was also limited by the technology used in my flat – students in Ireland were unlikely to own a fridge but I don’t think my flatmates would have taken kindly to me plugging it out. As for TV, RTÉ existed in 1982 but frankly, I’d rather watch the fridge.

Stripped down to the basics, I began my day. I was quite looking forward to it. How hard could it be? I had lived in the eighties before. Briefly. Once I got over the initial shock of not being able to communicate every inane thought I had the second it occurred to me, I began to miss the truly useful aspects of modern technology. I went for a run but didn’t get far. Normally, I have an app with a voice telling me every few minutes how well I’m doing – just hours without constant electronic reassurance, and my life was falling apart.

I decided to go to town but I couldn’t check the bus timetable. In preparation for my technology-free boredom, I had arranged to meet a friend the day before. One of the major things we’ve lost as a society is the ability to plan. Normally when I’m going to meet a friend, I make a vague arrangement some days before, decide on a time that morning and then shortly before tell them I’m running late, all through text. Back in the day if you made a plan but something had come up in the mean time, there was absolutely no way to let them know. You either had to go anyway, or just leave them waiting. To check the bus times I had to walk to the bus stop and write down the times. On paper. Like a peasant.

I don’t usually wear a wristwatch since I have my twenty-first century pocket watch – a phone – so I misjudged the timing and arrived at the meeting place a bit late. My friend was nowhere to be seen, but I had no way of knowing whether he was also running late or had arrived, waited a few minutes, and then left. I had no choice but to sit down on some convenient steps and wait. And wait. I waited hours, years. Or maybe ten minutes, I didn’t have a watch. I couldn’t contact him, he had a phone but I didn’t have the number except in my phone. Even if I had, I would have absolutely no idea where I would find a payphone, or even how to use one. I’ve had a mobile phone for as long as I’ve had anyone to call. The worst part was I had nothing to do; nothing to play with, nothing to listen to. It was a long time since I’d heard the unadulterated sounds of the outdoors; I nearly always have my iPod on when going anywhere. Even when I’m not listening to music I have my headphones on so charity collectors, homeless people or random weirdos don’t start chatting to me. I was in great danger of becoming the latter that day.

Eventually my friend arrived and noises of the outside world aside, I was able to enjoy a fairly normal day drinking coffee and wandering around the shops. One bit of luck for the day was that I was able to use an ATM – cash machines arrived in Ireland in 1980 so I was saved the ignominy of having to go into the bank and interact with people. I headed home and after satisfying myself that whether past or present, RTÉ is rubbish, I spent the evening reading.

For a normal if slightly duller day, going technology-free wasn’t too bad. If it had been college time it wouldn’t have been possible at all. Back in the eighties we would have had to hand-write everything rather than just our exams, with our keyboard-withered claws. We would have had to go outside to discover new information, possibly even reading it on something that wasn’t backlit. We would have had to keep up with our friends by actually talking to them instead of reading their status updates and contributing “lol”.

Truly, this is a golden age.

There is a great train that stretches all the way from Hamburg to Budapest and is used by all backpackers. You can hop on and off at any stage with an InterRail pass, or buy a ticket for any part of the journey. Seats are not allocated – as many as possible are sold and if you don’t manage to cram yourself on then you have to wait for the next one. Normally this isn’t a problem, but last August thanks to the Sziget festival, the train was packed. Sziget is one of the largest music festivals in Europe, with nearly 400,000 people attending annually and over a thousand acts performing. It is held in the centre of Budapest on one of the many islands on the river Danube and makes Budapest the city to be in over August, so be sure to get your ticket early to avoid feeling left out.

Apart from the train, Budapest is breathtakingly beautiful. The city is dominated by the Danube, with important buildings to be found on either side of its banks. From the huge central Széchenyi Chain Bridge you can see the baroque Buda Castle, rebuilt in the sixteenth century after the destruction of the original medieval castle, and the neo-gothic Parliament House – the biggest building in Hungary. Everything along the river is lit up at night, making for spectacular scenery. Most of the museums are around this area, and though you have to pay for entry, they offer student deals and discounts for visiting more than one. Even without these the fee amounts to no more than a few Euros. There are also free walking tours several times a day, each showing different aspects of the city.

