Wednesday 18 March 2009

Myth busting

Occasionally a news story comes along that doesn't quite ring true, and for me one example was - from the start - the claim by Buster Martin to be the country's oldest worker, famously refusing to take a day off on his 100th birthday. Sequels to this included beating off a gang of muggers, making a (musical) record, writing for FHM magazine, and running the London Marathon at the age of 101. It was at the latter hurdle that things started to unravel, with Guinness World Records refusing to recognise Martin's claim to be the oldest person to complete the event, as he could not - or would not - provide proof of his date of birth.

Martin claims he was born France in 1906 and raised in a British orphanage, so while he has a certificate of naturalisation, he was no birth certificate. The expert hired by Guinness to verify his age turned up the fact that while having a Medical Card giving his year of birth as 1906, the NHS also had a record of it actually being 1913, meaning that his celebrated "100th" birthday was actually his 93rd, and that he ran the Marathon at 94, not 101. No mean feat, but not a record.

Following the Marathon debacle, The Guardian's Patrick Barkham made a commendable effort in trying to pin Martin's age down, interviewing the man himself. Barkham conceded that, "perhaps the biggest weapon in Buster's battle to prove he is 101 is that retentive mind. The most striking thing is not the wit of the remarkable stories he tells, but their precision. Buster has a mania for dates." He is entirely consistent in the ages and dates as regards his birth, his move to London, his marriage (in France, hence no marriage certificate, although his age of 14 and his bride's of 13 conflicts with French law at the time), joining the British Army and specifically the Grenadier Guards, when he left it with the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major, when he "retired" and then resumed work three months later, and so on. Martin's emphatic and consitent precision seems stronger than any solid proof, even if it is about events that can't actually be corroborated, but it may unwittingly be his downfall, via a seemingly barely significant detail mentioned in passing by Barkham:
He's sipping a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale with chunks of orange, and explains that this habit was acquired during an army training exercise in Egypt. "It was my 21st birthday. 1927."
If Martin was born in 1906, he would indeed have turned 21 in 1927, but if he was born in 1913, he would have reached that milestone age in 1934. The question, then, is whether any battalions of the Grenadier Guards were actually in Egypt in either of those years, and according to this page their deployments were as follows:
1st Bn.:
1925 London, Wellington Barracks
1927 Aldershot 1 Bde
1929 London, Tower 4 Bde
1931 Egypt
1933 England, Warley
1934 Aldershot 4 Bde
1935 Windsor 4 Bde

2nd Bn.:
1925 England, Aldershot 1 Bde
1927 London, Chelsea
1929 England, Aldershot 1 Bde
1931 London, Tower 4 Bde
1932 London, Wellington Barracks
1933 England, Windsor
1934 England, Aldershot 1 Bde
1935 London

3rd Bn.:
1924 England, Aldershot
1929 London 4 Bde
1933 Egypt
1935 England, Aldershot 1 Bde
Clearly 1927 is a non-starter, as all three battalions were in England in that year, and the same applies to 1934 for the 1st and 2nd Bns. This leaves the 3rd Bn., which was indeed in Egypt in 1934. Of course, if he was born in 1906 and was in the 1st Bn., he would have spent his 26th birthday in Egypt (1932), or - depending on the date of deployment - his 25th and/or 27th in the years either side; or if he was in the 3rd Bn., he would have turned 28 in that country (1934), or 27 and/or 29, but that would depend on his famously precise memory being completely wrong as regards one of the "significant" birthdays a person has. Or maybe he got his regiment wrong, but that seems unlikely considering its wide reporting and the absence of any other named unit.

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Thursday 12 March 2009

The numbers game

I guess for anyone running a website, there must always be the occasional nagging doubt as to whether anyone is actually reading it. Luckily, the hosting service I use (Globalgold) provides access statistics, the results of which never fail to amaze me...

