Is this just fantasy? I actually once heard Kenny Everett claim that the second line (to Bohemian Rhapsody of course) was actually, "Is this just Battersea?" which still makes me chuckle. However before you start thinking that this week's column is going to be an ode to Queen, it's not. I have to confess that I didn't in fact hear Bohemian Rhapsody until I was well into my teens. I know this for certain because I can vividly remember saying that I didn't think I'd ever heard of it, to a Queen fan at college. He looked at me as though I had just admitted that I'd forgotten to put on my underwear that morning. It's a bit of a trauma-induced blur now (and this is only over a song - goodness knows how I would have coped if it actually had been an underwear crisis) but I think that I then hastily back-pedalled and tried to pretend that I had in fact heard it after all, but had just temporarily forgotten.

Talking about that now it makes me sound like Doc Morrisey in the very good second episode of the not terribly good third series of "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" (currently available as part of a 3-disc box set, very reasonably priced at Play.com, Christmas is coming). Doc is trying to pass himself off as a stranger for the benefit of the only visitor to the new Perrins commune, but slips up by answering to 'Doc'. He then attempts to salvage the situation with the optimistic remark, "I've just remembered - I'm not a doctor." I suspect that my attempts to convince my former college-mate that I really had heard the bizarrely-titled, bizarrely-lyriced (why does Beelzebub have a devil for his sideboard anyway?) Queen classic were just as desperate and unsuccessful. Ah well, at least I didn't have to wear that awful kilt - and you see, now you'll just have to buy the DVD won't you, to find out what in the Reginald Iolanthe Perrin I'm talking about.

However, and somewhat more relevantly, a better question at present might be what in the Reginald Iolanthe Perrin am I writing about? Well, a quick glance back over the first two paragraphs tells me... well, not much really, but on second glance, and focussing on just the title, I want to mull over reality. No, actually not quite, nothing anywhere near as ambitious or esoteric as that. I do, though, want to consider one area of debate over what is real and what isn't. Namely, how 'real' is the 'life' we live on-line?

When I lived the life of an international jet-setter (well, when I went to America for a week anyway) I could never quite get my head around the time difference. Obviously I knew in a factual, rational sense that it existed, and understood the reasons why... but nevertheless, when speaking to anybody back in the UK I couldn't quite shake the thought that it was all a big conspiracy. Were the people in England only claiming that it was nine in the morning when I called them at two in the afternoon? Ludicrous I know, but the same principal applies in part to dealings on the Internet (well I think so anyway). Although I know that all the people that I may chat to on the Message Boards are real people, leading real lives in real places with real jobs and real homes and real-- well, you get the idea; although I know, again in a factual, rational sense, that they are real, I still can't always dismiss the suspicion that actually they aren't. Is there in fact a committee of just half a dozen nerds out there, who are creating all these 'real' people to populate the internet with?

OK, I admit that the suggestion is probably pushing it a little - we of course hear warnings and cases about people on the internet pretending to be things they aren't for reasons of their own, but I think it fair to say that they are the exception, or at least I hope so. But there is the issue of how we treat our on-line lives. A few years ago, I would have probably labelled anybody who spent any amount of time posting on Internet Message Boards, or in Chat Rooms, a sad, lonely individual - a nerd or an anorak or any one of those less than flattering labels. (Geek is another.) But now my opinion has changed, and of course this is since we got a home computer ourselves. Whether my opinion has changed because I have seen that such a dismissal is objectively untrue, or whether it's just because I now am one of those sad, lonely individuals/nerds/anoraks/geeks, is I suppose a matter of opinion (place your votes now).