Budapest is very easy to get around, either by foot or metro. The cost of the metro is reasonable, which is fortunate, because unlike most of the surrounding countries, it is impossible to get on without a valid ticket. There are staff at every entrance and exit checking and stamping tickets and they come down hard on anyone trying to cheat, so be warned. Taxis are expensive because they know only tourists will take them, but your hostel might be able to help you out, both to assist you with the language barrier and to make sure you don’t get ripped off too badly. There are day trips you can do outside the city but if you are only staying a short time then the centre has plenty to offer in a small space, making even the metro unnecessary if your hostel has a central location. Ultimately, Budapest demands a comfortable shoe.

One thing you should not scrimp on is your accommodation. While there are plenty of cheap hostels, many of them are outside the city centre, and the metro does not extend very far. The average quality is not as good as other cities, and at busy times you could easily end up paying over the odds for a dirty, noisy dorm. Along with the beautiful sites there are scary back streets full of boarded-up strip joints so pay attention to the ratings on the booking site.

The food is similar to other Eastern European cities; lots of meat, potato, stews and dumplings, and all delicious. Because it’s such a tourist-reliant city, it’s not as easy to get a cheap meal as other places. Depending on your budget you may have to take a walk away from the castles and museums, but even nice places aren’t outlandish. Two things make it feel more expensive than it is; first, if you have been travelling around a lot and come from somewhere like Slovakia, everything over a Euro seems horrifying. It’s amazing how quickly your expectations can adjust. The second is the currency. Hungary uses the Forint, worth approximately 320 to the euro. Paying over a thousand of anything will give you pause, even if it’s actually a fantastic deal. Even the cafés aimed at tourists are much cheaper than anywhere in Dublin.

Although maybe not as budget-friendly as the rest of Eastern Europe, Budapest has plenty to offer anyone with a love of travel, food or history, and an adventurous spirit.

Now look, I’ve made my peace with Feminax, it has anti nausea stuff along with very strong painkillers which you can argue has particularly female applications but this is baffling. Woman paracetamol? It has EXACTLY the same ingredients as Panadol Extra. So why did they bother designing and producing special pink Woman paracetamol? So women could accessorize their painkillers? God it’s so annoying when my drugs don’t match my lipstick.

It’s not even more expensive than normal Panadol, nothing about this move makes sense to me.

Serving size 100g, pot size 125g. I have of course obeyed the packet and flicked the last spoon of yogurt out the window

With Christmas fading into distant memory and your stretchy pants reaching their elastic limit, we are fast approaching the New Year. The time where we all pledge to become better people; new sleek organised versions of ourselves with better hair and wittier comebacks. For about a week. It turns out that you are the same lazy forgetful person you were on December 31^st and your promises slowly disappear to be replaced by new and interesting vices. But never fear, technology has come to your rescue and there are a host of iPhone apps to help with whatever you want to achieve.

Lose Weight

If gym membership is anything to go by this is the worlds most popular resolution and the iPhone brings it to a whole other level. Not only can you record your intake and exercise, but you can scan the barcodes of what you are eating to get detailed nutritional information. The best app I have found is the free app from MyFitnessPal.com. You can input your weight and measurements and your ideal goal, and it will tell you how much you should be eating and exercising to achieve it at a sensible pace. After you input your calories for the day it will tell you how much weight you will lose or gain if you you were to continue for the next five weeks at that level of intake and exercise. Trying it out on Christmas day was a fairly horrifying experience. It didn’t quite get me to put down the Quality Street though.

Exercise

One of the main flaws in New Years Resolutions is overdoing it. Going from 4 hours of Skyrim to 4 hours in the gym is unreasonable. You’ll pull something or just find that a 2 hour workout isn’t possible once you go back to college. Mostly, you’ll get bored, or discouraged by how long it takes. Now there are apps which help ease you in to a new regime week by week, encouraging you and keeping track of your progress. One app which does this is Get Running, a program which brings you from completely unfit to running for 30 minutes in 9 weeks. This app is credited by Charlie Brooker for turning him from a pudgy, lazy misanthrope to lean, active misanthrope. There’s till no explanation for the hair.

