A lecture at the recently-held British Egyptological Symposium (BES - do you see what they did there? If you're Egyptastic you will) was thrown into confusion when the lecturer's customary entreaty for questions from the audience at the conclusion of his presentation solicited three successive examples of 'self-promoting rhetoric' in place of genuine enquiries.

George Baynes, who had moments before completed the delivery of a 20-minute presentation on the career of a minor official of the seventeenth Dynasty, later told us: "It came as a bit of a surprise. I mean, when you say 'any questions?' I think it's pretty clear that you're asking if anyone requires clarification of anything you've said, or wishes to engage in some sort of critical discourse. I thought, for instance, that someone might ask me to expand a little on my remarks about the essentially unsatisfactory nature of the prosoprographical record. I know the things that were said were technically questions, in as much as they all started with "but wouldn't you agree that?..", but all three of them just went on to expound some personal view or other, while making sure to drop enough facts and figures to make clear their encyclopaedic - if entirely unreflective - knowledge of the topic. I'm honestly shocked that people could misinterpret a basic enquiry like 'any questions?' so badly. Maybe I didn't make myself clear".

One of the questioners, an overweight North-American woman, was later asked to explain her actions, but instead launched into a thirty-five minute exposition of her 'unique' insight into the Amarna Period. Or the death of Tutankhamun. Or some bullshit. Fuck knows what it was to be honest. I think she just likes the sound of her own voice.

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