www.625.org.uk

This is currently running at an average of 29,145 hits per month, which resolves to 4,721 individual visits a month - 155 per day. The last full month - February 2009 (see graph) - had 26,331 hits, resolving to 4,179 visits - 149.25 per day. The following were the most popular hits in terms of entry pages, i.e. first page which visitors accessed:
463 - Top-level
327 - John Mortimer biography
243 - Nineteen Eighty-Four review, part 1
243 - Things to Come
198 - Out of the Unknown
196 - Out of the Unknown archive guide
155 - Nineteen Eighty-Four review, part 2
151 - Story Parade: The Caves of Steel review
150 - BBC Enterprises sales documentation for Out of the Unknown: Tunnel Under the World
140 - The Listener - The BBC Archives
In terms of actual pages accessed, the top 30 were:
463 - Top-level
327 - John Mortimer biography
243 - Nineteen Eighty-Four review, part 1
243 - Things to Come
198 - Out of the Unknown
196 - Out of the Unknown archive guide
187 - 625 mainpage
155 - Nineteen Eighty-Four review, part 2
151 - Story Parade: The Caves of Steel review
151 - Things to Come - Photo Gallery
150 - BBC Enterprises sales documentation for Out of the Unknown: Tunnel Under the World
140 - The Listener - The BBC Archives
114 - Things to Come - Publicity Gallery
114 - Things to Come - The Gutlohn Print
103 - Top-level (frames)
99 - Rudolph Cartier biography
97 - "British Telefantasy Began in 1963...." Part 1
95 - Kate Hardie screenography
86 - Ian Curteis biography
86 - Biographies index
86 - Things to Come - Film Story
85 - Out of the Unknown, part 2
83 - Stephen Poliakoff biography
82 - Left frameset
82 - Things to Come - Merchandise Gallery
76 - Giles Cooper biography
72 - Staraker Publishing issues
71 - Doctor Who: The Aztecs review
69 - G.F. Newman biography
68 - "British Telefantasy Began in 1963...." Part 2
The continued popularity of the biographies - particularly that of John Mortimer (which I really must update!) - are explained by the fact that someone along the line people added links to the relevant Wikipedia pages. Nineteen Eight-Four remains of interest, although it's a little sad that 36% of those who at least get look at the first part of the review don't progress to the second, while 30% don't progress to the second part of the Pre-1963 British Telefantasy article.

www.cwgcuser.org.uk:

It rather startling to realise that this site now averages 105,941 hits per month, although this resolves to a 6,259 individual visits a month - 206 per day. February 2009 (see graph) had 103,572 hits, resolving to 5,723 visits - 204.39 per day. The following were the most popular hits in terms of entry pages:
796 - The Underground at War
631 - The London Underground in Films & TV
485 - Lost in France, Day 2
352 - Lost in France, Day 6
332 - Simon of the Amethyst
295 - The Underground at War - Casualty & Fatality Analysis
328 - Lost in France, Day 5
287 - Top-level
253 - Lost in France, Day 1
447 - Personal
In terms of actual pages accessed, the top 30 were:
796 - The Underground at War
631 - The London Underground in Films & TV
485 - Lost in France, Day 2
447 - Personal
352 - Lost in France, Day 6
332 - Simon of the Amethyst
328 - Lost in France, Day 5
295 - The Underground at War - Casualty & Fatality Analysis
287 - Top-level
253 - Lost in France, Day 1
151 - Lost in France, Day 7
141 - The London Underground in Films & TV: An American Werewolf in London
133 - Lost in France, index
114 - Hidden City photo gallery
112 - Lost in France, Day 8
110 - Lost in France, Day 4
106 - Terrorist Attacks on the London Underground
104 - The Loss of H.M. Minesweeper No. 847, The Lord Airdale - 18th/19th March 1915
101 - Hidden City: South Kentish Town Tube Station
94 - The London Underground in Films & TV: Sliding Doors
82 - The London Underground in Films & TV: Adverts
81 - Hidden City: 23/24 leinster Gardens
79 - Lost in France, Day 3
78 - Shields-Con I
76 - The London Underground in Films & TV: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
73 - The Cat-alogue
71 - The London Underground in Films & TV: Quatermass and the Pit
67 - Hidden City: Aldwych Tube Station
67 - The London Underground in Films & TV: EastEnders
67 - The London Underground in Films & TV: Lost
It's interesting that while the Hidden City index gets 114 hits, the three sub-pages collectively get 249, so clearly there are a lot of people going straight to specific sub-pages, presumably as a result of relevant web searches.

Although the London Underground at War has long been established as the most popular page on this site, there was a time when hits to it went through the roof, as the graph here shows, with the immediate and massive spike on 7 July 2005 being all to painfully apparent. Rather than the usual ~750 visits a month, it shot up to 1,700 before I hastily installed a intermediate page, and shifted the page proper and its images temporarily over to the 625.org.uk domain. This was necessary because the, due to the large number of images on the page, there was a danger of exceding my bandwidth limits for the month.

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Wednesday 11 March 2009

Who shall watch...?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?