The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Despite its earlier noisiness, the specimen had been quiet of late. So we decided to wire it up to an amplifier. That was a mistake. Our neighbours and generous funding-providers* in the Fringe office soon came running round with white hair, white clothes and white shoes to request we didn’t blow the plaster off their walls like that again in future. They were impeccably polite in their fury. We showed them what had been responsible for the noise. When they saw the egg, they went very quiet and slack-jawed indeed. They may even have gone pale, too; but it was hard to tell under all that plaster dust. In short, the egg left them completely mesmerised. So much so, we had to lead them by the hand to the exit.

*Um, have I mentioned this already?

7-minute interval amplification data.
i) 09.31: 10 dB.
ii) 09.38: 15 dB.
iii) 09.45: 35 dB.
iv) 09.52: 75 dB.
v) 09.59: 93 dB.
vi) 10.06: 127 dB.
vii) 10.13: 141dB.
viii) 10.20: 0 dB [due to explosion of the amplifier].

An almost frenzied determination to solve the mystery of the egg is under way. Everyone in the lab is putting in double-shifts for the next few nights. Ideally, we’ll have everything finished before the Fringe starts on 7 August. That’s because the office of the Fringe – the benevolent people who are the source of all our funding – is so close, it would be bedlam if we were still working after that. A deluxe espresso machine has now been installed in the college kitchen, enabling those who are flagging to perk themselves up. We decided against a machine that dispenses cans of that high-caffeine drink that students use to revise for five solid weeks without sleep.

The mole is me! I had forgotten that I’d been putting everything into the public domain by blogging. I now feel very foolish indeed. As an apology for questioning them for 3.25 hours last night, I will be taking the entire department out for Eggs Benedict at lunchtime.

I think I might be losing my sizable mind but I swear I'm actually hearing voices from within the egg. How exciting! Professeur d’Oeuf will be sick with envy! I will review the sounds recordings over the past few hours and report back with my findings on my Twitter page!

This has to be the worst day of my professional life. Hard on the heels of the newspaper story, a journal for professional scientists has just run an article highly critical of the progress my department and I have made. “Soft-boiled science fails to crack Edinburgh egg mystery.” They even reprinted the tabloid’s cartoon of me. Needless to say, Professeur d’Oeuf has done a hatchet job. Old acquaintances by the score have been leaving messages on my mobile. Their attempts to sound sympathetic undermined only slightly by their tittering just before putting the phone down. Reporting that “Hegg’s team have been hearing voices within the egg’s interior”, they’ve made me out to be a fantasist or a fool. How did they get the information, though? I fear there may be a mole in our team. I will get my Anglepoise and cross-examine everyone after work.

This has to be the worst day of my professional life. Hard on the heels of the newspaper story, a journal for professional scientists has just run an article highly critical of the progress my department and I have made. “Soft-boiled science fails to crack Edinburgh egg mystery.” They even reprinted the tabloid’s cartoon of me. Needless to say, Professeur d’Oeuf has done a hatchet job. Old acquaintances by the score have been leaving messages on my mobile. Their attempts to sound sympathetic undermined only slightly by their tittering just before putting the phone down. Reporting that “Hegg’s team have been hearing voices within the egg’s interior”, they’ve made me out to be a fantasist or a fool. How did they get the information, though? I fear there may be a mole in our team. I will get my Anglepoise and cross-examine everyone after work.

Procedure: Specimen was exposed to the full force of human dentition.
Result: No cracks. But dislodged two fillings.

Watch video report >

Oscillations were the source of much excitement earlier today. This was the cue for many of the team to sing “Good Vibrations” at the tops of their voices in rather irritating falsettos. Because, you see, the egg has now begun shaking like mad. No amount of Blu-Tack will keep it still on my desk. Attempting to hold it with both hands is extremely tricky. As I was making a rather futile attempt to clutch it, the egg managed to dislodge both my wedding ring and the little hand of my wristwatch. The latter is astonishingly accurate, but that will be no consolation if I arrive for meetings and conferences three hours late precisely.

Procedure: Extreme exfoliation with miniature cheese grater.
Result: The procedure did wonders for the specimen’s complexion.