Get Running (Couch to 5k) – €2.39

Organisation

Every year I resolve to be more organised: I buy diaries and notebooks and memo boards and pledge to keep records of everything I have to do. I’ll write a blog post every day, do my homework as soon as I’m given it and deadlines will merely signal the turning in of long completed work. To stop missed deadlines being a mocking reminder of my inadequacies, there are several apps which can help with organisation and procrastination. Awesome Note has a fun display with different sections for study notes, diary and event reminders and the option to add and personalise as many more as you like. It’s fun to play with but it’s hard to get over the fact that you just paid three quid for a digital to-do list. Much better for stopping procrastination is BreakApp which times your activities and lets you break up your work into more manageable chunks. Of course, the biggest failing of all procrastination apps is how easy they are to turn off.

Awesome Note – €2.99

BreakApp – €0.79

Learn a Language

This is a common feature of my resolutions. I love the idea of jabbering away in another language, experiencing culture that only a fluent speaker can enjoy. The problem is I’m really bad at it. After six years of French and fourteen years of Irish I still can’t speak a word of them. Maybe the problem was that I didn’t have an iPhone then. MiraiPenguin have a series of apps which bring you from complete beginner to conversational level with 50 step by step lessons, dictionary, pronunciation guides and tutors to help explain everything about your new language. You can listen to the pronunciation and then test your skills with quizzes, all for €2.39. There is also a series of more basic free apps 24/7 Tutor featuring grammar and quizzes. Much better value than the Leaving Cert.

MiraiPenguin iStart program – €2.39 – Available for Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese and German

24/7 Tutor Inc. – Free – Available for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese

Give up Smoking

Although there is nothing yet that can help with my App addiction, smoking has also been taken care of by app makers. The Livestrong group have given up on the whole bullying thing and focused on smokers with their free app. It allows you to set goals and track your progress, slip-ups and cravings, randomly peppered with comforting and inspiring messages. By the time you’re through you’ll have completely forgotten how cool and sexy smoking is.

Livestrong.com My Quit Coach – Free

iPWhat other technological aids to New Years Resolutions have you found?

Social provisions for a residence community used to be practically non-existent, with students obliged to forge their own way through campus-wide clubs and societies, and their own social initiative to befriend their neighbours. In the last few years however, the culture of UCD residence has expanded with the establishment of Res Life, a program created by the Students’ Union and the residences management with the very aim of promoting community spirit. Students’ Union Welfare officer Rachel Breslin is one of the strongest advocates of the program, her interest in the scheme stemming from her own experiences living on campus.

“I’ve lived on residence for 3 years and I’ve certainly felt, particularly in my first year when I wasn’t really involved in anything else, that the lack of community spirit in residences that I felt existed at the time can make you feel a bit more isolated. The biggest proportion of residences is first years, there’s over 800 of them, and a lot of them come from schools like I did in Donegal, not knowing anybody else in college. If there isn’t a built-in spirit of community in residences then it can actually add to your isolation rather than make you feel better about being in college.”

On the front line of the campus community initiative are the three Residence Representatives, who assist students with campus issues and represent residents in the Students’ Union council meetings. They have become heavily involved in fostering this sense of community and are working to increase awareness of the various programs and events available. Danielle Curtis, a second year Res Rep, explains how they have worked this year to increase their presence on campus.

“It was one of our aims, myself and the two other Res Reps, to get to know people. We have gone around and knocked on doors and introduced ourselves, we’ve lecture addressed in the main buildings where there would be a lot of country people on Res like Ag and Science and told people who we were. Even when we went lecture addressing about the march we introduced ourselves as Res Reps so the people who were sitting in lectures knew who we were. Its kind of us trying to get our name out there, to show people that there is somebody who represents them in council because not many people do know about that.”

One of the big projects planned for this semester is a formal Res Ball especially for the students living on campus, held in the Burlington Hotel later this month. “We have got a market of about 2,600 students to sell to, so hopefully it’ll go off”, Danielle explains. “The hitch is that it’s the first year it’s running in UCD … but hopefully we can start something small that will continue through the years.” Though the first of its kind in UCD, there have been hugely successful Res Balls held by other colleges, for example Trinity College.

The second big initiative planned is the residence magazine – a free monthly magazine put together by students and delivered to each apartment in UCD. The hope is that this will increase the community identity of residences as they become more informed about events and their fellow Res students.

