This isn't in a manic way, either – he's relaxed and lucid.
Revision time is manic and everyone deals with it differently.
He performed as a child with his incredibly morbid father, and suffered manic depression throughout his life.
He is keenly aware of his own absurdities, which not only include his sartorial "fetishism" (his word) but also a fairly manic obsession with football (in general and Crystal Palace in particular), and music (again in general, but especially Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones).
Whether after recent results – including the manic second leg of their semi-final against Sheffield United, when they led 3-0, 4-2 and 5-3 witwotwo minutes to go and eventually clung on to a draw – they retain enough confidence to pip Preston we will soon find out.
This collective manic revision mentality can be both a source of motivation and stress.
He was in his mid-30s that manic February, and remembers booting up multiple PCs to leach off any Coltrane rarities he was still missing.
He is a man under pressure: Bahari diagnoses him as a psychopath and manic depressive, but also lets pathos in, calling him: "Just a man with a job".
In fact, as well as being admirably effective in two of the three top ministerial jobs, Straw has shown himself bravely willing to speak out (see Iran) when he thought it necessary to be a counterweight to Tony Blair's manic support for anything that President Bush might do.
The closest we come is when Hitchcock stands in the lobby outside the premiere, faux-conducting Bernard Hermann's slashing violins; he has a combination of a maestro's manual flourishes and a murderer's manic stabbing motions as the audience inside wails and howls its way through the shower scene.
The shoe-bomber, Richard Reid, was apprehended by flight attendants and passengers, not one of the new air-marshal police officers.America's airline industry has now embraced security in a somewhat manic fashion.