Watch video report >

Belinda, one of our team, came into the college clutching a copy of one of the popular newspapers. On page 9, there was an article with a cartoon of me as the egg. A rather dreadful pun was used in the headline. Something about Egginburgh, if memory serves. This character assassination is too much. I could turn the other cheek to attacks by the press on my friends, wife or children, but when they pick on the Heggster (as the youngsters affectionately call me), they’ve overstepped the mark. There was even a sneering quote from the “Gallic egg boffin, Professeur Guillaume d’Oeuf”. “Boffin”? That’s not how you spell “buffoon”.

Procedure: Poking of specimen in the Mrs Hegg’s Rock-Hard Biscuit Test.
Result: It survived! It actually survived!

Watch video report >

Guillaume d’Oeuf, great (d’)oaf that he is, has decided to create some controversy by tipping off the press about the egg. He has told them that this is a historic find and that I am squandering the opportunity that it presents. I have already received three phone calls this morning from journalists anxious to speak to me on the issue. I told them in all truthfulness that it was work in progress. I also mentioned that d’Oeuf wouldn’t know one end of an egg from the other. That, far more scathing than anything that I could say about his mother being a failed botanist, is the most withering remark I could have made. I hope they put that on their front pages next to revelations about MPs’ expenses and failed celebrity marriages.

Procedure: Painstaking testing of the hypothesis that a chicken produced the specimen.
Result: Not a good fit. Like Cinderella’s glass slipper on an ugly sister’s foot.

Watch video report >

Repeated attempts to X-ray the egg have yielded absolutely nothing. The images always come out black. There is no good reason for this whatsoever; rational explanations seem to be failing us. However, I remain unconvinced by those in the team who insist that the thing we are subjecting to close scrutiny is of extraterrestrial origin. I am particularly eager to ignore the opinions of those who habitually wear replica Star Trek tops under their lab coats. Having said that, there’s a little voice in my head that tells me it’s true. And that I have something Venusian, say, in my care. Fortunately, that little voice in my head is ridiculously high-pitched and squeaky – like my father-in-law’s – and so I tend not to take it too seriously.

It’s getting hotter! No, not the external atmospheric temperature, I mean the egg. This is a development too exciting for words. Because this suggests the egg may actually be self-incubating and that it may be about to hatch. I have refrained from calling any TV companies or newspapers with the news, momentous though it is, as I am reluctant to be doorstepped, as I believe the term is, by the paparazzi. A colleague also informs me that an appearance on an American programme called Larry King Live, via satellite, would then follow as surely as night follows day. This would be most distracting, and so I intend to keep a low profile. Mum’s the word.

Procedure: The specimen was subjected to severe darthing and extreme vadering.
Result: The force appeared to be with it.

Watch video report >

Initially, anyone intending to handle the egg had to wear velvet gloves that were steam-cleaned at 15-minute intervals. They also required written permission from me. Given that we now know the specimen to be practically indestructible, neither of these regulations applies any more. Indeed, those needing to pass the egg to a colleague will often throw it the entire length of the laboratory. My poor knowledge of rugby (which I believe I have mentioned before), led to me describing someone’s throwing as being worthy of Gavin Henson. Apparently, I meant the Scottish legend Gavin Hastings. This faux pas created a frosty atmosphere that lingered for many hours.

Procedure: Dr Peter “Leatherface” Wilkins scientifically tested the specimen’s resilience with a chainsaw.
Result: Not so much as a scratch.

The strangest thing happened earlier this evening. Just as my team and I were about to experiment on the egg, we heard some comedians on the radio. Although they made many references to popular culture – only one of which I understood – they were clearly very funny indeed, because my colleagues were all crying with laughter. It was only later that we realised there was no radio in the lab. (Sadly, I had to impose a ban back in 2007, when a digital radio fell from a shelf and destroyed a fossilised pterodactyl egg midway through the Terry Wogan show.) Everyone is understandably disturbed by this. It is very unnerving indeed. Someone said they believed the sound had come from the egg itself. But that was a preposterous hypothesis that even that buffoon Professeur d’Oeuf would scoff at. Probably. Anyway, we will all be sleeping with the light on again tonight.

Procedure: The specimen’s puttability was tested by a lab technician with a golf handicap of 6.
Result: The specimen was birdied, despite a collision with the base of a retort stand.

