There’s even a silver candelabra, a porcelain head covered with phrenological markings, and a small metal penguin standing guard over a pile of $20 bills. The only thing that spoils the prevailing Gilbert-and-Sullivan effect is the presence of an expensive computerised drum machine, with electronic pads that make a noise you can hear only through headphones.Schott is not a natural successor to Keith Moon and John Bonham, the dead patron saints of rock drumming. A sequel appeared, Schott’s Food and Drink Miscellany, and also sold well, though it lacked the eccentricity-quotient of the original. The author’s work began to appear in a national newspaper, employing the same stately design and typeface (Adobe Garamond if you want to know), and bringing the official rules of conkers and elephant polo to a thunderstruck readership.

You could become fully conversant with Britain’s iniquitous hat tax, you could find out who supplies bagpipes to the Queen, but the man behind this procession of resonant trivia remained as inscrutable as Fu Manchu.His creation went on to sell 330,000 copies. Mr Schott, meanwhile, turned down all overtures from the press, for interviews and pub quizzes alike. Now, two years after his starry debut, Schott is bringing out a third volume of eccentric facts – Schott’s Sporting, Gaming and Idling Miscellany – and, mirabile dictu, he has suddenly decided to knock the Garbo routine on the head and meet the press.This modern Autolycus (the vagabond in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale who calls himself “a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”) lives in north London, in a cosy shoulder of Highgate. Unable to capitalise on either opportunity, Rusedski urgently needed to put in an immaculate service game to make Davydenko again serve to stay in the match, but he fell apart.Davydenko charged to 0-40 on the Rusedski serve, and although two break points went by the wayside, the third was snaffled up and he led 6-5.To the delight of the Muscovites, Davydenko served out for the match, to deny Rusedski the chance of a second title in 2004.

Rusedski triumphed at Newport, Rhode Island, in July.All looked to be going well when Rusedski took the opening set. Before the season started it was obvious they needed to strengthen the pack and find a pair of half-backs but more people left than were recruited. Wilkinson converted, though for the remainder of a very disappointing half that, with the exception of Robbie Kydd’s penalty, was that.A Wilkinson penalty three minutes into the second half brought the scores level. A list of Henry VIII’s wives sat beside a pictogram showing how to wrap a sari. The layout of an orchestra was followed by the layers of Dante’s Inferno.

Lists of Shakespeare’s plays were counterpointed by a list of how to say “I love you” in 42 languages. One entry, for no discernible reason, listed the “Curious Deaths of some Burmese Kings” (such as the unfortunate King Theinhko, who was “killed by a farmer whose cucumbers he ate without permission”).
It was barmy and magisterial at the same time, perverse and prescriptive, kind of useful and completely useless simultaneously. It had a charm about it, though: the kind of old-fashioned, slippers-and-almanac quality that English people find hard to resist In the weeks that followed, they gave in to temptation. Barely a month later, it had whizzed up to No 29 in the Amazon online sales ranking. No Christmas stocking was safe from the cute little handbook of factual bits and bobs, with the stately design and cool typography, the Alphabet for the Deaf on page 69 and a glossary of American diner slang (“hounds on an island = sausages on beans”) on page 52. It was the birth of a breed of Schott look-alikes and wannabes, bringing a flood of trivia and cod-Victorian design to an unexpected new audience.It was called Schott’s Original Miscellany, and from the book you could tell precisely nothing about the author, beyond his first name: Ben.

And its contents were something else: historical facts about kings and queens rubbed shoulders with recondite bits of instruction. It was a small, formal-looking hardback with a woodcut on its discreet grey jacket; it carried a ribbon to aid browsing; and its pages were laid out in a oddly random fashion, with little pictures, diagrams, lists and bits of typographical trickery. On 4 November 2002, a curious little volume appeared in the bookshops of the nation. ‘The Weather’ runs to 30 October; the Young Playwrights’ Season continues to 18 December at the Royal Court Theatre, London SW1 (020-7565 5000; ).