There does seem to be though, in some circles at least, a kind of snobbery against friends one meets on the Internet, as though the simple fact that in most cases they are people we only talk to via the written word rather than people who live close enough for us to physically meet, is somehow sufficient reason to consider them as second class. From my post-computer point of view this strikes me as rather strange - although it's probably gone out of fashion over the past few decades, there was a time when people had pen-pals, friendships sustained by an on-going series of written exchanges between people living far apart, and in most cases people who had never met. The only differences between the old-fashioned letter-writing pen-pals, and those friends we can make on-line is that in the internet age we don't need to buy a stamp, the replies come so much quicker, and (perhaps most liberating of all) we can have many more than just the one 'pal'.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Internet acquaintances are sometimes considered as secondary to other friends is the lack of a visual reference. For whatever deep-rooted psychological reason, we as human beings seem to prefer being able to see things. Regardless of any considerations of quality, radio will nowadays always be a poor relation to television - I'm not saying this is right and proper, but radio clearly has no hope of the high ratings or the high profile of television shows. Take our own beloved Doctor Who as an excellent example: the Big Finish audio range, although popular with its supporters, only appeals to a minority of fans. Even the official, BBC-produced Jon Pertwee radio serials of the 1990s are considered secondary to the TV show proper. Although the book and the audio play are both excellent media for Doctor Who, since both remove one of the major limitations it suffered on TV (ie, a visual ambition far beyond its budget) they will simply never appeal to fandom as a whole. One only has to look at the sheer upswell of interest in the new TV series to see that no non-visual medium attracts anything like the same attention.

So given our addiction to all things visual, perhaps we might be forgiven for regarding friends we can walk down the street and see, as different to those we know only through their names and their words. As with the radio/TV comparison above, it's not necessarily a realistic or appropriate distinction, but it possibly goes some way towards explaining the perceived difference. But then, even that can only be a part of it, surely, since we all tend to 'fill in the gaps' where required - we imagine the images to go with the book we're reading or the radio play we're listening to (and incidentally that fact surely reinforces the claim that we prefer visuals over everything); we also imagine what the radio DJ looks like or, as here, what the person on the other end of the Internet connection looks like. At a slight tangent, this can be a very interesting experience, and even though I have now seen photographs of some of the Planet Skaro Message Board luminaries, I still find myself instinctively picturing them in terms of my earlier mental images. Thus for me James Lindsay will always look like Captain Turner from "Spearhead from Space" and Rob/Steve McCow will always be Wulnoth from "The Time Meddler". More alarmingly still, Wayne Jeffries will always be the seriously hirsute comics genius Alan Moore. The exception to the rule is Ant Cox, who will forever be a five year old with an eye patch.

I suppose at the end of the day, it perhaps hinges on our definition of what a friend is. A quick skim on the Internet tells me that Marlene Dietrich said, "It's the friends you can call at 4am that matter"; it also, after some searching, allows me to find the source (one C. Raymond Beran apparently) of a poem that my Dad had up on his study wall for years (it's probably still in his study, but since the room now looks more like Steptoe's Yard than anything else, it is only safe for me to say that it's probably still in his study... somewhere). The opening, which I can still remember without consulting the Internet, goes, "What is a friend? I will tell you" and then continues, "It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself."

This, I think, is a good point, and certainly one that stands in support of those we are in touch with via the Internet. We all have certain things about ourselves that we don't like to talk about, but which ironically are often just the very things we want to talk about. Although we know that the other people on-line are real people, it still feels easier to write down such things, for those who are interested to read, than it is to look somebody in the eye over a pint and tell them. And indeed, since sometimes we have things we just want to get off our chest, without the need for a conversation, it perhaps makes more sense to post it rather than to say it. It isn't the response or the reaction that we need, we just need for somebody to know. There is, in this sense, something of the confessional about the Message Board existence - we know there is a real person on the other side of the screen, but we can tell them without having to see them, and they are in one sense there simply to listen. Certainly, there are things I've posted on-line which I don't think I would be especially comfortable flinging into verbal conversation with anybody. Whether that in fact indicates some deep failing in me as a person, well I don't know, maybe it does - in which case we're back to the issue of being a sad, lonely individual/nerd/anorak/geek. But if that's the case, then I've seen enough soul-searching and stunning emotional frankness on the net to know that at least it's not just me.

But there's more to it than that, times where it's clear that despite having never met in person, those unseen posters at the other end of the computer connection are more than just passing acquaintances. Curnow Towers is situated not very far from the border with Cornwall, and thus not all that far from where, a couple of weeks ago, there was such horrendous and unexpected flooding. A day or so later I received an email from a five year old with an eye patch - knowing the approximate area where we lived, Ant just wanted to make sure that we hadn't been affected and I was genuinely touched. Nuff said.

A final point. The other advantage we have in terms of making friends on-line is the sheer range of the Internet. As long as you have a computer and a connection to the Web, the playing field is perfectly level. There is no difference between speaking to a person in Scotland, and speaking to a person in America. Or Australia. Or anywhere. If nothing else, surely that has to be a good thing!

And now I'm off to check my messages...