The Great­est Blog­ger in the World was offi­cially launched last week at Read­ings Carl­ton in Mel­bourne by author/broadcaster Tony Wil­son. It was a lovely evening. Tony said nice things about the book, lots of peo­ple came to lis­ten to him, most impor­tantly, I got to wear a suit jacket. And it wasn’t even a wedding.

Big ups to Read­ings and Hardie Grant Egmont for putting on the launch and let­ting me pre­tend I’m more impor­tant than I am for just one night.

Tony Wil­son (author of Harry High­pants and Grannysaurus Rex) launch­ing the book.

Me and my suit jacket.

All the lovely peo­ple who came to Read­ings to hear Tony talk about the book and then stayed while I read a small extract out.

I signed books. Peo­ple wanted me to. I felt very important.

And here’s my with my fam­ily and my friend Sean who MC’d the evening. And yes, I have a big (but beau­ti­ful) fam­ily and yes, my Mum has been doing bunny ears to us all our lives. Sigh.

And here’s some of what Tony Wil­son had to say when he was launch­ing my book. Thanks to Rob McD and Matty Soc­cio for the pho­tos and video.

When I look out the kitchen win­dow at the moment there are men next door build­ing some kind of house that looks more like a giant out­side toilet.

It’s such a small place to con­struct any kind of  build­ing. Per­haps the men are just build­ing their own per­sonal cubby house. That would be pretty cool. If they are build­ing a cubby house I will be able to wave at them from my kitchen when they’re fin­ished build­ing. And maybe they’ll invite me over for lemon­ade and choco­late in their giant-loo-sized cubby house. Orsome.

I have a friend called Ken. He thought that he could make improve­ments to my book. Thanks a lot, Ken. Here are his ‘improve­ments’ with apolo­gies to the fan­tas­tic cover illus­tra­tor Gre­gory Baldwyn.

So what do you think? Per­son­ally I’m just glad he didn’t think of The Great­est Bog­ger in the World because I would hate to see what changes he would have made to illustrations.

After the com­ments and feed­back left on my pre­vi­ous post about the bits and pieces that make up one’s beard, I now present the revised edi­tion of The Anatomy of the Com­mon Beard.

And here’s the KEY:

PHILTRUMLINGS: The hair of the philtrum.

SIDEBURNLINGS: The hair of the sideburn.

CHEEKFUZZLINGS: The fuzzy hair of the cheek.

GINGERLINGS: The inex­plic­a­ble gin­ger hair on blonde or brunette beard.

BERMUDATRIANGLINGS: The place where hair refuses to grow at all despite the clear geo­graph­i­cal require­ment of hair growth.

UNDERLINGS: Neck hairs.

TRANSCHESTLINGS:  The hairs that sit just under the Adam’s apple and glare envi­ously past the collarbone.

Thanks to Phill, Ken, #2 and House­mate Numero Uno for their input.

Win­ter is cer­tainly a time when beards are at their most sported. Every sec­ond or third man seems to wear a beard at some point of winter.

After a dis­cus­sion on Twit­ter today about the var­i­ous parts of the beard, mostly with a chap called Phill, a new set of beard terms have been reached that I think reflect the class and dig­nity inher­ent in a fur-face.