My "friend" Colin Bateman

I don't know what the highlight of your week has been thus far, but I can certainly tell you mine.

I'm now "friends" with Colin Bateman.

For those of you who don't know who Colin Bateman is - shame on you, by the way - or perhaps just need a little prod to remind you (would Jeffrey Donaldson do?), he is the man who wrote the book-turned-film Divorcing Jack and, most notably, Murphy's Law which was later adapted into the long-running BBC series featuring Coleraine's own Jimmy Nesbitt.

From Bangor, County Down, Bateman has now published almost two dozen novels.

And most importantly of all - for the purposes of this blog at least - he is by far my favourite author.

His plots, his turn of phrase and his dark "Norn Iron" wit mean that I never go on holiday without at least one of his books in my bag.

It is with all of this in mind that you can perhaps understand my initial bemusement on Tuesday when I received a Facebook notification that he wanted to be my "friend."

My first thought was that it must be "some other" Colin Bateman. But a couple of clicks soon confirmed that it was actually "him."

This included checking to see if we had any "mutual friends" and, indeed we did - 10 of them. And the majority are journalists - Bateman is an ex-newspaper reporter - and therefore very likely to know him personally.

Marvellous. My bemusement had turned to delight.

So what to do? When you are contacted by a hero, surely you should contact them back to tell them they're a hero? Shouldn't you?! Just me then.

But, sensibly, I stopped to think.

Maybe he hadn't meant to ask me to be his friend. Maybe it was a mistake. Did I want to face disappointment, nay, humiliation by finding out that he'd confused me with someone else?

And if it wasn't a mistake, did I want to kick off our new "friendship" by coming across as a sad weirdo?

Clearly, the answer to all of these questions was, well, no.

In an ideal world, Colin Bateman wanted to be my "friend" because he had stumbled across this blog, quickly realised that it wasn't very good but was at least the work of a trier, and concluded that I had earned the right to be in his Facebook gang.

But it probably wasn't what happened.

Whatever the truth, I am officially both thrilled and honoured that he clicked on my name.

And, Mr Bateman, if you ever do read these words, I want you to know that I think you're a genius (although if you haven't worked that out by now you're clearly not as sharp as I thought you were).

PS If haven't yet read a Colin Bateman novel, do yourself a favour and order one now: http://www.colinbateman.com/