'Hello, you've won a Nobel, hello?' [Click]

Not everyone is desperate to win the Nobel Prize so as to always keep one's phone literally handy, or have a dedicated office line to receive a call from the good people in Sweden - or Oslo, if it's the Peace prize. So, when this week, Fred Ramsdell, co-winner of this year's Medicine Nobel, was unreachable for hours because he was on a phone detox somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, N Committee members, armed with satellite phones and carrier pigeons were sweating in their tuxes. It's supposed to be the call of a lifetime. You've cured cancer, invented a molecule that makes broccoli taste like chocolate or, in Ramsdell's case, made serious inroads into how the immune system attacks hostile infections. A Nobel chap dials your number, champagne corks poised mid-air - and they find you off-grid.

The world's brightest are also the most elusive. They retreat to yurts, delete WhatsApp. Then there's a chap on the line sounding like he's selling spam. 'Hi Fred, it's Sven from Stockholm. You've won a thing. Call us back before the ceremony. Please. Pretty please? Or we'll have to give this to Trump.' Imagine Einstein ghosting the committee because he was busy paddle-boarding. Or Marie Curie missing the call because she was deep in a sensory deprivation tank. Come to think of it, so that was what landlines were for: in case you get a Nobel call.