Watch video report >

My team has been told to make progress soon. Or else it’s rumoured that my counterpart at Paris’s Université de Charles Aznavour (or whatever it’s called) – the loathsome and incompetent Professeur Guillaume d’Oeuf – will be given custody of the egg. (But not, as far as I understand, egg custard! Ho! Ho! I really can’t help myself!) Needless to say, this would be a travesty and an outrage. Quite frankly, they’d be better off giving a marmoset with ADHD the responsibility of classifying the most important find of the century. Our resolve sharpened, we are now preparing a huge number of tests that we will unleash in an all-out quest for the truth. Please watch this space. And that goes for you, too, d’Oeuf – you moustachioed, cravat-wearing charlatan.

As is my habit, I turned on my Anglepoise this evening and moved it around for a while like the animated lamp logo of the American studio, Pixar. (I have now watched Ratatouille 37 times!) As I did so, an extraordinary thing happened. I accidentally backlit the egg. The powerful 120-watt bulb (which I intend to change for a low-energy equivalent next week) rendered the eggshell translucent. Terrifying, ghostly shapes were visible within. I then did what any distinguished man of science would do in such circumstances. I hid under a bench until the lab cleaners came round at 11.30pm. And then, emboldened, I got to my feet and fled. My red Crocs sandals have never moved so fast, I can tell you. But I shall return tomorrow, in broad daylight.

The first results yielded by the spectral analysis ovoscope have been recorded. That’s one in the eye for those who said that the cost of the machine – £135,000 – was a complete and utter waste of our benefactors’ (the Fringe’s) money! The demand that our funding be slashed by 95% looks pretty silly too! We have now mapped the way the colour of the egg inexplicably changes over a 24-hour period. All the way from infrared to ultraviolet (via my favourite colour, the much underrated indigo).

N.B. The total comes out at 102.5%. We’re unsure as to exactly why. But, with hindsight, it may be due to the fact that the SAO was dropped down a flight of stairs during delivery.

Procedure: Subtle scientific examination. Using a blowtorch.
Result: Several bystanders lost eyebrows, but the intense heat had no discernible effect on the specimen.

Watch video report >

We took delivery of a spectral analysis ovoscope (SAO) this morning . . . but what am I thinking? I’m blinding you with science, aren’t I? Sorry. In simple layman’s terms, an SAO is a big machine enabling us to perform spectral analysis ovoscopy. (Call me presumptuous, but I think you’re beginning to see why I’ve been told I have a gift for making complex matters seem simple.) This is big news. Huge. Even greater than back in the ’50s, when we got an atomic egg timer that was accurate to within 0.0000000001 seconds. But no one is going to get plutonium sickness from our latest gadget . . . fingers crossed!

I gingerly placed a stethoscope against the shell this morning. And listened hard. The resulting vibrations loosened all 17 of my fillings (Mrs Hegg’s homemade toffee and sugar-glazed doughnuts have taken their toll on my dentition). And it reduced the lenses of my spectacles to a fine powder. If my ears stop ringing by Christmas, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. There’s something going on within the walls of that eggshell. Something big. This requires further investigation. For we Hegg’s are persistent; we Hegg’s are not quitters. (With the possible exception of cousin Edwina Hegg, author of “I QUIT! I QUIT! A would-be quitter’s guide to quitting”.)

One of my more excitable students dropped the egg on the floor this morning. Oops! I fear that my description of it had left him so awestruck, his palms had become extremely sweaty. Consequently, the egg slid from his grasp like a rugby ball through the fingers of an English scrum half. (Not being of an athletic or sporting disposition, I have no idea what that meant, but one of the Scottish lab technicians here asked me very nicely if I’d say it.) To our relief, the egg seems perfectly fine. But the laboratory floor now has a rather large pothole.

I may be renowned in international egg circles – or ovals, as we prefer to call them – but I don’t mind admitting that this has left me flummoxed and bamboozled. In my 40 years of egg study, I’ve never seen anything quite like this baby here. Of course, my use of the word “baby” in that last sentence was entirely colloquial, not scientific. Goodness me, if I were to suggest an egg was an infant, I’d be drummed out of the International Fellowship of Ovologists! And when that happens, not only do they remove your name from the members’ register, they also send you a week-old omelette in a box. Symbolism is very important to us.