“The magazine is really to make people aware of the events that are being run anyway” explains Breslin, “so L&H events, Ents events, any sort of talks that might be going on, even careers events. So kind of a calendar of events that are going over the month in the college itself to make students aware of some of the offers the campus outlets have got on … ways to save money in residences and then also to do things like, the Res Reps wanted to organise a Come Dine With Me competition. It’s difficult to organise over social media and Facebook but if we get everyone with the same leaflet going through their door and the same offer; like maybe we’re going to do an offer that week in the shop where you can buy tea for less and everyone kind of knows about it, then it will be easier.”

“We were thinking of doing a description of meals that you could cook with suggested recipes but then have house competitions so you might not get everyone knowing about the house if it’s online but if they all get a magazine they can get the house together and also post photos to the website, and then they would be in the next magazine.”

Those currently living in UCD residences have a less optimistic tale to tell of SU initiatives however. Fiona Brown, a first year Arts student living in Belgrove, feels that there is little community spirit in her building, “There’s not really a community feel, everyone just keeps themselves to themselves … I know the ones across the hall though, we can’t get rid of them! They’re over here drinking tea now”, she jokes. “It’s a big change, but I live with nice people.” Although there are parties and nights out among the group, the SU-planned events have sparked little interest. “Well they tried at the start of the year, it didn’t seem to work. There was a sports day organised but no one really went to it.”

Others paint a more positive picture of the resident community, “All my roommates are so nice” Catriona Daly, a first year Roebuck Castle resident affirms, “Half of them are exchange students only here for the semester and half of them are here for their whole course and I just think its really nice that we’re all getting to know each other, we’re all intermingling. I know a lot of people in Roebuck Castle, I’d say I know most of them because we eat together, we all have meals together. I know people from my course as well but not as well as I’d know the people in Roebuck Castle. There’s always parties going on in different apartments and people are free to come and join in so I’d say it’s definitely a community.”

Catriona agrees that there is little participation in organised Res events however, and feels the SU involvement is largely unnecessary. “I think that people are fairly good at organising their own events and stuff a lot of the time. There was an attempt to have a Roebuck Halloween thing but only a few people showed up because most people wanted to go out and stay out.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for the SU to get more involved. If they wanted to I’m sure people would be happy but at the moment we’re happy to organise our own stuff.”

Breslin however, feels that the SU drive for a residence community is very beneficial for students, particularly for those who may not be as quick to connect with classmates and neighbours. “I think that natural community on a residence, it depends on the people in the apartment, so if you have people in a block who know each other already then a community spirit builds up very quickly, but if you have people who are more shy, less confident, who maybe don’t know anybody then they don’t feel part of that community spirit unless there’s an event they can go to or unless someone makes an effort to bring them into the community, which is what I really want to do. I want to make sure that there’s an event for everybody, so that everyone feels comfortable going to at least one event during the year or doing one activity through Res Life.”

Getting to know your neighbours is not an automatic process and Rachel Breslin has found that residents are more self-contained than people realise. ”When I put in my manifesto last year … I was surprised how many students when we went round to the door, even casually when we asked if the person next door was in they’d say, ‘no, I don’t know them’ – within their own house. There’s more of that than even I was aware of.”

The feedback for the upcoming initiative has been very positive so far, with even those who feel support to be unnecessary expressing huge interest in involvement in the projects. “When an event has happened students have been really quick to say that it was really good. So rather than outwardly demanding it, when it has happened they’ve always come back saying that was a really good idea. There were lots of people attending so it shows there is an appetite for it here.”

Living on campus can be invaluable for a new student. It removes many of the pressures of living on your own for the first time; cutting out landlords, transport and depending on where you live, perhaps also cooking, which even final years seemingly struggle to master. Living in the centre of the action with so many people doing the same thing is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and these initiatives should help residents experience what UCD offers to the full.

Reflecting on her experiences as a resident, Danielle Curtis echoes Rachel in her support. “The community feel is there in every sense, I know everyone in my building this year. You just see people walking on the stairs, you introduce yourself and stuff like that. I think there is a community feel in each res and it’s pretty much the same vibe in each res. It made my first year, living on res.”