A return from Darlington is £77.00, which isn't peanuts. It's a big outlay just to go and see someone I don't really want to meet, and who probably doesn't want to meet me.

Nor would I say Nigel is a my 'friend'. 'Companion' maybe, at one time, and the two things aren't necessarily the same.

It's true that i've been talking to him for around 15 years. And it's true that, during the dark days circa 2003-2008, he was pretty much the only person that bothered with me on a regular basis. He didn't shun me no matter what I said or did, even if we did frequently have our disagreements.

But . . . I still think it's possible that he doesn't even exist, and is just a character/sock puppet invented by someone else.

Maybe he really is Peter Meyer of Chicago, who inadvertently ended up in a Manic Street Preachers chatroom in the late 90s, after trying to find an online Christian community to troll. And so just turned to trolling Manics fans instead. And is still tolling them a decade and a half later.

In fact, that's the most likely explanation. The sock puppet theory seems way too elaborate at this point.

And I don't know which one would be worse, if i'm honest. That i've spent the last fifteen years talking to a figment of someone else's imagination, or the last fifteen years talking to f*ckin' old Peter Meyer.