My mother told me to be wary of fauns

Went to see Pan's Labyrinth at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square. It's a cheapy place, especially for bang in the middle of the West End, because it shows slightly older movies and also it's a bit jammy and a bit clangy, but in a good way - apparently Quentin Tarantino loves it, so they named the bar (well, small low-ceilinged room, if you want to be picky about it) after him, but Kevin Smith got a bit upset and had to be honoured with his own loo cubicle. I cannot confirm that he used it.

I absolutely love this movie but had never seen it on the big screen - one regret I now needn't have!

It's a beautiful movie, right at the top of my favourites list. It blends ferocious reality, at times so stark it's impossible to look at the screen, with an innocent, wish-fulfilling fairytale. The two overlap, so the harshness is sometimes tempered with sweetness while there are subtle dark undercurrents to Ofelia's tale. And in the end, we are left wondering whether the wish was ever really fulfilled - the movie is either impossibly comforting or too heartbreaking to accept, depending on whether you choose to believe in the magic.

I went to see it with ex-editor Tim, who may have stolen workmate Graham's crown as Funniest Bloke I Know. I haven't seen him in a while and, though he makes me laugh out loud in his emails (and alert everyone within a 20-yard radius that I am Doing Something That's Not Work), I'd forgotten quite how bad I get when he's in the same room.

I giggled till my eyes watered until the movie started and Tim, quite incomprehensibly, ceased to move a single muscle for the duration. When the credits had been rolling a while and he still wasn't flinching, I did start to wonder if he'd upped and died on me. Never have I been so aware of how much I fidget!

I'm considering making a blog devoted to the unparalleled wit of Tim and Graham (and new contender: Graham's Brother) and leaving it to everyone else to decide who's the funniest. It's definitely one of them. Tim once made me a house out of a small cardboard box with Spock in the garden because he couldn't find a dog, which he told me last night he knocked down because the land was worth more freehold. Graham once told his wife that the shoes she was trying on looked like a badly packed box of bananas. In the words of that annoying bastard from the Big Brother voiceover: you decide.